Audi readies Q1 SUV after Fiat rebuff over name

Automotive News reports that Audi has failed to persuade FIAT to let it use the designation Q2 for a new compact SUV, so it has had to go to Plan B and reluctantly call it Q1. The Q2 'name' (can it really be called a 'name'?) is held, the report says, by Alfa Romeo (which Audi has been trying to buy from FIAT). It is (or was) used to designate a self-locking front differential.



Why this relentless simplification of model titles? When you use such banal designations you're bound to run into problems more often than if you use a bit of imagination and think up a name for the car, or for the technical system. Hydrolastic, for example, rather than - what - H1 or something like that. And there have been plenty of examples of conflicting three-digit numbers, for example when Mazda and BMW used to use them.



Audi, however, do have a theme here. AN says:

Audi uses the Q badge for its SUV/crossovers, which include the Q3
compact, the Q5 midsize and the large Q7. Audi CEO Rupert Stadler said
earlier this month that the automaker is "working heavily" on a
range-topping Q8 to go on sale before 2020.

Wait until the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation hears about that last one!