Marketers and Ridiculous Car Acronyms

Very recently, Lotus previewed two Evora models. One, a supercharged Evora S and the other, the Evora IPS. The Evora S is what motoring enthusiasts would want. More power in what could be considered a sublime chassis. So it gets a supercharger to boost the 3.5liter V6 engine, making the Evora S have all the power some motoring journalists felt it sorely needed; about 350bhp and a whole lot of torque.

The other Evora mentioned was the Evora IPS. The IPS stands for "Intelligent Precision Shift" or in non-marketing talk, Automatic Gearbox. This Evora is basically equipped with a Toyota sourced automatic transmission unit matched to the base Evora's 280bhp 3.5liter V6 engine sourced from Toyota. The transmission unit or gearbox features a “Lotus developed transmission control”. This is actually more marketing talk. As it basically means Lotus did some driving on the base Toyota automatic, decided that the transmission control software needed recalibrating for quicker shifts and downshifts or any other tricks required to make the Toyota gearbox sporty enough to be utilized by Lotus.

Of course, this automatic is still a torque converter equipped box and may also be used in the Toyota Camry that you see tootling around town. But it has those flappy paddles at the back of the steering wheel if you want to do the gear shifting yourselves (the photo above) and buttons in place of the usual gear shifter in the middle of the transmission tunnel/center console (the photo below).

Lotus says this car is for those who want a sports car to cruise around in, looking sporty but with ease of driving. I'd say it is for people who want to pose and drive as little as possible. Actually this Lotus will sell. To a large number of Asians (who live in traffic clogged cities), Americans (where most of the cars made usually comes with an automatic transmission) and other places where city folk who do a lot of city wide commuting and get stuck in lots of traffic all the time.

But all of this is besides the point. The point of this article is that those marketing people think too much sometimes. I mean, how could they come up with “Intelligent Precision Shift” for something that is actually so mundane and is part of every car out there? An automatic gearbox IS an automatic gearbox even if it is programmed in whatever intelligent way Lotus can think about. The marketers are to be blamed for this.

Sometimes, I wonder how all these terms and acronyms come about. The engineers design a car with four wheels, two doors, an engine (or two if its a hybrid), brakes to stop it and something to channel the power to the wheels. The marketing men then take a look at the facts and figures and come up with these funny names. I suppose this is what happened when they decided to reinvent the word 'key' in Aston Martin by calling it the 'Emotion Control Unit' and then upon starting up the car with the 'Emotion Control Unit', ensure that the engineers program the words 'Power, Beauty and Soul' popping out on the information read-out located at the meter cluster.

I do not know why the marketing men feel that they need to put pointless statements and try to re-invent a word for something so universally accepted like a key or a vehicle's transmission unit. This is especially so when it comes to cars like an Aston Martin and a Lotus. I mean, look at the DB9 or the current V8 Vantage. Do cars like these need any additional marketing gimmicks to make them sell?

They're already a grown man's wet dream just from the way they look and sound (when that 'Emotion Control Unit' is used to start the car). Of course, the only emotion that could be derived from starting up an Aston Martin could be joy. But if you are a secret agent and have recently been double crossed, I do not think joy would be the first thing on you mind. So it is utter pointless to call a key, something else.

Now we have Lotus jumping on the bandwagon of pretty pointless words for something common. What's next? How about the “Deceleration Unit Mega Booster” or “DUMB” for a luxury car's ceramic brake setup option? Or let's call the vehicle radiator an “Efficient Thermal Energy Conductor” so that people think their car has some hi-tech thingamajig. Or get this, calling the driver's side door “The Gateway Towards Speed, Power and Glory”.

I think the marketing people nowadays think too much and try too hard. I mean they're not re-inventing the wheel or anything like that in the first place. There are so many other things to actually do, like save the whales, or help the poor. Maybe they should just write that the car is a vehicle that is utterly soulful, and not plaster it with big words of things that aren't that great in the first place.