The letters game

Whatever happened to proper trim levels?

Today I want to talk about something that has quietly and almost imperceptibly disappeared from modern motoring. Not so long ago your social standing would be made obvious to the world by the trim level of your car, those little letters on the bootlid that told everyone how well-equipped or otherwise it was. A lot of people may take them for granted and not give them a second thought, but these trim levels had far more importance than their stature might suggest - they said a great deal about the person behind the wheel and, particularly in the company car world, your success in life would be judged by your peers on what badge you had. Nowadays though, these traditional hierarchies have all but disappeared in favour of meaningless names, and I for one miss the days of designations like L and GLX, whose simplicity belied the connotations attached to them.


Until the 1960s, the whole concept of the trim level didn't really exist at all, most cars came in one single specification (take it or leave it) and variants were considered separate models and given different names, such as Ford's Consul, Zephyr and Zodiac. The idea of defined trim levels started in a small way: you would typically have the unnamed standard model and a Super or Deluxe with a bit more equipment, plus maybe a sporty GT, but that was it and the trim hierarchies didn't appear until the seventies and the boom in the company car market with its strictly defined grades.

An early example of a trim level, the Cortina Super was a cut above the standard model

The majority of manufacturers followed similar conventions and in general the more letters you had the higher the specification and thus the higher your social standing was. The range would usually start with the base model, which wasn't even endowed with a single letter and was extremely spartan, stripped of all but the bare essentials and existing mainly as a 'price leader' that was bought only by real skinflints. Just above sat the L, costing a little more than the base but that extra would at least buy some creature comforts, and in reality this was the lowest spec most buyers would usually consider, particularly in the family car classes. Having no letters at all was a badge of shame, marking you out as someone so miserly you wouldn't even stretch to an L and were willing to endure the utter misery of manual everything on a base model.

No letters at all meant everyone knew you were a skinflint

Next would typically come an LX or LS, still fairly basic but models in two-letter territory were a little more refined and usually had the option of larger engines, and this would be the volume seller. In the middle of the range sat the GL, GS or GX, and it was only at this level that such luxuries as electric windows and central locking became standard features. Then came something like GLX or GLS, which was really going upmarket and having three letters on your bootlid meant you had made it in life. There were variations such as Hyundai's GSL and Nissan's SGL, but in general if it had a G in it that meant posh and made L drivers envious. Only the flagship model right at the top of the range would be bestowed with a proper name, often something pretentious like Elegance, Executive or Diplomat, and if you had one of these with all the toys you knew you were a real somebody to be looked up to by lesser mortals with their LXs and GLs.

Stellar GSL. Three letters and a G must mean it's a posh one.

An 'i' was a very important little letter as that meant you had the benefit of fuel injection and more power when most cars still had carburettors, which was really something to boast about. The Mark 2 Granada for instance was available in both 2.8 and 2.8i forms but the latter was the one everybody wanted as that little 'i' made all the difference. The ultimate was the 2.8i Ghia X, the envy of everyone and a clear sign that you had climbed the management ladder to executive status and could lord it over the lower ranks from the air-conditioned comfort of your heated, electrically-adjustable leather seats.

Looks flashy but it's only a carbed 2.8 without that all-important 'i'

Then there were the sporty models, and simple little combinations of letters like GTI, XR and RS have become legendary for what they signify. These were the cars of the boy racers and started out as real status symbols among thrusting young go-getters but ended up with a bad reputation in popular culture that they are only now starting to shake off. Anything that boosted the power like 'Turbo', '16-valve' or 'Twin-Cam' would be plastered in huge bold capital letters all over the car to leave other drivers in no doubt that you had the high-performance model and weren't to be messed with in the traffic light grand prix.

