1993 Chevrolet Blazer Silverado Sport Utility 2-door 5.7l on 2040-cars

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800k car names trademarked globally, suddenly alphanumerics seem reasonable

What's in a name? This cliched phrase probably gets tossed out at every marketing meeting that happens when a new car gets its nomenclature. We know the answer, though: everything. The name of a car has all the potential to make or break it with fickle customers that are more conscious than ever about what their purchases say about them.
That's giving headaches to marketing folks across the automotive industry. "It's tough. In 1985 there were about 75,000 names trademarked in the automotive space. Today there are 800,000," Chevrolet's head of marketing, Russ Clark, told Automotive News. Infiniti's president, Johan de Nysschen, echoed Clark's sentiment, saying, "The truth of the matter is, across the world, there is hardly a name or a letter that hasn't already been claimed by one car manufacturer or another. You can go through the alphabet - A, B, C and so forth - and you will quickly see that almost all available letters are taken."
What has that left automakers to do? Get creative. In the case of Infiniti, it made the controversial move to bring all of its cars' names into a new scheme, classifying them as Q#0 for cars and QX#0 for SUVs and crossovers. So the Infiniti G, which was available as the G25 and G37, is now the Q50. The FX37 and FX50 are now the QX70.

Chevy Corvette Stingray "colorizer" lets you chase the rainbow

After you've convinced your better half to let you buy a new Corvette, then comes the hard part... actually figuring out which 'Vette you want. While Chevrolet has yet to release the official configurator for the 2014 Corvette Stingray, it did give us something else to kill some time playing around with.
The C7 Corvette "colorizer" recently went online, and it lets you look at the car in all of its available colors and wheel options from four different angles so that when this car does go on sale, you know exactly which one you want. It includes the Corvette's full pallet of colors including Torch Red, Laguna Blue and the hue you see above, Velocity Yellow. Toss in the black wheels, and we're sold. If you have some time this afternoon, be sure to check it out the Corvette colorizer for yourself, and even if you don't have the time, we've put together a gallery with all of the possible color combinations.

Corvette Stingray designer lists five goals of new exterior shape

Redesigning an icon is a difficult task, especially when you've got a blank sheet of paper in front of you and the all-new C7 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray is intended to be your final objective.
General Motors has released a new short video featuring Kirk Bennion of the Corvette's exterior design team, talking about the challenges of sculpting Chevrolet's new flagship sports car and the five goals the team had to keep in mind as it worked. In the end, Bennion's team had the pleasure of seeing their hard work take center stage as the Corvette captured the world's eyes at the Detroit Auto Show earlier this year.