Ford Freestar - Name Change

Name Change

The Freestar name change may have led to the van's early demise, and is perhaps a textbook example of how a name change can kill what was once a strong product line. The Toronto Star cited one naming expert who called it the "Ford Fiasco." Naseem Javed, president of ABC Namebank International predicted "It will cause confusion and chaos for consumers. Others called the scheme to rename Fords with a word starting with the letter F as "just foolish." Ford said that dealers suggested the idea, and that it fit the $600 million redesign of the Ford minivan. Joe Greenwell, vice-president of marketing and operations for parent Ford Motor Co. believed the new name would "stimulate interest in the product."

Read more about this topic:  Ford Freestar

Famous quotes containing the word change:

    Like dreaming, reading performs the prodigious task of carrying us off to other worlds. But reading is not dreaming because books, unlike dreams, are subject to our will: they envelop us in alternative realities only because we give them explicit permission to do so. Books are the dreams we would most like to have, and, like dreams, they have the power to change consciousness, turning sadness to laughter and anxious introspection to the relaxed contemplation of some other time and place.
    Victor Null, South African educator, psychologist. Lost in a Book: The Psychology of Reading for Pleasure, introduction, Yale University Press (1988)

    The same things change their names at such a rate;
    For instance—passion in a lover’s glorious,
    But in a husband is pronounced uxorious.
    George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)