Testa Rossa: By any other name, would the redhead from Maranello be so sweet?

If there was ever a car that epitomized the greed-is-good excesses of the Eighties, it was the Ferrari Testarossa. To purists, even its name represents a sell-out. The original 250 Testa Rossa road racer was not only shockingly beautiful, it performed beautifully on the racetrack as well, winning three World Sports Car Championships between 1958 and 1961.

The Testarossa of the Eighties, in contrast, had no racing pedigree whatsoever. It was, impure and not-so-simple, a car designed and built to cash in on an image. And since cashing in was what the Eighties were all about, it was the perfect vehicle for its time. The saving grace was, it was also a damn good automobile.

When it came time to name their hot new car for next year, Ford looked back to the Futura.

The Futura name is itself a bit retro. It first appeared on a Lincoln concept car in the 1960s, and was recycled repeatedly on a variety of show cars and production vehicles during the decades that followed. In Australia today, Ford sells a version of its Falcon model bearing the Futura designation.

But those naming plans backfired when the lawyers for Pep Boys Auto Parts sent Ford a letter complaining of potential conflict with their line of Futura performance tires. Then, Ford didn't know what to call its new car. It's not easy to think up exciting new names for cars, year after year, especially if you restrict the creative thinking to names that start with F. The naming conundrum caused problems for sales people at Ford, inhibiting their efforts to create prospective buyer anticipation for the car with no name, or worse, a car with a name that was being abandoned. As one writer put it in the Chicago Tribune, "There's no pent-up demand for vehicles dubbed 'formerly known as.'" At some point, the sales people just don't care what you call the F****** car, as long as you give it a name they can introduce to prospective buyers now looking for next year's new car.

While the Ford Futura name is alive and well in the land down under, others are having naming problems of their own in Australia. Mitsubishi Motors was doing just fine with its Magna, until they imported a hot French designer from their equity-partner, Mercedes Benz. Apparently, the pointy-nosed "Boulay look" for the Mitsubishi Magna wasn't fancied by the Aussies, and sales stalled. Now, almost nobody wants a Mitsubishi Magna. There's no time to retool the design for next year, so what's a car company to do? Dump the name Magna, in favour of...well, we won't know until the winning name is determined by a naming contest. Crikey!

Meanwhile, the attention-grabbing car in America is the new Dodge Magnum. Now, that's a name! And, it's got a powerful design and performance specs that make new car buyers all hot 'n' hemi, so there's a good chance the name will prove to be a good one.

UPDATE: Just a day after this post, the British press reported that Mazda UK is having naming problems with the numbering its latest flexible format people mover. The new vehicle, which offers five, six or seven seats, was going to be called Mazda4, not to correspond with the seating configuration, but to fit nicely into Mazda's numerical branding policy. Late in the marketing season for new cars, it was realized by the Japanese automaker that the number four is associated with doom and death in Asia, so the numerologists nixed the name Mazda4. The model will be making the rounds on the autoshow circuit as the Flexa, until an acceptable name or number is found. It's reported that "urgent market research" is underway.

UPDATE: The Detroit News reports that the Ford Futura is being renamed Fusion. Autos Insider says, "The Fusion name fits in with the Ford brand's strategy of beginning the names of its cars, minivans and crossover vehicles with the letter F."