Horse 963 - X, Y and Z is for Stupid

If you look down any suburban street, the chances are that you're going to find at least one car somewhere with either an X, Y or Z somewhere in the name or the model. It is my general supposition that these letters on a motor car either indicate that the car is either pointless or puerile, or just plain contemptible, or that the driver of said vehicle is a combination of same.

Think about it...

In Mosman these sorts of vehicle abound: Volvo XC90, Mazda CX-7, BMW manage to do it a number of times with their X5, X3, Z3 and Z4, the Jaguar X-Type. Cast your gaze to white bread suburbia and you'll find the Ford XR6, XR4, XR5, XR8, Holden's Captiva MaXX, Hyundai's Getz, Toyota have the Yaris.

So then, if placing X, Y and Z instantly propels your new car into the realms of the stupid, what are the acceptable letters you can use?

Well there is always the venerable S as in the Mini Cooper S. Perhaps you can even double it as in the Holden Torana SS, maybe even triple it like the Nissan Pulsar SSS but the second you add X, it falls down again. The Holden Commodore SLX is loftily overly stupidly named.

If you don't like S, you could always go for the ubiquitous GT. As in the Ford Falcon GT and GT40 and you can even add letters after it as in the Ferrari 308GTB. Maybe if you have a dinky little car you could have a hot hatch like the Peugeot 206 GTi, or the Suzuki Swift GTI, perhaps the Vauxhal Astra GTE. GTX on the other hand is merely an engine oil.

R is also quite a good thing to put down. Honda have an Integra Type R, and there's the Nissan GTR. Few would argue with either the McLaren F1 GTR or the Mercedes-Benz CLK-GTR.

Nissan tried to confuse everyone with a Pulsar Q, BMW still like to indicate that their cars are fuel injected despite the fact that every car on the market has been fuel injected probably for 10 years plus now (320i) and Audi, Citroen and Mazda have gone for market recognition with thier A4, A6, C3, C4, 2, 3 and 6.

If I was going to release a new car I'd make sure that X, Y and Z were nowhere to be seen. For this reason when I found out that Holden have resurrected the name Cruze for their... Cruze, I instantly knew that the car underneath the badge would be a horrible pile of crud (the website can be found here: http://www.holdencampaign.com.au/cruze/ ) and also why I really do not believe their slogan: Park your preconceptions, you've never seen a car like this before. The problem is... that I have in Horse 955 in which I said The Lacetti itself is expected to be replaced by the Chevrolet Cruze.

I'm afraid that Holden may have given the game away here; even the name is stupid. If they're considering building it here then I suggest very strongly that they don't. It's rubbish.