A few choice words for the car industry
The car market has never offered buyers more choice. So why does so much of the language still play it safe? Matt looks at what happens when brands choose the less obvious word.
Jolt is mildly alarming. Busted sounds cheap. Stupid-o-clock contains, well, ‘stupid’. Swamp is grubby. And Overfeel is just made up.
And yet these words are all out there in the wild, working their magic for Hyundai, INEOS, Škoda and Porsche – and are great examples of innovative language in a car market that has never been more crowded.
I’m not just trotting that tired phrase out. At the end of 2025, Auto Trader counted 72 brands competing for UK buyers – a huge 27 more than just six years ago. By the end of 2026, Auto Trader expects to see around 80 in the market. SMMT, meanwhile, says model choice has increased by 6.4% in the last year alone. It’s a truly – yes, here it comes – unprecedented range of options.
With more badges and more models than ever all fighting for the same pair of eyes, disappearing into the established language of the category is basically attention suicide. And yet tone of voice is still one of the easiest places for brands to squander the chance to sound different.
Leave some dirt on
‘Sound different’ is a very easy thing to say. But what does cutting through actually look like when it reaches the page?
Well, INEOS suggests you can “drag a trailer through a swamp if you like”. Elsewhere, it talks about a “busted vehicle”.
Drag is blunt. Swamp is dirty. And then if you like undercuts the feat rather than inflating it. They could have written something about “conquering the toughest terrain with uncompromising capability”. Instead, the car is doing something quite hardcore, but the language stays down at ground level and the brand can barely be bothered to boast about it.
As for busted, it’s an expression you’d more naturally hear in someone’s pub story about what happened to their Land Rover, rather than polished automotive product copy. In other words, it has real character.
Škoda, meanwhile, lets a different sort of mess into its language. Its UK ‘Made for Familying’ campaign gives us spilled ice cream, “snack tax” and a “flight to Spain on a stupid-o-clock plane”.
Familying of course borrows the same knowing ‘verbification’ as adulting: the serious business of being a grown-up recast as something you’re just about muddling through. And stupid-o-clock sounds like something a parent might really say while setting a horrible alarm, rather than polished-smooth copy.
There’s a faint echo of the pratfall effect here too: a little imperfection can make competence more likeable. Škoda lets some of that imperfection into its world without attaching it to the car itself.
And then there’s “Šhhhkoda”. British buyers have spent years getting the pronunciation wrong, but rather than politely correct us, Škoda puts it at the centre of the campaign and plays with it: “Šmart”, “Špacious”, “Štylish”.
Against the usual SERIOUS ENGINEERING and MOODY SHOTS, deliberately playing with your own brand name feels almost mischievous – and far more human.
Feel what, exactly?
“Yes,” you may be thinking, “put the experience into the language. Obviously. We already do that.”
Fair enough. But how specifically?
The Hyundai IONIQ 5 N doesn’t stop at putting the feeling in a headline – it puts it into the feature name itself. The car’s power-boost function is called N Grin Boost. Elsewhere there’s “grip and grin” and even “gleefully scorching torque”.
The technical feature could easily have been given another anonymous performance label, leaving the emotional work to the body copy… perhaps to be missed altogether. Instead, the grin gets right inside the feature name, and keeps resurfacing.
Then comes the paired headlines Feel it jolt / Hear it roar. The matching structure has stopping power of its own (who said tone of voice was just about words?), while both phrases put you inside the car, rather than standing outside being told about it.
Jolt is especially good because it contains risk. Take it out of context and it sounds like a fault, and before you know it somebody has dropped an anxious comment bubble. Put it behind the wheel of a performance car, though, and it’s exactly what the driver is looking for. Replace it with response and nothing is technically wrong – but you’ve lost the sensation.
When the usual words run out
I’ve written instant response, I’ve punned on electrifying, I’ve scratched my head looking for another way the English language can somehow describe what happens when a battery deploys a lot of power very quickly (and that’s assuming the brand’s tone of voice even gives permission to go somewhere less obvious).
So I have a lot of professional admiration (aka jealousy) for Porsche’s Overfeel. Yes, that’s Overfeel.
When put together, two unremarkable words produce something truly distinctive and ownable, that tries to name the customer’s experience – instead of generically describing the car’s behaviour. There’s perhaps a faint echo of oversteer in there too: the same over- construction gives it a familiar automotive flavour, even within the strangeness.
A customer may not fully get it on first take. They may decide it’s silly. Fine. But they certainly weren’t expecting it. They might remember it. And they might even read on to find out what Porsche means by it. It’s got a chance to make an impact – where instant response probably doesn’t.
And some credit to the client. All the talk of being bold can look great in a tone-of-voice deck or manifesto – the harder bit is getting an Overfeel (or even just a jolt) approved.
There’s nothing wrong with asking whether jolt sounds uncomfortable, or whether busted feels cheap. Overfeel will probably irritate some people. But if distinction is the aim in a market this insanely busy, tone of voice needs to make us feel a bit nervous.
There will always be a safer word. The question is whether it gives a customer anything as memorable.