6/29/09

Syntax in the Auto Market

Kia Soul Concept photographed at the Montreal ...Image via Wikipedia

I read a review of the new Kia Soul, which is set to compete with the the Scion xB and Nissan's Cube. Aside from the question of a possible pun in the name (Kia is based in South Korea, so is the model a homonym for Seoul?) the interesting thing about this car is that they've used punctuation to distinguish the different models.

There's the base Soul, and the Soul Sport, but there's also the Soul Plus, or Soul+, and the top of the line Soul Exclaim, aka "Soul!" In the "olden days" Unix programmers used to call the exclamation point the Bang, but I don't know if people would be interested in driving the Soul Bang! Unixers also used to call the asterisk (*) the Splat, and I don't think anyone would want to drive a Soul Splat*.

Of course, this leads to a wide range of possibilities. Kia should have called the Sport model the Soul? (Soul Wonder? Soul What? Soul Huh?). And maybe Ford or GM could declare their own car variables. Would calling it the Chevy Camaro$ help you understand the value or price range of the car? There could be operator problems using the Ford Aero*. It would be obvious that the Soul++ is incrementally better than the Soul+, but if the car is called the ++Probe, well, does it get better before or after the probe?

I just hope they don't start using parentheses, otherwise we'll have to work out an order of precedence. Is a (4x4)+(A/C) better than a Soul!?
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