TBA

It is one of our favorite pastimes while driving to observe the other vehicles on the road in order to keep current with car stylings, and to see how long it takes a vehicle to appear on the road after seeing a TV commercial for it. What we have really noticed recently is that car names are becoming more and more inscrutable with each passing model year.
It used to be that car names were simple. Easy to pronounce and remember, and representative of some tangible object or creature. Comet, Maverick, Pinto, Charger, Falcon, Gremlin, Roadmaster. Naturally, there were some curious exceptions, like the Ford Granada or the Buick LeSabre.
Nothing like today, however. Nowadays America's roadways are crowded with the likes of the X5, a BMW SUV* that sounds like an experimental aircraft Chuck Yeager flew into sub-orbit back in the 60s. And Toyota has a hybrid car called the Prius, which sounds like some kind of ancient Roman statesman. Prius Maximus. Or perhaps one of Socrates' argument opponents from Plato's Republic. We half expect to start seeing commercials introducing the 2007 Toyota Glaucon.**
Buick has a new model out called the Lucerne. Our best Google efforts have turned up only that Lucerne is a city in Switzerland. What that has to do with Buicks--or cars in general--is beyond us. The word Lucerne is not evocative of speed, or high performance, or any other sensual quality automakers typically shoot for when naming their vehicles. It is, however, quite evocative of Glucerna, a milkshake that is formulated to be safe for diabetics.
The word cobalt comes from the German kobalt or kobold, meaning evil spirit, the metal being so called by miners, because it was poisonous and troublesome (it polluted and degraded the other mined elements, like nickel). And the Cobalt-60 isotope is used as a cancer treatment. So, does Cobalt seem like a good name for a car? If one simply must, under severe compulsion, name a car for an element in the periodic table, we suppose one could do worse than cobalt. Chevy Calcium, for example.
The Ford Fusion, like the Cobalt, seems to trade on a sort of generic association with science. The name implies the joining of two concepts into a new idea. Hence, one would expect the Fusion to be a hybrid vehicle: the Fusion of gas and electric engines. Or perhaps on of the so-called crossover vehicles, the Fusion of car and truck. Or (ideally), the Fusion of rock and jazz, like the group Weather Report in the 1970s. But it is none of these things. It is just a sedan.
Infiniti[sic] names its vehicles as if they are ballistic missile prototypes. G35, Q45, QX56. Is it not impossible to conjure these vehicles' characteristics up in one's mind, or to differentiate them in any way? Imagine yourself at the dealership: "And here we have the QX56. This baby really lit up the salt flats. Wait till you see next year's version, the QX66PL306J, which comes standard with anti-lock brakes, power steering, and Plan 9 From Outer Space!"
___________
*Not to be confused with the X3, the X5's smaller cousin.
**Socrates takes Glaucon to the metaphysical cleaners in Book II of the Republic in the classic dialogue about justice.