The Auto Writer

Three’s A Charm When It Comes To VW Model Names

Routan. Tiguan. Touareg. VW loves to create difficult to pronounce names, but customers don't seem to be too flustered. Year to date sales remain good and the new Routan should help raise VW's visibility somewhat.

Ah, Routan. The name just rolls off the lips, doesn’t it? Well, if you’re like many people who aren’t quite familiar with the Volkswagen brand, you could be pronouncing the rebadged Dodge Grand Caravan minivan in a number of different ways.

• Roo-tan or Roo-tahn

• Routing as in Rowting

• Rooting

In a curiously and ongoing move by German automaker Volkswagen, the company continues to bring forth new models with unique, but difficult to pronounce names.

A few year’s back we were introduced to the Touareg, the automaker’s midsize SUV. The name looks like it is spelled incorrectly, but it isn’t.

Last month, Volkswagen unveiled the Tiguan, its small SUV, a word that isn’t even part of the German vocabulary. It turns out that VW held a contest to name its SUV and readers chose Tiguan which is a hybridization of two words — tiger and iguana. Don’t ask!

How Do You Pronounce It?

I heard about the Routan name shortly after Volkswagen and Chrysler (then DaimlerChrysler) announced that VW would supplement its North American line up with a minivan, a reworked version of the popular Dodge Grand Caravan / Chrysler Town & Country models. Even then I thought to myself, “Why is Volkswagen selecting names that American drivers will find difficult to pronounce?”

Marketing pros will tell you that the ability to pronounce a product’s name is critical to its success — why make it difficult for your customers to understand it? David E. Davis, Jr. shares my position regarding the Volkswagen Touareg even going so far as remarking that some people think that the name could bring down the VW house (it hasn’t).

Take It From Mercedes and BMW

Personally, naming conventions along the lines of the “classes” and “series” offered by Mercedes and BMW would make better sense for VW, but they aren’t likely to bite. Instead, we’ll probably see a bevy of new models rolled out with mispronounced names that would make any German grammar teacher cringe.