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Ferrari Italy 150th Anniversary
Ford blocked TOIT 2011 car's new name alleging that the name F150 already belongs to a Ford pick-up sold on the US market.
Ferrari wanted to argue that a F1 cannot be confused with a pick-up, but, in front of Ford's resistance, TOIT had to rename the car making explicit the reference to the 150th anniversary of Italian independence.
It is true that between Ford and Ferrari there is an old rivalry in F1 dating back to the legendary Cosworth engine era, but....in your opinion, who was more stupid in this issue, Ford or TOIT?:P:cool:
Comments
Absolutely delicious thought of the poster potential with the shotgun rack on the back parcel shelf of the Dino. Oh please make it happen.
To my mind, the issue is around intellectual ownership of the letter F. No, seriously. Bernie spends real money prosecuting anyone who adds the numeral 1 in the same context. Ferrari have in recent times pared back to numerals behind the cherished letter. And let's not kid ourselves about why, when it is clearly done to make the synapse that links to F1 fire up each time you say a model number. I'll bet that in the safes at Maranello are reams of analysis that show that everytime F1 is spoken at a Monte Carlo dinner table, a deposit gets put down on a Ferrari.
Whilst Ford may lay less claim to F in a general sense, they have used it to continuously denote the pickup since 1948. That gives them pretty good title to the F150 (though one could argue that the F4 through F8 are not generally known, even though they too are part of that family).
We can overlook the F-Truck being copied from the Australian-invented Ute of 1934 for the time being. Who cares if the world doesn't acknowledge that we invented everything from the Combine Harvester to the Wine Cask. That's just our cross to bear, and we're happy to help the rest of you out when you're short of ideas. It is probably not worth pointing out that the name Ferrari is thought to have been copied from the 1925 Fast-Arsy invented by Goober Leonard in Broken Hill from a milk churn and a lawn mower to compete in the inaugural Broken Hill 'Huge Cock' street race of 1926.
So I reckon that it is the associations made in the mind of the buying public with the letter F, and any numerals that it is coupled with that corporations are falling over their lawyers to defend.
It's not about continuity; it's not about corporate history and traditions; it's certainly not about Italy allegedly being independant for 150 years (no, don't gainsay me on the independant thing. I will simply reply: Berlusconi, and if that don't stop you we can move on to some other names); it's not even about perceptions of quality; it's about the money, and particularly ambush marketing the heck out of anything to do with cars and Fs
Eff me!