Editions of GWM’s biggest ute and SUV with a muscular new 3.0-litre diesel achieve a bespoke designation. What’s in a name?

BLACK editions are well-established in the passenger vehicle market.

Notwithstanding that just one has a Black Series - pub fact, that’s Mercedes Benz and its AMG high performance division which lays absolute claim to that name, reserving it for their most extreme, track-focused, and limited-edition road cars, with just six making the cut - black is the new black for almost every car maker.

With so many black editions out there, some brands have become creative and conjured alternates that aim to equally represent an ethos of special power, mystery and higher status.

Hence the Vanta. It’s a trim designation for incoming versions of the GWM Cannon Alpha and Tank 500 with the new 3.0-litre turbodiesel.

A fresh diesel engine in this day and age seems counter intuitive when everyone - this Chinese make including - is focussing much more on an electric/electrified future. But nonetheless this one does seem set to be a banger.

Making 170 kiloWatts of power and 620 Newton metres of torque, the unit (codenamed GW4F30) not only makes 35kW and 140Nm more than the make’s pre-existing turbodiesel, a 2.4-litre which only went into the ute (the SUV always having been petrol-electric previously), but also looks pretty decent on output when compared to the sector’s current heavyweight, the 184kW/600Nm 3.0-litre V6 that slots into the Ford Ranger and VW Amarok.

GMW New Zealand boss Cameron Thomas is highly confident the engine can make high penetration, at least equal to the expectation for Australia, where it is tipped to command at least one third of volume for those models.

The new engine is reserved for the applicant models in their highest trim specification; the premium for this and the power plant pushes the ute to $71,990 and the Tank $8000 more. Both are on a higher pricing step than they’ve previously held.

Hence why GWM has determined they should have a specific model name is. It’s all about reinforcing the implication of extra pedigree.

Vanta is from ‘vantablack’, an ultra-black paint, so dark that it absorbs up to 99.965 percent of visible light. Which makes it one of the darkest substances on earth. Anything coated appears like an empty void. Or a flat back hole.

The Vanta editions aren’t in the hue itself; the real stuff is actually quite an expensive and tricky application. Probably a bit too challenging for a production line. Accordingly, the Vanta products have highlights in regular gloss black.

“(It) … was selected by our local ANZ product team following a workshop to develop the variant title,” GWM’s marketing communications manager for New Zealand said when asked for more background to the naming decision.

“The name was chosen to reflect the vehicle’s ‘black pack’ offering, which features a range of black exterior styling elements,” added Jem Taylor.

Linguists will contend ‘vanta’ in this context is a being mis-used; it’s not a word but an acronym, for ’vertically aligned carbon nanotube array.’ These being the forest of vertical tubes that "grow" on a subtract using a special chemical process.

They’re the reason why, when striking vantablack, light gets trapped instead of bouncing off, continually deflected amongst the tubes and eventually being absorbed and dissipating into heat extreme shade of black.

Yes, I know, very nerdy. And ,maybe not very ‘need to know.’

Vanta is actually a word, just not in English. Might GWM had gone for something different had its research taken it down the path followed by this writer?

We all know about those car names chosen with best intention that can u-turn on their makers. The one most often raised as an example is ‘pajero’, which is about to make a comeback.

Mitsubishi’s usage relates to the Latin name for the wild Pampas cat. Not in Spanish-speaking markets, though – there, 'pajero' roughly translates to a word you might yell at someone who's just cut you in traffic, accompanied by a specific hand gesture. Hence why the car in those places was hastily renamed Montero, meaning ‘huntsman’.

Toyota’s Midship Runabout 2-seater ran into issues in France, because when you say its name in French, it comes out sounding something like the word for … well, the same word that also caused issued for Audi, with the e-tron. In French, ‘étron’ means – and there’s no other way of saying this – turd.

Nissan’s Moco was also only ever sold in Japan spared Spanish-speaking markets the giggles of being offered a car named after what you fish out of your nose when you think nobody’s looking.

Anyway, to Vanta. It is a Nordic word, dating back to Viking times, and now employed in Sweden - where it means 'to wait’ - and Iceland, where it stands for ‘to lack’. Which is really the opposite of what the GWM engine proposes.

The more vexing issue for vanta might come if the products are taken to northern India or Nepal.

In the language of that region, it’s a word that means ‘to vomit’ or, worse still, ‘to consume something that has been vomited.’

So perhaps, if offered there, they might call it something like ‘onyx’, or ‘nightfall’ or ‘midnight’.