Model Misnomers

This is a relatively random rant, but it's something that has bugged me for a little while. It really bothers me when a car company establishes a naming convention, and then ignores it for egotistical reasons. The latest example of this is the Pontiac G5. Pontiac created the G6 with the plan of introducing the G8 at a later date. Why, then, is the Pontiac version of the Cobalt, which has basically the same size relationship to the G6, as the G6 does to the G8, not called the G4? It's not like this is a bad name for some reason. It sounds fine, perhaps even better than G5. And it's not as if Pontiac is taking the route of BMW, and bumping the number up by one for a coupe, since that would make the G6 coupe the G7. It seems to me that this was purely a case of brand manager ego.

The same thing happened a few years ago, when Audi created the A3. With the A8, A6 and A4 already in the lineup, why was it not the A2? Sure, Audi created a smaller A2 model 3 years later, but that short-lived car could've been called the A1, as they will do in 2009 when they try again.

Okay, I know this stuff is largely irrelevant to most people, but I'm a big fan of order, and when something fits, stick with it. For this reason it also bothers me when BMW calls its base 3.0L model the 328i. Sure, it needs differentiation from the 3.0 turbo at the top end, but that's already done by calling the latter model the 335i.

Pick a system and stick to it!