Why do brands revive exciting model names for boring cars?

This is becoming a more common occurrence as we move away from sedans being our car of choice. We hear “Oh, that gorgeous car from the ’70s is coming back again” and we all hold our breath for the press shots.

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Then the teaser shots come out, and suddenly it’s not a sedan or a coupe; it’s big and has a hatch on the back.

A wave of disappointment rushes over you as you realise that the nameplate that was synonymous with a weekend away, hitting the twisties, is now sentenced to a life of picking up kids from soccer practice and daycare.

Alfa Romeo is the most recent brand to follow this trend, reviving the iconic Junior nameplate for its new small SUV. A nameplate that once graced some of the finest coupes that Italy had to offer now sentenced to a 1.2-litre four-cylinder SUV.

So, if we hate it so much, why does it happen?

Why do brands revive exciting model names for boring cars?

The real reason brands choose to do this is because these nameplates are often synonymous with positive associations and brand recognition; they’re simply selling to a wider range of people.

When you live and breathe cars as a hobby, it’s easy to live in a world where you think everyone has the same thought process as you when, in reality, we are the outliers in the greater scheme of new car purchasing.

The sports category is an increasingly niche part of the market. In fact, the 2024 yearly VFACTS data shows that the category makes up just 0.9 per cent of all new car purchases.

But, for the most part, sports cars are a large part of a brand’s identity, which is where the term ‘halo car’ comes from. There are cars that brands lose money on directly but generate a good brand image.

Take the Mazda Cosmo, for example, which you can read about here. Mazda never expected to break sales goals with the first generation of that car. Instead, it was a market tool to say ‘Look what we can do’.

Then, the brand applied that nameplate to the wider-sold second and third generations, just without all the wizardry found in the first generation.

This generation of reputation is what sells something like a Toyota Corolla, while the buyer is lured in by looking at something like a Supra in the showroom.

Then you have the longstanding trust built by a brand – MG is a good example of this. The brand was known in Australia for its two-seater British convertibles from the 1960s and 1970s, but was revived in the 2010s to sell commuter vehicles.

Sure, SAIC Motor could have started another brand, but it chose to purchase the MG name to leverage a familiar face in most international markets.

Another small implication is that a brand may want to use a named trademark and find a use for it without paying for the copyrighting as it stands doing nothing.

With that being said, there have been some pretty boring evolutions of a nameplate from its sporty origins.

Exciting model names revived for boring cars

Ford Mustang

The Mustang sits in its own category of ‘Pony Car’, just a marketing term for a two-door sports touring vehicle, and has a heritage dating back to 1965.

The car passed through seven generations and is still on sale today, but Ford shocked the world when it decided to release an EV with the iconic Mustang badge in 2019.

Something like this is to be expected, with many cars making the switch to green energy; however, the confusion arose from the fact that it was a mid-sized SUV.

The decision came from Ford to leverage the well-known nameplate to launch an all-new product, but it does admit that the Mach-E is not counted among its seven generations of Mustang.

Mitsubishi Eclipse

One lesser-known model for the Australian market was the Mitsubishi Eclipse, perhaps best known locally through the Fast and the Furious movie franchise.

The nameplate was first introduced into the family in 1989 and was essentially a two-door Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution – featuring the same running gear and all-wheel-drive system – but constructed in the United States under the Chrysler/Mitsubishi partnership.

The car underwent three more generations before it was finally discontinued in 2011. However, the name made a comeback in 2017 with the introduction of a small SUV called the Eclipse Cross.

The model obviously bore no comparison to the historic Eclipse shape, but Mitsubishi wanted to pay homage internationally to its once sporty and curvy Eclipse.

Ford Capri

Perhaps one of the most surprising renditions of a classic nameplate making its way onto something it barely represents is the Ford Capri.

The Capri name went on a hiatus for 30 years in Australia, and Ford teased the return of a familiar face in mid-2024, which seemingly broke the internet.

When the covers were pulled off, what we were met with was an EV mid-size SUV, unrecognizable from the fastback coupes of the ’70s and ’80s and the little convertible of the ’90s.

Ford claims the electric Capri SUV “is the car the iconic sports coupe was destined to become” and created sketches for what Capris would have looked like over the decades the badge was dormant, evolving from a coupe to a sedan to an SUV.

There are nods to the 1970s Capri in the new model’s design, including the ‘four-eye’ LED headlights and tail-lights connected by black bars, but other than that, there’s nothing it really shares in common with the cult-classic two-door Ford.

The new Capri has yet to go on sale, but it’s unlikely that we will ever see one in Australia.

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