There are not only names and surnames here …
Although, of course, most often it is someone’s passport data that hangs on the trunk lid. The names of the founders are everywhere – Citroen, Opel, Toyota, Honda, Peugeot, and so on. In second place are abbreviations that make life much easier. It’s easier to say BMW than “Bavarian Motor Plant”. The same story with FIAT, AMG, SAAB.
But there are other car brands whose names are not at all what they seem …
BRABUS
The name of the German tuning brand has nothing to do with exotic fauna. Don’t confuse “Brabus” with a barbus! It appeared as a result of the addition of the first syllables of the surnames of the founders of Brackmann + Buschmann. And the main figure among these two was, oddly enough, the second – Bodo Buschmann. But out of common sense, he did not insist on combining BusBra. Some kind of piquant nonsense would turn out …
DATSUN
The re–closure Japanese brand Datsun is also half an acronym. DAT – the first letters of the names of the founders of the company, to which the word son – “son” was first added to denote a new compact, that is, the youngest model in the family. Then they realized that in Japanese “sleep” is consonant with the concept of “collapse“, “loss“. So the “son” became the “sun“. It’s a pity, but an interesting story did not help the Japanese …
VOLVO
This is not the name of the founder, no. In Latin, Volvo (or rather, volvere) means “I roll.” The founders of the Swedish car company were directly related to the ball bearing giant SKF, which patented this trade designation back in 1911. In 16 years it will become the name of the first car of the most famous Swedish brand.
WOLTSWAGEN
Almost everyone knows the literal translation – “people’s car“. And in the course, why is he national? Because the construction of the plant in Wolfsburg and the development of the first model – the famous “Beetle” – were financed by ordinary German citizens. Such a loan is the opposite: first you pay for a car, and then you drive it.
True, the salt of the story is that none of the ordinary Germans received their assigned “Beetle“. And at the plant in Wolfsburg, they started the production of military all–terrain vehicles for the Wehrmacht. So it goes…
KIA
It is a rare case when an abbreviation in a brand name captures not someone’s passport data, but a romantic phraseological unit. KIA means “something good that came from the East.” And in this case it’s not about kimchi …
CADILLAC
But here it was not without a well–known surname. True, Cadillac is not the founder of the company, not the chief designer, or even the chief financier. Back in 1902, they decided to name the new car brand in honor of the man who founded the city of Detroit, the capital of the American automotive industry. True, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac was French, so it would be more correct to pronounce his last name as “Kadiyak“. But it doesn’t sound very good, tell me? ..