Global Engines Take Low Marketing Road

TRAVERSE CITY, MI – Branding engines has become as commonplace as branding vehicles.

Names such as Hemi, Northstar, Vortec, Triton and others are meant to send a message about the power and performance of what’s under the hood.

But one engine maker is taking a low-key approach and letting the performance speak for itself.

Global Engine Mfg. Alliance LLC says it will not brand its engines when they launch in Chrysler Group products late next year. But that doesn’t mean there weren’t heated discussions on what to name the engine when development began.

“We had very interesting discussions early in the program about brand attribution,” GEMA President Bruce Coventry says in an interview with Ward’s following a presentation at the Management Briefing Seminar here. “At one point we talked about…maybe there would be a logo (on the vehicle) that would say, ‘World Engine inside.’

“(But) after really looking at the market we are going into, it was pretty much decided we wouldn’t have any brand attribution for the engine.”

During the discussions with marketing teams, several names were conjured up. Some of them seemed logical, others not so.

“We went from Hemi, we were looking at Demi; there were all sorts of great ideas out there and we just said it didn’t make any sense,” he says.

The individual brands taking engines from GEMA will receive their powerplants with a beauty cover identifying the displacement and the marketing brand for the manufacturer, Coventry says.

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