There’s a battle happening in the SUV world right now, and we don’t even know we’re in it. By “we,” I mean America, and the battle is for the chance to name a full-size SUV ‘Sasquatch.’ Our enemy? The Czech Republic.
More specifically, I mean the American automakers that build full-size SUVs, and the Czech automaker Škoda. Škoda has a history of naming their SUVs really well, and model names are clearly important to the company. They have the Yeti, a smaller SUV, and just recently they announced the Kodiaq, a larger SUV named after an Alaskan bear.
Anybody paying any attention to this situation at all can see where this is leading. Let’s just do the math here: a Yeti is a cryptozoological creature sometimes known as the Abominable Snowman. It’s a sort of humanoid, ape-like being reputed to live in the Himalayas. It’s tough, rugged, fairly outdoorsy, and a fantastic name for a little off-road vehicle.
The Kodiaq references a are distinctively American; it’s an Alaskan town, the name of a type of Alaskan bear, and the name itself is derived from the Native American Alutiiq people’s language.
So, if you look at this pattern, and combine these two names, conceptually, a huge humanoid cryptid plus an Alaskan bear with a Native American name, what do you get?
There’s only one answer: Sasquatch.
Yes, Sasquatch, better known as Bigfoot, is America’s best known cryptid. If a Kodiak bear and a Yeti could mate – preferably in front of a bunch of pay-per-view cameras because I’m a businessman – the result would be a huge, brown, powerful Sasquatch.
It’s not hard to see what’s going on: Škoda is teasing us. They know what they’re doing. These two SUVs are warning shots to America, letting us know that if we don’t act, Škoda’s next SUV will be named the Sasquatch.
We cannot let this happen.
Sasquatches are American. And not just since-the-1700s Colonial American, they’re Native American. The name is from the Halkomelem people (the original word was sásq’ets, for “wild man”) of the Pacific Northwest, the home of Bigfeet. We simply cannot give up our rights to name an SUV Sasquatch to these Czech interlopers.
America has already claimed the Bigfoot name in the automotive world thanks to the pioneering monster truck we all know and respect. It’s now time for one of America’s automakers to step up and give their next big SUV the name it – and we, as Americans – deserve.
Surely one of the companies has their next big SUV in development and is ready to stick a new name on it. I mean, think how much cooler the next-gen GMC Yukon would be if it was called the GMC Sasquatch. Do we really need another Ford Expedition? Wouldn’t the Ford Sasquatch sell way, way better? Is the Durango name so precious? Dodge Sasquatch.
Any carmaker should be leaping at the chance to be the one to introduce the Sasquatch. The time to do it is now. If it means a mid-cycle renaming of a model and a hurried program of re-badging, so be it.
We know Škoda is ready to go on this; they probably have Autocad files of the badges just waiting. We have to step up and lay a claim on this most important piece of our national mythology, and make sure that the first big-ass, oversized, gas-slurping monster of an SUV to be named after that noble and terrifying wood ape is one from the continent that it calls home.
We need a big American SUV named Sasquatch, and we need it now.
Representatives of the major American automakers know how to contact me if they require further details, or samples of what I’m certain is real Sasquatch urine for inspiration.