After Vectra and Ascona
In the photo, you can see the German Manfred Gotta standing between the original Twingo and the new one. His company has since been transferred to his son. For the Twingo, Renault first engaged its creativity to come up with a name. It’s not surprising that the French contacted him, as they were in the middle of a transformation where the nomenclature was being overhauled. Renault 5 became Clio, and the new small city car also had to get a name instead of a number. “I was very surprised when chief designer Patrick Le Quément contacted me,” he says more than three decades later about the moment, after which he was invited to visit the holy of holies, the Technocentre in Paris, to see the new small Renault.
Conceived Alone
“I wanted to be alone with the car, and sent everyone out of the room,” says Gotta, who spends the winter months in the Caribbean, looking back on his great successes in the sun. “That way I could take in all the details by myself.” He didn’t know that while he was doing that, he was being observed through a window by Renault employees. “When Le Quément asked me what I thought of the car, I said: the car smiles. Then I was given the assignment to come up with a name.”
Friendly and Accessible
“From the outset, the ‘Twingo’ had something accessible and friendly about it,” says Gotta in a German press release looking back on the creation of the name. That Twingo is a combination of the words for the three dance forms twist, swing, and tango, which you can read on Wikipedia, is not true according to Gotta. “Twingo is an artificial name, conceived solely by me.” But how did he come up with it? “We work like a composer who creates a piece from many notes. For us, the letters of the alphabet are the notes. With every name, we start from scratch, and it was the same with the Twingo. You simply have to get a feeling for a product, and for that, the first impression is very important.” According to Gotta, his company consults with linguists to determine if the name in question is pronounceable everywhere, and of course, they check if there are any trademark rights. That was a bit difficult when conceiving the name Avantime. Some phone calls had to be made to Wolfsburg, because Avant had been registered years earlier for Audi’s station wagons. Besides Twingo and Avantime, Gotta also conceived the names Vel Satis and Mégane.