No ordinary Golf - those three little letters GTI told everyone you had the power

There were letters of shame too. E commonly stood for economy rather than executive, which was denoted by X, and Vauxhall's dreaded Viva E was a prime example of such a car. These were typically stripped of all creature comforts to reduce weight and had the smallest engine tuned for ultimate frugality at the expense of anything that could be called performance, often with a strange high-ratio gearbox designed for low revs at cruising speeds that meant acceleration was glacial. Owning one of these immediately identified you as a miser more concerned with fuel consumption than any form of driving pleasure and they were best avoided.

Metro HLE = High Line Economy. Good fuel consumption but poor equipment and performance.

D for diesel may be mainstream nowadays but back in the seventies and early eighties it again meant miserly. Relatively few diesel engines were available in those days and those that did exist were usually slow and unrefined truck-like units that belched black smoke and were often available only with the lower trim levels. TD on the other hand meant you had a turbo diesel and turbos were good as they gave more power, which was always a bragging right. Turbo diesels would often be pitched much further upmarket and command a significant price premium over their naturally-aspirated sisters that were still mainly the preserve of taxi drivers and caravanners.

D is for diesel, slow and smelly, but that Turbo badge makes all the difference

Of course there were some manufacturers who did things differently, and the French in particular seemed to have an obsession with the letters R and T, ably illustrated by Citroen with their R, RL and TRS, and Renault's equivalent TL, TS, TR and TX, where T didn't stand for turbo. Their trim levels didn't always translate well though, most famously Citroen's TRD that became DTR in the UK as it sounded too much like 'turd'. Others favoured designations such as S, SE and SLX, with the S possibly intended to indicate 'special', while some like BMW and Mercedes avoided the whole trim level minefield completely by offering one standard spec with a comprehensive options catalogue so almost every car was different despite being badged the same.

The French did their own thing, but a BX LX would sound silly

The move towards named trim levels seems to have started at the bottom of the range in the 1980s. To eliminate that stigma of driving an unnamed base model, cars such as the Metro City, Nova Merit and Fiesta Popular appeared with names that were euphemisms for poverty spec but sounded a bit more appealing. This perhaps stemmed from the success of special editions, where the manufacturer or dealer would take a base or L, add some simple enhancements like stick-on stripes, better wheeltrims and maybe a sunroof, and give it a fancy name. These were still just as basic but customers were taken in by exotic names like 'Quest' and 'St Tropez', and some of these specials, Austin-Rover's Mayfair for one, ended up becoming regular production models. That maybe paved the way for the 21st century's proliferation of meaningless names and nowadays the traditional hierarchy of letters has all but disappeared in favour of named variants like Expression and Dynamique whose position in the range deliberately isn't obvious.

A Metro Amour sounds exotic but under those fancy graphics it's just an L tarted up by a dealer

Everyone knew where you stood with your engine size and trim level letters displayed for all to see, but those days are gone and now most trim levels aren't even written anywhere on the car so you can't tell how high the spec is simply by looking at it. Even when they are, they don't mean much as every manufacturer uses a different set of names and constantly seems to change or realign them. What's a Club, an Authentique or an S-line and what do you get with that spec? The flexibility of modern mass production methods means the idea of a fixed set of trim levels will probably soon become a thing of the past anyway: every car can be individually built to its customer's own specification on the same assembly line, and some manufacturers already offer such a bewildering choice of options that no two cars are exactly the same so the trim level designation is basically redundant.

It doesn't say so but this is an Avantime Dynamique. What does that even mean?

I suppose the demise of the traditional trim level is a result of the decline in company car culture and fleet managers' rigid prescriptions of which models were available to which pay grades. Only qualifying for an L or LX was a powerful incentive to work harder and join the ranks of those eligible for a GLS, while the flagship Ghia and Vanden Plas versions were something for the juniors to aspire to if and when they reached management level. Now though with most company car users given the freedom to choose anything within budget, there is no longer such obvious snobbery and oneupmanship associated with the letters on your car, where a GL badge was an accepted status symbol that granted an unwritten superiority over those who drove a mere L. Perhaps it's a good thing those days are gone, but things aren't the same now and I miss that ability to instantly establish where in the range a particular car sits just by looking at the letters on the bootlid.