WHAT is so unacceptable about the term Sports Utility Vehicle (or SUV) among the high-end brands that some manufacturers feel they must coin their own, increasingly ridiculous TLAs*?

Fiat Chrysler Automobile’s Sergio Marchionne insists on referring to the imminent Ferrari high-rider as an FUV, BMW calls its X-cars SAVs and now Rolls-Royce has joined the go-anywhere wagon bandwagon with its own apparently unnecessary moniker.

The news that the British car-maker’s SUV foray will be christened the Cullinan is not a well-kept secret but that, now official, confirmation arrives with the news that Rolls will refer to it as a High-Sided Vehicle, and the company might have benefitted from running that option through a few more focus groups.

Secondly, for exactly the same reason there should be two separate words for chips and chips, High-Sided Vehicle abbreviates to HSV.

Each time the Cullinan is mentioned in the media, an army of Australian petrol-heads will click links in their feed that take them to news of an expensive English SUV and not the tyre-shredding Aussie track-star they were hoping for. Try this instead.

It’s by no means the first time car-makers have taken nomenclature matters into their own hands to make something practical sound a little more sexy. Audi’s wagons are dubbed Avants, BMW’s equivalent is the Touring and Mercedes adopted the Estate and Shooting Brake terms.

Little technical detail is included in the release other than the HSV will be the second Rolls-Royce model to roll on the company’s new aluminium spaceframe, following in the tyre tracks of the Phantom limo.

*Three-Letter Abbreviation