How to Top Touareg: VW Christens New Tiguan

We’re just dumbfounded this morning. Utterly dumbfounded. When Volkswagen announced its first SUV would be the hard-to-pronounce Touareg, most of the auto press snickered. Consumers struggled to simply pronounce the name, let alone tell a friend they liked it, and the company spent its first slew of Touareg ads teaching the public how to pronounce it. Then there’s the fact that the Touareg is actually the name of an African tribe that still dealt in the slave trade well into the 20th century. Good job marketing guys.

Now the company — and obviously the same marketing team — has announced it will produce the sexy Concept A compact SUV shown in Frankfurt last year. And what do they name it? Tiguan. Is it a real word? Not according to Webster’s; it’s actually a combination of the words tiger and iguana. Because that’s automatically what you think of when you look at the vehicle shown here.

VW actually came up with a few names, then surveyed more than 350,000 Europeans to see which one they preferred. The other options? Nanuk, Namib, Rockton and Samun.

We’re betting our readers can come up with better names off the top of their heads. Go ahead and try in the comments below. You can also browse more photos of the Concept A below to get a better idea of what the future vehicle will look like. Getting your hands on a real, live Tiguan will have to wait until 2008.

[Source: Volkswagen]