ALPHABET SOUP: The letters and numbers of the car world
October 11, 2018
Posted by Barrett-Jackson
Written by Chris Griggs
Pick up the latest car magazine covering the latest and greatest from car manufacturers and you might notice there’s a plethora of letters and numbers added on to what normally is a simple name. Combinations like ZL1, GT3 RS or SV seem to be scattered about in the car naming world, but what significance do these seemingly arbitrary letters and numbers have?
There is no one answer to the question, as each automaker is different in what they use and how they incorporate them. However, the most common place you’ll see them, especially when it comes to the Barrett-Jackson auction docket, is on performance-oriented version of a specific car. For example, if you walk into a Chevrolet dealership to buy a regular Camaro, the salesman would show you one with a lower-horsepower 4-cylinder or 6-cylinder engine. But if you walk in and say you’d like to buy a Camaro SS or ZL1, the salesman is going to show you cars with high-horsepower V8s, tuned suspensions and a whole host of go-fast goodies.
As commonplace as this nomenclature is on new cars, it’s a trend that has been around for decades. Muscle car enthusiasts are readily familiar with terms like SS, Z/28 and W30 from GM, or R/T, AAR and Six Pack from Mopar, but it stretches back even further. When Chrysler introduced the 300 line in 1955, it was known as the C300. They changed up the name the following year to the 300B in 1956, 300C in 1957 and so on. The letter on the end not only denoted what model year the car was, but also helped differentiate it as the top-of-the-line version when Chrysler expanded the 300 model lineup in 1962. Going back even further, in the 1932 Duesenberg offered a supercharged version of their Model J, adding an “S” to the name and called it the Model SJ.
Each manufacturer has their own combination and twist on things, but there is some common ground. The letter “R” has made appearances on high-performance models ranging from Porsche, Shelby, Nissan, Mercedes, Acura and more. At times the letter designations actually stand for something: The KR in Shelby’s GT500KR represents “King of the Road” and the R in the GT350R indicates it was a race-spec vehicle; RS and SS stand for Rally Sport and Super Sport; AAR means “All American Racing” and – hands-down the most used across the board – GT is an abbreviation for Grand Touring (with GTS representing Gran Turismo Spider, Sport or Special).
More often than not, however, the letter/number combinations are arbitrary and adopted by carmakers purely to help buyers differentiate between various versions of a particular model and set the top-of-the-line offerings apart from the rest.
You’ll find letters and numbers galore on the high-performance vehicles certain to grace the docket at the 2019 Scottsdale Auction, Jan. 12-20. To become a bidder either on-site or absentee/online, click HERE; to consign your car at the event, click HERE; and to purchase tickets, click HERE.