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beige_alertI was reading something in Wikipedia and, you know how this goes, clicked on something, and then something else, and, eventually, ended up in the Ford Merkur article. If you don't recall, "Merkur, the German word for Mercury, was an automobile brand which was briefly marketed by Ford Motor Company in the United States and Canada from 1985 to 1989."
I was in high school then, and had no interest in lower-end luxury cars, but I remember Merkur. They must have run a lot of advertising. Worse than remembering "Merkur," which is an actual name, I find the model "XR4Ti" vaguely familiar. It looks like something you get when a cat walks on your keyboard, but after all these years I still remember it. They must have really run a lot of advertising.
Thinking about it, although XR4Ti looks a bit like something the cat typed in, or like they let the engineers come up with a model designation, it's probably not. The cat would actually produce something like "oe.y5p" and the engineers something like "B34g.2" No, they had marketing experts work on it. That's why I can remember it (vaguely) after twenty years of never having cared in the first place. They had focus groups and testing. They probably determined that XR4Ti was 17% more memorable than XS4Ti, and that 20% of people thought XR4Ti sounded like a luxury car they want whereas 19% of people thought XR3Ti was a "droid" that "wasn't the one they were looking for."
I was in high school then, and had no interest in lower-end luxury cars, but I remember Merkur. They must have run a lot of advertising. Worse than remembering "Merkur," which is an actual name, I find the model "XR4Ti" vaguely familiar. It looks like something you get when a cat walks on your keyboard, but after all these years I still remember it. They must have really run a lot of advertising.
Thinking about it, although XR4Ti looks a bit like something the cat typed in, or like they let the engineers come up with a model designation, it's probably not. The cat would actually produce something like "oe.y5p" and the engineers something like "B34g.2" No, they had marketing experts work on it. That's why I can remember it (vaguely) after twenty years of never having cared in the first place. They had focus groups and testing. They probably determined that XR4Ti was 17% more memorable than XS4Ti, and that 20% of people thought XR4Ti sounded like a luxury car they want whereas 19% of people thought XR3Ti was a "droid" that "wasn't the one they were looking for."
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Date: 2010-05-25 07:36 pm (UTC)You know that an X always sounds cool in any alphanumeric designation!
(That's an X-20 in my userpic)
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Date: 2010-05-25 08:17 pm (UTC)The Ti suffix was Turbo Injected (everyone was putting the 'i' on fuel injected cars because it was new and sexy). The original XR series didn't have either the turbo or fuel injection, then there was a rash of XR#i models and the XR4Ti (I'm not sure if I ever saw a XR3Ti or XR2Ti).
However, I haven't been able to find whether the XR part actually meant anything, except that X is always a 'cool' letter (look at the earlier Jaguar XJ series for instance) and that there was an earlier RS Ford designation which I believe came from the Cosworth stable. A fair bit of Cosworth R&D went into the Ford XR series cars so they may have borrowed the R from there.
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Date: 2010-05-25 08:42 pm (UTC)my brother had the Ford Fiesta XR2i, our neighbour had the Escort XR3i, and I *didn't* have the XR4i, I had the XR4x4 (four-wheel drive version of the XR4i) Sierra.
The R often stood for Rallying, though they had the RS500 models for the Rally Sport.
The XR4x4 had a 2.8litre engine and stunning acceleration and handling (for a "family" car).
Even now there's a flourishing XROC (XR Owners Club) and XRs still appear in Performance Ford magazine.
I started my UK cars with a Ford Sierra 2.3V6, then moved up to the XR4x4, then moved on to a Ford Mondeo (the replacement model of the Sierra) in a 2.5v6, and when that died, replaced it with another slightly newer one of the same, which is still sitting outside my house ... it's the spiritual successor of the XR4i, just in the slightly more "toys and comfort" version rather than the "boy racer" model.
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Date: 2010-05-25 09:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-26 06:54 am (UTC)Some companies are still going for cryptic. Like Audi, Mercedes, and BMW (mostly). You get the S-class and the A4 and a lot of numbers that I don't care to remember. I'm much better with names like Omega or Scorpio or the like. But marketing never asks me...
And before I forget to give you some German trivia: I guess you know that "Merkur" is only the word for the planet Mercury, not the element. The element (Hg) is Quecksilber and that would not make a good brand name here :-)
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Date: 2010-05-26 01:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-27 12:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-27 10:28 am (UTC)