Hi Steven,
Your claim of a "urban myth" was covered at length in one of my college marketing class case studies in the early 1980s...
The "No Va" (Nova) car brand name did negatively affect GM sales in Spanish speaking countries for that model and was verified by the Marketing Professor of my class at the time who did market research consulting for GM.
He claimed GM Detroit use to have a "one size fits all" mentality that did not recognize the unique needs and preferences of people living in other countries. If I recall correctly, GM remnamed the "Nova" to disfferent name after several years of languishing sales.
Steve Neago "Questioning Internet claims, not the facts in Cincinnati, Ohio"
<classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>; "Mark Bulgier" <mark@bulgier.net> Sent: Saturday, January 04, 2003 12:23 PM Subject: OT: Chevy Nova (was Re: [CR]Bicycle brand nicknames)
> on 01/04/2003 08:09 AM, Raoul Delmare at R.Delmare@Charter.net wrote:
>
> > Like when somebody at General Motors finally figured out why the
Chevrolet
> > Nova was not the best name for a car sent to Mexico . No Va = No Go .
> > Wonderful name for a car , "Won't Go" !!
>
>
> Urban myth.
>
> See http://www.snopes.com/
>
> --
>
> Steven L. Sheffield
> stevens at veloworks dot com
> veloworks at worldnet dot ay tea tee dot net
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