It seems all vehicle manufacturers were (and are) guilty of it – “badge engineering” or doing as little as possible to distinguish one brand or model of car from another, in an effort to save costs.
Mitsubishi Suzuki
North American manufacturers were especially egregious – with the pinnacle perhaps being reached in the decades of the 70’s and 80’s. But British Leyland also was known to “swap out grilles” on its many Mini clones. Even today, in Japan’s kei-car class, there’s no difference between a Suzuki Every Wagon and a Mitsubishi Town Box other than the badge on the same grille.
One of my favorite commercials is the mid-’80’s Lincoln ad with the high rollers coming out to pick up their cars…and stumble over which is the Caddy, Olds or Buick. You know that had to cause a lot of gnashing of teeth at GM headquarters.
But even with this example of GM’s look-alike C-Bodies of the mid/late-’80’s, I think there’s another that’s even better (worse?).
Cordoba
Charger
Since there are so many to choose from, let’s confine ourselves to the ’70’s and ’80’s – and my pick is the 1975 Chrysler Cordoba and Dodge Charger.
What makes it my pick is the stark contrast of the 75 Charger with its previous three-generations of predecessors. While the 66-67 Charger wasn’t a huge sales hit, it was definitely unique. Then we were blessed with the beautiful ’68-’70 models. Finally there were the ’71-’74 fuselage years.
Then we get to the 1975, which even a two-year old could tell was a Cordoba with a slightly different grille and hood medallion, and some louvres over the opera windows. But I guess we can’t heap too much scorn on Chrysler – they were in terrible financial shape at the time, and would require a federal bailout to stave off bankruptcy just four years later.
I guess it’s not surprising that in the ’90’s, Chrysler would give up on the pretense altogether and sell the same Neon with Dodge and Plymouth badges.
Ford Escort and Mercury Lynx? Chevy Monza/Buick Skyhawk/Olds Starfire/ Pontiac Sunbird? Chevy Cavalier and Cadillac Cimarron? Chevette and T1000? Dodge Aries and Plymouth Reliant?
There are so many – what’s your pick?
Years ago I was a car design student (1999). People from Lincoln came by to recruit. For this I provokatively designed a Lincoln pick-up truck. Little did I know…
Keep in mind in the 70s Chrysler Plymouth had dealers and Dodge had dealers. Few were CPD combined. Also in our town GM each had their own dealerships. Stand alone Oldsmobile, stand alone Buick, etc.
Omni/Horizon
I believe the first generation Cadillac Escalade is the worst case of badge engineering among trucks and SUVs. It was an example of a rushed effort, taking the GMC Yukon Denali and sticking on Cadillac badges.
By comparison, the first generation Lincoln Navigator was far more differentiated than the Ford Expedition it was based on. The Ford guys clearly took more than 10 minutes to make it look like an actual Lincoln.
The BMC ADO16 was a low point of badge engineering, with – ascending price order – Austin, Morris, Wolseley, MG, Riley and Vanden Plas 1100 available. If you think of them as trim levels rather than different cars it makes more sense and was easier to understand than the alphabet soup that other makers used.
The worst in Europe now is VAG. From the ouside I can’t tell the difference between Audi, Cupra, Seat, Skoda or Volkswagen, especially the SUV models. The interiors are even more similar, sharing screens and switches.
Imagine how much better the cars would be if the effort expended on the insignificant differences were spent on actual engineering. When you look at the history of badge engineering, specifically BMC, GM and Chrysler, and now VAG it’s difficult to make a business case for it.
Toyota seems willing to let other makers sell their cars. At the moment in the UK the Corolla is available as the Suzuki Swace and the Yaris as the Mazda 2.
Whereas the Stellantis light van is real badge engineering, the badge is the only difference between Citroen, Fiat, Opel, Peugeot, Toyota and Vauxhall.
The worst was the Nash/Hudson Rambler. Only the hood badge and hubcaps were different. Second worst was the 47-48 Kaiser and Frazer. They had slightly different grilles, and dashboards with a rearranged cluster. Otherwise identical.
Before 1930 there were a lot of rebadges among the smaller independents. As with store brands on appliances and food, one “behind the scenes” company made a car, and several different “manufacturers” sold the same car, pretending that they “manufactured” it.
The new generation of the Mitsubishi Colt, the ‘ultimate hatchback’ and ‘developed for the European market’, according to the site of the Dutch dealerships. Which must also apply to the Renault Clio then.
The profit margins were so small (if they weren’t negative) on the Pinto/Bobcat and Vega/Astre, you can’t really blame them. The N-O-V-A cars must have been the first to get four models from the same sheet metal, and the Js, five. The ’76-77 Cutlass Supreme/Regal coupes were the worst high-volume/high-profit offenders I can think of, but they did have different hoods, interiors, and trunk lids in addition to the fascia.
Mazda 2 (current gen Toyota Yaris). Also, Suzuki offers rebadged versions of the current Corolla and RAV4.
Proton Tiara
The Plymouth Horizon / Dodge Omni comes to mind. If we were to go back a few decades, the clear winner would be the Studebaker President / Packard Clipper. Not a winner for Packard.
LINCOLN, what a Luxury CAR should be and once was. That commercial was brilliant. The GM downsized Luxury sedans were indeed confusing as well as too small and downright UGLY. Small wonder buyers bought Lincolns. Fun fact, the close up of the confused man is Actor John Ingle who played E. L. QUARTERMAINE on General Hospital. The 78 LINCOLN sales brochure features Tom Selleck. Of course who can forget Ricardo Montalban and *Rich Corinthian Leather *? BTW, having owned Cadillacs, I switched to LINCOLN. Still Thinkin Lincoln with my 2007 Town Car Signature Limited, the last gasp of traditional American Luxury CARS.
I think the mid- late 90s Chevy blazer, GMC Jimmy and Oldsmobile Bravada is about as bad as it gets. The Blazer and Jimmy are barely distinguishable other than the bowtie badging and color options . At least the Bravada had some Oldsmobile unique bits- unique front clip and body cladding, and Oldsmobile only all wheel drive (vs 4wd) and no skid plate. I guess they didn’t think the discerning Olds buyers of the day weren’t into mud bogging. My wife and I had a 1998 version of the Bravada, a nice enough vehicle I suppose and it did bring our boy home from the hospital so there’s that.
The Omni/Horizon is the point where Plymouth became irrelevant. Seems like everything they made past that point was also the same thing as a Dodge, just different badges. Maybe a different grill. About the only “unique” Plymouth without a Dodge after that point was the 1990 Laser. Which was just a rebadged Mitsubishi Eclipse. Oh and the Prowler but that was pretty niche
I was expecting to see a Blackwood on these pages, soon, since I saw a kind of ratty example of one just a couple of days ago, the first sighting on one in a while and was expecting the pre-CC effect.
That said the Blackwood is NOT a case of simple badge engineering since the only visible sheet metal that is shared is the cab and even inside that cab there isn’t a lot of parts shared with the F-150.
The worst example is the Dodge/Plymouth Neon, since the only thing that was changed was the brand badge as they shared the same name.