New BMW Sport

Sometimes a lot � perhaps the storied history of racing prowess earned since the days of yore. Think Ferrari, Porsche or even Audi.

Sometimes very little. What a brand name and symbol took so long to acquire is sometimes devalued by the latest owners when marques change hands. Harley-Davidson in the AMF era from 1969 to 1981 comes to mind, as does (sadly) Saab under GM and Chrysler under the Cerberus conglomerate.

But what do people really think of your favourite car brand? Well now you can find out, or at least in terms of the Net-literate with.

The premise is simple: what pops into a person�s head first when they see a brand? Part market research and part pop-psychology, Brandtags takes these responses and sizes them according to the number of times a word appears.

Why the research? Well it�s interesting. Also it explains an experience I had driving the new, very gorgeous BMW Z4. It�s a surefire way of catching attention since the new roadster is much better looking than the old one, which resembled a sneaker.
It attracts both good and bad attention though � alongside the craning heads and bulging eyes were a lot of angry glares and disdain. I was quite puzzled (no I wasn�t driving like Kubica) but what made me really curious was the amount of aggression it seemed to elicit on the road.

The worst bit was a silver car tail-gating me very very closely at around 90km/h in the right lane on the TPE. In open traffic that�d be fine, I�d just pull over and let him through but the problem was we were boxed in by other cars, it being around 7pm. And then Mr. Road Safety began flashing his lights even though there was no room to move in front, left or right.

I guess he must�ve been having a baby, a hernia, or both and I began wondering if I had ever insulted his extended family in past life. In any case, bewildered and rather irritated, I pulled over to let him through and spread the joy with the rest of the world.

Then I went home and remembered what word the brandtag for BMW had most memorably.

To save you a Google and a click, it began with �a� and ended with �hole�. Clue: It�s not ant-hole.

And it�s really curious because other luxury German marques don�t have that word writ anywhere as large, although on a side note all the major sports car brands have at least one occurrence of �small penis� (I�m serious!). My only explanation is the BMW has always been, and still is, the yuppie-mobile of choice.

So thanks to the power of the Internet all the aggression directed at the lovely, female-designed Z4 was explained, and then some.

Yep, you guessed it: the silver car was a BMW as well.