GM Trademarks the “Stingray” Name

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GM Trademarks the

Earlier this year in May, GM filed a trademark with the US Patent and Trademark Office for the name “Stingray” for use on “motor land vehicles, namely, automobiles”. This is leading to speculation that GM may be registering the name in advanced of launching the C7 Corvette which is expected sometime between 2012-2014.

The Sting Ray moniker first made its debut on the second generation Corvette, albeit in two word form instead of one. It disappeared with the launch of the third generation Corvette in 1968, but returned in 1969 as one-word “Stingray” where is graced the front quarter panels of Corvettes through 1976.

For thirty-three years, the Stingray name lay dormant until resurrected for a new concept car that was initially called the Corvette Centennial Design Concept. You know it better as Sideswipe, the 50th Anniversary Corvette Stingray Concept that appeared in Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen.

With recent comments by the head of GM Design Ed Welburn who said the split window would return on the next-generation C7, as well as GM’s penchant for pulling out historic names for new Corvettes: Z06, Grand Sport, ZR1, it’s easy to see why we are speculating about a C7 Stingray.

Jalopnik asked Corvette PR man David Caldwell about the trademark filing and he responded with the following:

“It’s not really indicative of any specific naming or branding decisions. When we did the semi-recent design concept, we discovered that we did not control the Stingray name to the extent we thought we should.”

Jalopnik points to the fact the one of the best selling cars in Japan, the Suzuki Wagon R, is using the word “Stingray” as trim level package so that may initially support the theory about protection rather than registration for a new model.

Having said all that, I am reminded of our blog post we did back in January of 2007 in which we discovered that GM had filed a trademark for ZR-1, again for “Land based vehicles, namely automobiles.” Prior to that moment, the speculation about what the new $100,000 super Corvette was going to be called was either “Blue Devil” or “SS”.

As a C2 owner, I love the “Sting Ray” name (one word or two) and would love to see it return on a future Corvette. GM’s David Caldwell seems to agree: “We greatly value Stingray as a piece of Corvette’s legacy….and we want to protect that,” said Caldwell.


Source:
Jalopnik

Related:
Name Games: GM Renews ZR-1 Trademark
[VIDEO] Transformers 3 Sideswipe in Alt Mode as the Convertible Corvette Stingray Concept
[PICS] Transformer’s Corvette Stingray Concept Revealed in Chicago

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6 COMMENTS

  1. Absolutely! Bring it back-but please also put that wonderful Stingray “logo” shown above on the car-preferably as a gas cap just as the original ! That plus the split window and I will have one for sure – I’ve waited a long time for it.

  2. Fantastic! Hopefully it lives up to the amazing performance figures as the first generation Stingray’s!

  3. “…sometime between 2012-2014.” Well that’s a shame considering the world is supposed to end Dec 21, 2012. Wait, wasn’t it supposed to end back in 2000?

  4. I love those predictions. My current favorite “end of days” prophesy is that the End of the World will coincide with Chevy putting a V6 in a Corvette.

  5. Yes I own it, StingRayCorvettes.com and four or five others, but this is the grand daddy! Why there attorneys havent sued me yet? Dont know but I think Sting Ray is a sea creature name no one can own and corvette is a def. for a fast battleship. So the way I see it as long as I dont try to sell “motor land vehicles, namely, automobiles” I should be fine. The original idea was I could never afford one but could afford the name of my all time dream car ! Kinda like when I registered 1967camero.com, you see the direction. What can I say I have Gold taste on a tin buget. The doomain cost me .99 to register.

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