As an Autopian, you probably get asked questions about cars on a daily basis. A common query I get is after-the-fact car identification from people hoping I can tell them what kind of car was in front of them at a light.
“I’ve never seen one before” they’ll say. “It was this sort of sporty-looking thing with a strange badge on it.” That gives me basically nothing to work off of so I ask if they had any idea at all what the logo might have said. “We’ll, I think it was called an ex-ra-tee?”
An Exraty. An Exraty? Damn, that’s a new one. It’s nearly unheard of for me to encounter a mark from the last 100 years I’ve never heard of at all. Can you describe it a bit more, I ask. “Well, it had two wings on the back like a biplane.” Whoa, that’s odd. Could this Exraty be some bespoke coachbuilder, perhaps outside Tuscany, where artisans are inspired by World War II aircraft to create cars that … wait a minute.
I quickly tap a search into my phone, select Images, and present my likely suspect. Is this the car you saw?
“That’s it!”
Nope, not Italian. The Exraty is a Merkur XR4Ti, or the Americanized version of the Ford Sierra XR4. No wonder this thing didn’t stand a chance in this market.
We laugh, but that’s an odd mouthful of a name for a car and easy to see how someone might read it wrong in that stylized font. “Surely that’s an A between the R and T, why would it be a four?” They aren’t alone.
My Rental Car Is A What?
Typography is a tricky thing. It can be done extremely well where the eye is fooled into reading exactly what the designer wants you to see, even if technically it’s not actually there. Take a look at the Studebaker Lark badge below. The letters are all connected by a horizontal chrome band at the bottom. Other emblems have used similar connecting material between letters, but you’re not supposed to read it as anything other than masybe an underline. So you might expect to read this basdge as “Iark” since that thing in the front might be a capital “I,” but the only thing anyone I’ve encountered reads it as is Lark, without an annoying space between the “L” and the other letters. It’s rather brilliant.
American Motors was famous for using straight-up Helvetica font for most of the graphics on their cars and, more famously, on Jeep products. It created a recognizable style for the Kenosha Kar Krafters, and it was also tremendously legible:
Other badges, well … they have occasionally not read as well as the makers likely intended. As car people, we typically know what the make and model the thing is since we’ve already seen it on a website or in a magazine for older machines, so we don’t have misread-emblem issues. You would never, for example, call a Toyota MR2 a “Mister Two.” [Ed Note: I would, and do – Pete]
But if you have no automotive inclination whatsoever, you might be forgiven for misreading certain emblems. There are plenty of examples of badges that graphic designers possibly should have taken a second look at before they tooled up to make tens of thousands of them.
They Should Have Gone Back To Fancy Cursive Shit
It might sound hard to believe, but I’ve personally heard accounts of all of these misreads of badges below. Honestly, I probably can’t blame the readers of these emblems.
Pontiac really got into the Halloween spirit in the eighties, offering not only the GOOOLE (I usually hear it pronounced GOOH-lee) but also the GOOOSTE to scare the kids. Nobody has asked me what a Pontiac “GOO-lay” was, but to name a car after the guy whose appearance on TV caused Elvis to shoot the screen might be worth it.
We all know that Tesla offers a PLAID model, but at some point they sold a PLOOD version as well. Was that ultra slow or something?
If there was ever a more appropriate badge than 74 Oil I don’t know what it is. Finally, a car that is honest about how many quarts of synthetic it will burn up a month (the early V8s were terrible).
I wouldn’t mind being Stealth, but it would be so much better to be BOOOGT, wouldn’t it? Not a GOOOSTE, but close:
Displacement is usually noted in cubic inches or liters, so I’m not sure how large the motor is in the Datsun 24 ounce:
We can ignore the Ford Fiso (pronounced FI-sow), the French-sounding Toyota Le Hybrid and even De Coupe by dem guys at dat dere Mitsubishi n’at.
Let’s Eat Grandma / Let’s Eat, Grandma
What’s the issue here? In many cases it’s the typography being too similar. There are no breaks between letters and other times the numbers and letters look identical (like the zeros and “O”s in the 6000 LE and 3000 GT).
A little change in scale can help. For example, there is no reason why you couldn’t scale down the “TI” in XR4Ti and have a much more readable badge. See the one I modified below:
Oddly enough, Acura has done just that with there SH-AWD logo for “Super Handling All-Wheel Drive.” You can see the difference in the sizing of the SH versus the AWD on the lower one. Oddly enough, I don’t think the one replaced the other one on Acura vehicles. Yes, I have been asked about what a SHAWD is.
Different fonts might work as well, or different colors or finishes. A few small changes would go a long way to making an easy-to-misread badge (I’m looking at you, KN Motors!) into something quite legible.
Still, where would the fun be in that? Don’t you want to hear your mom ask what a Volvo Jurbo is?
Isn’t “Jurbo” the main guy in Breakin? I’m not really sure, but can you think of any more badge fails?
Top graphic: Thisss is a Mitsubishi 3000GT (not a BOOOGT) via Cars and Bids
Most of these problems could be solved with actual names rather than anonymous alphanumerics.
Then again, most of these cars are long off the market, so problem solved?
Nobody was confused about what you were talking about when you referred to your new Galaxie, Catalina, Fury or Legend.
Why on earth Acura replaced their flagship Legend with a Ralph Lauren, I’ll never know…
Fantastic and fun article!
