Cars that have changed their name

Some of the most popular cars bought by Aussies have changed their model names throughout their lifetime, so if you're trying to purchase a pre-owned Nissan Qashqai or Ford Escape, you may discover a few gaps.

Why do car brands change the model name? It could be for a number of reasons, mostly due to the global head office wanting the same name worldwide. Sometimes the name doesn't resonate with the local residents the same way as it does in Europe or North America. Sometimes, it's to simplify the model line-up, especially if the sedan, hatch and wagon versions of the car all have different names.

Here are some cars that have changed their model names and what names to look for if you're searching for a used car.

In Australia, the first-generation Qashqai was called Dualis, which was the name it went by in Japan. This was mainly because Nissan was worried that Qashqai could be pronounced 'cash cow', and the motoring media often used that pun to describe the sales success of the model. The car became known as Qashqai in Australia in 2014 bringing it in line globally.

The Ford Kuga first landed in Australia in 2012 and was a Euro-style SUV, that replaced the Escape (which itself was a twin with the Mazda Tribute SUV). The Kuga slowly chugged along in Australia but couldn't match the sales heights of the RAV4 or CX-5, while in Europe it remained very popular. It also was sold in the US as the Escape, and the name eventually found its way to Australia in 2016 - did Aussies dislike the Kuga name that much?

The Subaru Crosstrek was originally a variant of the Impreza family known as the Impreza XV (a higher-riding version of the Impreza hatch) before becoming its own model, known in Australia as the Subaru XV. In 2023, the third generation of Subaru XV was revealed however, the XV nameplate was scrapped globally in favour of the existing but unfamiliar (for us) Subaru Crosstrek name which had been in use in North America.

The current i30 Sedan has a long lineage of evolutionary names. Today's name is a localisation to bring both the hatch and sedan under one popular model name (i30), making things easier for new car buyers. Before this, the sedan was called Elantra (which it's still known globally as) since 2000. The sedan was initially marketed as the Lantra in Australia due to the similarly named Mitsubishi Magna Elante model in 1991.

Globally, this small car from Nissan has had many names depending on where you are in the world. For the majority of its life in Australia, it was known as the Nissan Pulsar. In an article we published back in 2010, "Nissan Australia was never in favour of the Tiida name for the car that succeeded its Pulsar small car. It was an outcome forced upon the local arm by its parent, subscribing to a global one-name policy at the time. The unusual name bears most of the blame for the car's poor showing in the local market, according to Nissan." In 2012 the Pulsar name was back.

The Hyundai Tucson launched in 2004 and, like all Hyundai SUVs at the time, was named after a US city. The second-generation model was marketed as the Hyundai ix35 in most global markets including Australia when the brand went through its 'i' phase (remember the i20, i40 and i45?). For the third generation of the SUV in 2016 it reverted back to Tucson name worldwide.

The first-generation models sold between 1999 and 2005 were marketed under the "Yaris" and "Echo" names depending on where you were in the world. Australia was an Echo market, most likely due to Australians not liking weird-sounding words. By 2005, Yaris was used worldwide.

This Mitsubishi Triton-based 4x4 went by the name Challenger in Australia since the '90s and had many generations being sold alongside the very popular Pajero. When it came time to update the Challenger to the latest Triton underpinnings and design in 2015, the name switched to Pajero Sport, in the hopes the association with the popular nameplate would be a hit with Australians as Mitsubishi ended the Pajero's run.

So why did the Hyundai Genesis change its name? It changed because this model was spun off into a whole new brand, with the former Hyundai model becoming the flagship sedan Genesis brand model named G80. In a statement when the brand was launched, Hyundai said that its Genesis brand would adopt an alphanumeric naming structure. All models will be named by combining the letter G for Genesis with a number representing the segment it is in.

The Suzuki S-Cross SUV you see today started life as an SX4, and even more unique, a high-ridding sedan. Over the last decade, the SX4 lost the sedan and grew its high-ridding hatch to a crossover (SX4 being an abbreviation of sports crossover four seasons). By 2016 the name evolved to become SX4 S-Cross (an abbreviation of smart crossover) before committing fully to the S-Cross name in Australia.

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