It's true enough that no va means "no go" in Spanish, but not beleivable that the name would retard sales of a car. In fact, unleaded gasoline from Mexico's state petrol monopoly is called "Nova". Nescafe is one of the largest selling coffees in Mexico (especially instant and decaf Nescafe) even though most people call it "Noescafe", meaning, "It's not coffee".

It's a smart move. And ironically, it plays into the hands of the young underground there, who use flash drives to get around internet repression. When I'm there I ususally try to take a few drives to hand out, and everybody wants them with linux on them. The cool thing is, free systems might be good for fighting MS/US hegemony... but they are also just the thing for dealing with a repressive local government.

I lived in a Seattle known for companies whose quality, vision and service spread their products around the country, even world: Boeing, Nordstroms. The Seattle I no longer live in is known for evil empires: MicroSoft, amazon.com, Starbucks. What I can't figure out is how the change happened or why?