Volkswagen has decided to drop the Rabbit nameplate and return to calling its hatchback the Golf. All part of a global naming strategy, the company says. Rabbit was the name from 1975 until 1984, when the Golf name was first used as part of a global naming strategy.

2009 Volkswagen Rabbit. In 2010, VW will revert to the Golf nameplate, dropping Rabbit for the second time.

Then in 2006, the Rabbit name returned. We were supposed to feel all warm and fuzzy again about the car that was essentially a replacement for the 0riginal Beetle, you know, simple and inexpensive.

As the owner of a 1975 Rabbit, I can atest to its simplicity. Mine, however, was anything but inexpensive. Things broke. A lot. The best thing the VW-Porsche mechanic I took it to could say is that it was better then the Audi 90 of a few years earlier, a car he described as “a basket case from the factory.”

For more on this, swing by Edmunds Inside Line.