I'm not an expert so forgive me if I'm wrong. I am doing the same thing with my search results car / auto. From what I know Google recognizes synonyms and acknowledges them. What I did is target car as the main keyword and in the first paragraph or somewhere close to the top I use the term auto. When you do a search in the SERPS I rank for both car and auto terms (not exactly the same position but not a big discrepancy). The only difference is what Google bolds in the SERPS description. If I search car it will bold my page title with the term car and when I search auto it bolds my description with the word auto in it.
Again I am no expert and there may be better or more SEO friendly ways but this is how I went about it.