March 17, 2017
Iran’s second largest carmaker, Saipa, has un-veiled what it says is the first car entirely designed and entirely made in Iran of entirely Iranian components.
But Saipa immediately got into trouble for giving the car a foreign name: Quick.
The Persian Academy of Language and Literature said the name must be changed—presumably quickly—because it violates the law on utilizing Farsi names. The head of the academy, Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, a former Majlis speaker and one of the leaders of the Principleist political movement, read the riot act in a letter to Culture Minister Reza-Salehi-Amiri.
Quick was unveiled last Monday at a ceremony attended by Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani, who ousted Haddad-Adel from the speakership.
The academy is the policeman of the Farsi language and periodically issues lists of foreign terms that it wants to expunge from daily usage. For example, a few years ago it banned “pizza” and ordered the use of the Persian words for “cheese pie.”
Haddad-Adel wrote: “We ask that a Farsi name be chosen for the car, lest this become a precedent.”
The academy has never criticized the use of “merci” instead of “motashakkaram” in daily usage for more than a century.
It didn’t tale long for netizens to weigh in with criticism of the academy. One person said a quick check of Google maps located a town in Hormuzgan spelled in Farsi the same way Saipa spells the car, although the town uses the more conventional Persian pronunciation of “ko-eek.”
Saipa said the Quick has an engine displacement of 1503 cc, weighs 1,063 kilograms (2,340 pounds) and has an engine rated at 87 horsepower.
Quick is classified as having the euro-4 emission standards and could be upgraded to the euro-5 standards, Saipa said.
The new car comes with either an automatic or manual gearbox.