Katherine’s latest pastime during our various drives about town is identifying car brands. She recognizes the Ford blue oval, and the Honda “H” and the Toyota “flying saucers” (“like Mommy’s car!”), the Lexus “L” (“like Nono and Nona’s car!”) and a few others, but she’s most proud of recognizing both the star cluster logo and spelled-out “SUBARU” that is so common in these parts.
I’ve never been a big car guy, but it’s a keen thing for Katherine to learn, and she gets a big kick out of it.
A bit of automotive trivia from Subaru’s web site:
“SUBARU” is a Japanese word meaning “unite,” as well as a term identifying a cluster of six stars, with the Greeks called the Pleiades — part of the Taurus constellation. According to Greek mythology, Atlas’ daughters turned into this group of stars. In 1953, five Japanese companies merged to form Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. The new corporation adopted the “Subaru” cluster of stars as the official logo for its line of automobiles.
Now I have to look up Mazda, man.
The Mazda logo is a little more difficult (looking like a “V” or a bird inside of a circle).
The ones Katherine has the most problems with are the ones that are just words (most trucks), as opposed to logos/symbols.
Interestingly, this has made me a lot more aware of such logo branding. Ford, as a relatively monolithic product line, has a big advantage over the multitude of GM lines (or the DaimlerChrysler lines), in having a unified image. That may hurt it in other ways, but it’s easy to glance around and spot Fords, not so easy to do so for other American car makers.
Your comment about how “monolithic’ Ford is made me curious. Ford has had Ford, Mercury, and Lincoln as brands for as long as we have been alive. They also own Jaguar, Volvo, Land Rover, and Aston Martin, and they have part ownership of Mazda. GM, on the other hand, has Chevrolet, Pontiac, Buick, Cadillac, Oldsmobile, Saturn, Hummer, Opel, Saab, and Vauxhall. That’s only two more than Ford.
But I guess I don’t see your point. I don’t see that the logo is what helps us to pick out Fords easily. I think it’s the fact that the Fords have a more distinctive unified style, and they don’t tend to use the same body style across their brands in the way that GM does.
Hmmm. Lincoln and Mercury are relatively small niches (at least in the traffic we go in), though Katherine’s beginning to recognize the Mercury logo (circle with stylized windswept M in it).
Didn’t really think of the other Ford subsidiaries as the same thing — we see plenty of Volvos, but they’re another that eschews the logo.
On GM side, each of the brands has their own logo or, in many cases (and with “GMC” trucks included) just text, which is a tick above where Kitten is at the moment. It seems to dilute the conglomerate identity, at least for this purpose.
At least, I see a lot more little blue Ford ovals on the road (or on car rears) than I see Chevy crosses.
“Mazda” the Traveller in Black’s name.
Also, part of the name of God for Zoroastrians, “Ahura Mazda”.
If we still lived in the era when both districntive hood ornaments or ‘brand styling’ were still going on, everyone would be more able to spot cars by their maker. The wind tunnel styling era has made most cars look alike – even Volvo has eschewed their boxy styling in favor of the ‘modern’ car look.
Though I don’t particularly like the new Cadillac front grill and hood assembly, I think it is an attempt to give that line an identity. Whether it will work or not is up to consumers. Tailfins weren’t universally appreciated when they were introduced, but they soon came to define an era in automobile styling, for good or ill.