What is badge engineering?

Car companies prefer the terms ‘captive import’ or ‘model sharing’, but marketing the same design with minor styling tweaks and under a variety brands has been known for decades as ‘badge engineering’.

The concept was pioneered by British manufacturers more than 80 years ago and exploited with varying degrees of stealth by US carmakers during the 1930s and beyond.

Australia was the destination for a huge variety of models that shared everything except their grilles and badgework with ostensibly-identical cars. During the 1950s, rivalry within the newly-formed UK brand BMC saw Austin and Morris models sold from separate premises and with their own brochures and spare parts packaging. This was despite the fact the Lancers and Majors, A60s, Oxfords and the occasional Wolseley shared identical mechanical components and virtually all of their body panels.

Holden did its bit as well. In 1967 it fitted cheaper, circular headlamps to Vauxhall’s Viva to create the very first Torana. In the early 1970s it had supplied Monaros and HQ Statesmans to be sold as South African Chevrolets. Then a decade later and under the auspices of General Motors’ ‘World Car’ program, local large-car design was shelved in favour of a German-sourced Commodore (nee Opel Rekord).

Australia had already seen an Isuzu-derived version of GM’s T-Car; our Gemini just one variation on a basic design that was also sold under Chevrolet, Isuzu, Opel, Vauxhall and Pontiac branding in more than 30 international markets.

Perhaps the most prolifically rebadged model of all time was GM’s ‘J Body’. Every GM Division in the USA had a variation and the car was built under different guises on every continent except Antarctica. Holidaying Australians would have been dismayed to find that their Cadillac Cimarron rental-car bore striking resemblance to the Camira they had left in the garage at home.

As costs increased and component distribution became more efficient, factories in countries with low labour rates became responsible for supplying cars that needed to meet diverse safety, emissions and marketing requirements. Holden’s current small car supplier, GM-DAT (nee Daewoo), makes a range of models for global sale including the Tosca – sold here as the Epica – Viva and recently-replaced Barina (aka Daewoo Kalos). Captiva is the Holden version of another Daewoo, that's sold as a Chevrolet in some markets.

Throughout the difficult 1980s-90s era, Holden did manage to maintain a degree of engineering autonomy. The ability to deliver world-beating rear-wheel drive design now sees VE Commodore derivatives rebranded for sale in the Middle East, South-East Asia and Britain.

Confusion was most apparent in Ford showrooms where Corsairs (aka Pintaras)made in Nissan’s Melbourne factory sat alongside the Mazda-derived Telstar and Laser. Around the corner where the salespeople wore R M Williams boots and talked like Paul Hogan, a vehicle eerily-similar to Nissan’s Patrol was proudly presented as the Ford Maverick. Wll, perhaps not proudly...

In the USA, where the world’s most powerful car manufacturers had access to the biggest and richest automotive market, none seemingly had the incentive or ability to design a small car that could counter the rudimentary Volkswagen Beetle or Toyota’s hugely-successful Corolla.

By the mid-1970s, fuel-shocked Americans and regulators were demanding more economical vehicles and all the US carmakers could do was look to overseas affiliates for help. While attempting to disguise its ‘sub-compact’ as something other than a Suzuki Swift, General Motors invented its first new brand in over 50 years – the Geo – but Ford didn’t even bother changing the badges when introducing the Euro-designed Escort to its ranks.

Chrysler’s association with Mitsubishi dated back to the 1970s so unsurprisingly a range of Japanese-sourced models including cars we know as the Colt, Scorpion and Starion appeared on the floors of Dodge and Plymouth showrooms.

Perhaps the strangest US-Euro arrangement was between a struggling American Motors Corporation and French giant Renault. From the late 1970s, AMC built restyled Renaults – including a convertible – before the brand disappeared entirely during 1987.

The latest Ford Raider/Mazda BT-50 is likely to rank with most successful examples of ‘cooperative engineering’. Developed to a large degree by Ford Australia, Mazda’s single and dual-cab utes will initially be built at a jointly-funded AutoAlliance facility in Thailand but sold through separate dealer streams here and in 167 other markets around the world.
   
Volkswagen probably ranks as the most successful and prolific exponent of badge-engineering. Commencing in the 1970s, models like the Audi Fox/80 and VW Passat were identical apart from their grilles, badges and minor details, yet pitched at quite different buyer markets. More recently, the VW/Audi A-Series platform has spawned a diverse range of vehicles including the Golf and Tiguan, Audi A3/TT and Skoda Octavia.

Not even the highest-profile models in the VW Group’s extended family escape the ravages of design ‘collaboration’. Beneath the elegant shape of the Bentley Continental lurks a Audi A8 mechanicals and the visual similarities between a Porsche-badged and powered Cayenne and the cheaper Volkswagen Touareg are unmistakable – in both first and second generations. The Audi Q7 is also mechanically closely aligned.

Prior to German acquisition of the brand, Rolls-Royce was an unashamed exponent of badge/grille engineering. From the late 1930s the R-R factory produced a string of mechanically-identical (and similar-looking) cars for sale through its separate and fiercely-independent networks of Rolls-Royce and Bentley dealers.

Not even motorsport can escape the tentacles of design commonality. Under the brightly-coloured signage of US Nascar racers sits a body/chassis design which must be used by every team contesting the series.

Similar constraints have also been adopted for Australia’s V8 Supercar category. No longer do teams take delivery of a factory-built body-shell and transform it into a competition version of their chosen brand. Under ‘parity’ regulations, cars must use purpose-made floor pans and roll-cages, suspension components and transmissions. Car of the Future rules will permit a range of V8 engines but with such constraints that only the exterior panels will maintain a tenuous link between the race and road cars.  

Australia faces a future laden with badge-engineered models. Locally-built Toyotas have for many years echoed Japanese versions and the Falcon of the future will most likely be a composite of European and US Ford designs.

Holden stands the best chance of remaining a design originator but at some point production economies might see the brand that is most closely aligned to Australian culture being shipped here from low-cost factories in Korea or even China.