Porsche and the "0" in the name.
 

So I was relaxing in my tree swing tonight, reading Vic Elford's book on performance driving when he wrote of the reason that the first 911 was first called a 901, yada, yada, yada.

How did they get away with the 904, 908 in that case?

Was it maybe because the were not regular production cars?

right, Peugots (sp) thing was for production cars, they had their own 908.

Jay

My understanding is that Peugeot copyrighted the name "901", along with a whole bunch of other 3-digit numbers with "0" in the middle.

One they didn't get was "308". Ferarri sold a road car called that during the '70's and '80's. Another consideration is that copyrights can be bought and sold.

N!

They got away with it because they didn't sell the cars in Porsche dealerships in France. They wanted to sell the 901 in France, so needed to either pay to use the name, or use a different name. They opted for the latter.

My understanding is that it was a trademark, not a copyright.

I have heard that war reparations were involved.

Best,
Tom