It never ceases to amaze me, the things that upset some people of a certain temperament. For your consideration, this Times of London story about a decision by Renault to name one of their prospective subcompacts the Zoé.

It’s not that the car’s exterior is ugly; there are worse looking models out there. Nor is it the performance: it’s a subcompact electric, which means as long as it performs better than the G-Wiz nobody’s going to complain.

No, it’s the logic some of these French parents are employing:

“Our daughters have a beautiful first name that must not be associated with a car, so let us unite to bring pressure on a multinational which is going to destroy this pretty name for our children,” says a petition launched by Sébastien Mortreux, from the northern town of Auby. “It is a scandal that they are able to use common first names for products,” he said.

Zoés will now become figures of fun, said Rebecca225, the mother of a one-year-old Zoé, who started one of the petitions under her internet user name. “I am shocked. It is completely wrong that Renault should take the name of a woman — of my daughter — for a car, a marketing product,” she wrote.

Just in case you’re interested, the petition in question can be found here; as of 09h51 today it already has 951 signatures.

About the only way I can understand their logic is if we make the logical assumption that

(a) Renault makes horrible cars
(b) The names of these cars are well known as horrible
(c) Anyone whose name reminds them of Renault will be forever ridiculed
(d) The Renault Zoé will therefore be a horrible car
(e) Therefore, my daughter will be ridiculed because she’s named after a horrible car

Of course there are a couple of flaws with this train of thought:

(a) This assumes that the Zoé will be a bestseller
(b) Not all of Renault’s products have been horrible
(c) Names are more likely to be damaged by notoriety than by product placement

So all these French parents have accomplished so far is to open themselves up to ridicule in the English-language press. And what’s more, when all these Zoés hit their teen years, they will look on the Internet at what their parents have done (remember, nothing disappears from the Internet) and find yet another reason to argue with them.

Of course, car-makers could do worse things. Lada, for example, could have named their next vehicle the Ignatiev . . .

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 13th, 2009 at 10:09 and is filed under Funny Stuff, International, Off the Wire and Off the Wall, Petrolheads. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.