Volkswagen's official announcement of its compact sedan also has brought to the fore another issue: i.e. what to name it? Ordinarily this would be a straightforward job of hunting for a name and using it. But with companies being the structured beasts they are today, it would, for all sorts of reasons, be preferential to choose a name already used by VW.
While the car is internally known as the ICS or Indian Compact Sedan, VW already has what it says is a provision name for the car — Bora. The advantage with this name is that, like the Vento it is a name that has been used internationally before. The other is that, like many VW cars, it is named after a wind. So Bora, a high speed wind that blows near the Aegean Sea can fit in well with Polo inspired by the Polar wind; Vento meaning wind in Italian; Jetta named after the jetstream; Golf after gulfstream, and finally Passat, a German trade wind. Interestingly Bora has also been used for a car before, by Maserati in 1971, and it was the Italian sports car company that actually started the trend of naming cars after winds. VW is also considering Derby, again a name it has used before and one that seems to have a nice ring to it.
VW insiders also said that the company is looking for names of Indian wind, which would go well with the others, and would be interesting. What we can tell you for sure is that VW isn't thinking of using the name Loo, which of course is the hot wind that blows across Delhi in summer. We are sure it was rejected immediately. Stranger things have happened however; remember the Skoda Laura?
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