We plead guilty to miss-spelling or miss-pronouncing lots of cars, especially the ones who's names originate from other languages. Probably the worst example of this around the office is Nissan's Qashqai, as some of our readers pointed out over the years. Apparently, the errors weren't our fault, as Nissan even admits its crossover has a bit of a problem in this department.
The ad comes not from Britain, but from Nissan Australia. There, Qashqai is a brand new nameplate, since the carmaker used to market it as the "Dualis" until now.
Making fun of yourself can be great for marketing, which is exactly what the Brits have done with this cleaver marketing campaign. Teaching folks how to how to properly pronounce the name of their most popular car in Europe was easy and fun. Nissan set up a coffee shop and totally misspelled people's names on the cups they ordered.
On the other side of the cup, there was a message from the Nissan that goes a little something like this: "Miss-spelled name? Don't worry, it happens to the Qashqai all the time. In fact, some people find it tough to pronounce, let alone spell. Well, this is the QASHQAI (Cash-Kai), easy huh? The QASHQAI is an urbanites' best friend - stylish and loaded with features".
And since humor and history lessons go together like vanilla and chocolate, we'll tell you that Qashqai are actually conglomeration of people in Iran. They were originally nomadic and speak two languages, their own which is also called Qashqai and Persian. That's a bit like Nissan's crossover, which is both a city dweller and sometimes a family nomad.
Mihnea's favorite cars have already been built, the so-called modern classics from the '80s and '90s. He also loves local car culture from all over the world, so don't be surprised to see him getting excited about weird Japanese imports, low-rider VWs out of Germany, replicas from Russia or LS swaps down in Florida. Full profile
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