Chrysler or Seat? Doesn't matter, the main thing is Spain.
01/16/2022
We've all been in this situation at some point: the sports car enthusiast friend who is only moderately interested in old cars tells you that some acquaintance has bought an "R8" and looks puzzled when you don't say "Wow, cool! The V10?" - but with "Nice. A Gordini?". Of course, the friend has never heard the name of the "Witcher" before, especially not in connection with Audi. Conversely, Renault has somehow still failed to squeeze a ten-cylinder engine into its rear-engined small car.
Duplicate car names always cause confusion when enthusiasts of one model unknowingly come across one of the other, and everyone thinks it's "their" car. However, the extent of the confusion is sometimes quite different. Mercedes fans get around this problem quite elegantly by simply naming the W 198, R 107 or R 129 model series instead of the engine to make it clear exactly which 300 SL they are referring to. The chances of drivers of a Simca Arone Week-End and a Fiat Palio Weekend misunderstanding each other in the wild are relatively low anyway; the same applies to owners of Chrysler and Seat Cordoba.
Ford, on the other hand, has always had a special talent for the second and third utilization of model names. The name Capri was first emblazoned on a Lincoln, then on an English Ford, then on a Mercury, then on a German-English Ford and finally again on a Mercury (which ran as a Ford in some markets). Twice they even managed the feat of offering two completely different cars with the same name at the same time. From 1974 to 1982, there was a Ford Granada in the USA, which had nothing in common with the European model apart from the name. In 2005, they repeated their creative declaration of bankruptcy when they put a moon-sized US sedan of the same name alongside the European Fiesta station wagon Fusion. Speaking of the Fiesta, it shares the holiday spirit in its name with Oldsmobile's full-size station wagons from the fifties. And then, of course, there was the Ford Galaxie and Ford Galaxy...
Many owners of Italian super sports cars were also hit particularly hard. The Maserati Bora with its eight-cylinder mid-engine had to give up its name 20 years after the end of production to a dull Golf IV with a notchback. The VW Polo hatchback is called the "Breadvan" by English fans, as is the one-off Scuderia Serenissmia based on the Ferrari 250 GT SWB.
If you want to make a big deal out of 55 hp, all you have to do is save the "Opel Rekord" and just casually say "P1". That's also the name of a McLaren with a healthy 916 hp. And any Ferrari 410 Superamerica with twelve cylinders pales in comparison to the splendor of an IES Súper América; an Argentinian licensed Citroën 2CV with a plastic construction machinery radiator grille and square headlights in the fenders.
Only Porsche drivers can breathe a sigh of relief: the Moskwitsch 356 remained a prototype.
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