Crossovers. Everybody’s buying them! But coming up with new names is hard. So GM has fallen back on an old tried-and-true method.
“Everybody loves the dustbuster!” General Motors CEO Mary Barra said Friday, referencing GM’s spaceship-looking minivans of the early 1990s. “But what everyone misses the most is the time when you could say the word ‘Lumina’, and generate the inevitable response, ‘which one?’. It’s a great conversation-starter, and we intend to bring back that element of fun.”
The new crossover, set to debut in 2019, will be called the Malibu, and will be sold alongside its sedan counterpart. “We’re taking special care to avoid any sort of ‘APV’ designation, thus eliminating any kind of shorthand clarification,” said Barra.
GM has flirted with the idea of of giving completely different vehicles same-sounding names in recent years, most notably with the Chevrolet Volt and Bolt. Though easily distinguishable on paper, it takes an extra amount of effort to enunciate properly.
“We figure, the more people talk about our cars, the less they’ll be talking about the competition.”