“The letters are all connected by a horizontal chrome band at the bottom. Other emblems have used similar connecting material between letters, but you’re not supposed to read it as anything other than masybe an underline. So you might expect to read this basdge as “Iark” since that thing in the front might be a capital “I,” but the only thing anyone I’ve encountered reads it as is Lark, without an annoying space between the “L” and the other letters. It’s rather brilliant.”
This is a really long way to say it’s in cursive (with a simplified k).
This is how I will pronounce all of these vehicles from now on
Most of these could be solved by the fact that numbers and (seemingly) random letters is stupid fucking way to name a car no matter the font
Whenever i see an F150 with the aftermarket [][][][] raptor-style grille, I can’t help but read DOOD or OOOO.
Pittsburgh reference detected!
The Honda CR-V EX has been quite popular in the gynecological community.
PFFT…Like Honda ever puts trim-level-indicating badges on their cars (unless it is a fancy word like, “Touring”)….
I see a good number of Nissan Trucks with added “Pro Forks” (Pro4X) tooling about town in these parts.
One day circa 1980, we were in a parking structure, and there was this cute little yellow targa-top Japanese car. My sister excitedly ran over to it, and said “It’s a Soon ka haser!”
I’d never heard of that, so I checked it out myself.
It was a “Sun Chaser.”
Nobody else saw Kenosha Kar Krafters and had images of a secret society that meets in the woods disparaging foreign cars? KREEPY
When I see the bZ4X logo imagine it pronounced like the sound of a paper jam in the printer. bbbBBBBZZZZZ4444XXxxxxX (stuck). Very phonetic.
Specifically a dot matrix one that uses the paper with the tear away holes on the side. I can hear it in my head.
Someone at the old lighting site (I think it was Jason, but I don’t care enough to look) came up with “busy forks”, and that’s been my go-to ever since.
Don’t forget the recent KN (KIA) cars.
Or as my wife asked the first time we saw one, “Is that a Nine Inch Nails emblem on that van?”
“Head like a hole, black Kia Soul”
Bow down before the car that swerves.
But they didn’t:
“ A few small changes would go a long way to making an easy-to-misread badge (I’m looking at you, KN Motors!) into something quite legible.”
My friend had a 1st gen MR2 that we all called Mr Two until it broke down and he took a couple of years getting around to fixing it so it sat in the garage where its wedge shape made it a handy place to lay out your tools for whatever else you were working on. Thus it became the “Mr Toolshelf”.
I can confirm that the Turbobricks crowd calls those early 760/740 Turbo badges “Jurbo” as well.
Personally, I’m partial to an early-’00s Subaru in LAWD trim. Different typefaces, but still. A good SLAWD-grade Nissan’s fun to say, too.
When having a potluck, I always bring a nice dish of Rogue SLAWD to the party.
Good LAWD, that sandwich got SLAWD (presumably at Primanti Bros, another Yinzer ref.)…
Related: Can someone tell me how to figure out whether a particular Cadillac is an XTS or XT5? The badging gives no clue.
XTS – discontinued large sedan; XT5 -SRX replacement
The Studebaker Lark badge with its underlining is reminiscient of what Denzel did with their delightfully brutalist Art Deco-ish logo. Denzel was a company in Vienna, Austria that produced their own cars, almost all open roadsters, similar to Porsche’s 356, in the 1940s and 50s. They often used Porsche engines and VW engines tuned with their own speed parts; they also sold speed parts for VW Beetles, similar to Okrasa and EMPI, albeit far more obscure (but I daresay JT already knows about Wolfgang Denzel’s company.) The logo made use of underlining (and the displacement number) where the untrained eye might read the name as DCNZCL as seen in this brochure:
https://www.autovisie.nl/nieuws/autobrochure-wolfgang-denzel-1300/
And here’s an unbelievably rare VW engine tuned by Denzel with their badge on the fan shroud; in addition to the underlining Denzel’s logo has toplining (ha) which is a bit difficult to comprehend but I think it says “mit motor” and not “wlt wotor”
http://photos.imageevent.com/mrokrasa/porscheenginebuilds/denzel/websize/DSCN7098.JPG
“4matic” surely means 4-speed automatic, which really isn’t something to brag about. It was many years before I learned it’s the Mercedes-specific term for all wheel drive. Not necessarily a legibility issue, but I’m pretty sure the only place that term is ever used is on the badge.
That one got me too.
Yep, I used to think this too
What did they think 4Motion meant?
I haven’t seen 4Motion badges. I’d have probably thought it meant 4 cylinders of power to barely keep your car in motion.
And there’s the Mitubishi “Endervor” (Endeavor) SUVs.
What about the Porsche Timbo?
The staff of Jim Rome’s sports talk radio show is called the “XR4ti crew”.
That Toyota SUV thing will always be the Busy Forks to me.
Also, the Chinese gave the Morris Ital estate some odd new names when they put it back in production
Bee’s Forks to me
Then there was the Honda motorcycle, CBR600F2, often referred to as a “GOOF2”. Popular sportbike in the 1990s.
I wonder if this is where those weird Amazon brands started?
For a few decades, Mitsubishi sold a sub-brand of COE trucks in the US called “FUSO”
I still don’t know how to pronounce it.
FUSE-oh?
FUSS-oh?
FOOSE-oh?
FUSOH! short and with exclamation mark. Like someone making a move in a karate movie. Hiiiiah!
From what I remember of hiragana, that would be 2 characters: Fu (pronounced like ‘you’), and Sō.
So, your last guess should be correct
FU-so
In Japanese – the emphasis is always on the first syllable.
Fuso Trucks and Busses have been sold in Japan for ages.
I once stumbled into a GMC truck and my brain went “…GIVIC?” for a second