What is badge engineering? It’s a misnomer of a term that means rebadging a company or marque’s car with another brand, changing nothing other than the emblem that is slapped on. Technically, there is no engineering in it, and it should be dubbed rebadging. The one company that indulged in badge engineering without much thought given was Chevrolet, and the result was that it was nearly brought to its knees.

And there are loads of people in GM who were culled because their bright ideas of badge engineering failed so badly… But is General Motors the only culprit in a long list of badge-engineered disasters? Hardly. To be honest, every automobile company there in the world has produced badge-engineered wonders and disasters alike.

To take a car, and declare it as your own, without spending anything on research and development sounds like a good deal on paper. Unless, if it doesn’t sell. So here’s all about everything that is wrong with badge engineering…

The History Of Badge Engineering

The Buick Roadmaster And Oldsmobile Starfire Were Rebadged Versions Of Each Other
via YouTube

The earliest example of badge engineering is obscure and began with the use of Texan Automobiles using Elcar bodies and selling them as their models. But the term and its true usage came into the picture with Chevrolet when the 1958 models of all GM brands started to look very similar. Think Cadillac Eldorado Seville, Buick Roadmaster Riviera, Oldsmobile Starfire 98, Pontiac Bonneville Catalina, and the Chevrolet Bel-Air Impala. However, these cars still bore minute differences in styling, interiors, and sometimes even the performance.

Still, since most were successful, the seeds of badge engineering took hold across every automobile manufacturer in the world. However, according to Hagerty, there are some classic cases where it worked perfectly.

RELATED: 10 Rebadged Cars That Flopped (And 5 That Were Successful)

It’s An “Easy Way” To Save Costs

Peugeot 107 And Citroën C1 Were Rebadging Of The Same Car
via Wikipedia

Other than an automobile manufacturer spreading the same car across its marques, another way badge engineering comes to play was when two automobile companies enter into a partnership to develop a new car. Both would then market the same car, with different names and emblems.

Sometimes, this also happened when one automobile manufacturer wanted to expand its business into another niche, like if a sedan maker wanted to become an SUV manufacturer as well. This was how the Ford Ranger became the Mazda B series.

Joint partnerships produced badge-engineered vehicles because two car manufacturers decided to scratch each other’s back since it was cheaper and more profitable for them. Take the example of the ahead-of-its-time Mitsubishi 3000GT and how it also became the Dodge Stealth. Mitsubishi and Chrysler had struck up a partnership and this is how the Stealth became America's "most-advanced" sports car as well.

In the long run, however, many of these badge-engineered cars did not last long and had dismal sales as well.

RELATED: 1983 Mercury Capri: The Rebadged Mustang That Could

The Core Problem Of Badge Engineered Cars

The Aston Martin Cygnet Was A Rebadged Toyota Scion iQ
via Pinterest

The basic problem of any badge-engineered car is that it’s not unique. It does not have a USP, as in a unique selling point because carbon copies of it already float in the market. When a customer wants to buy a new car, he usually wants something that is not already available under five different marques. No one wants a car that is simply one of the corniest examples of badge engineering gone bad.

Most badge-engineered cars are also priced differently whether they belong to the same company or different ones.

The Toyota Scion iQ rebadged and sold as the Aston Martin Cygnet with a whopping increase in pricing is one such example. And there are many such dodgy rebadging failures across the automobile world. Why would you buy a car that’s available at nearly three times less the price and carried mostly the same features?

According to Hemmings, the same happened with the Cadillac Cimarron which was nothing but a prettier version of the Chevrolet Cavalier, costing nearly double the latter.

Another classic example is the cloud cars from Chrysler that were sold as the expensive Chrysler Cirrus, the cheaper Dodge Stratus, and the cheapest Plymouth Breeze with barely any redeeming features to differentiate all three cars.

RELATED: The 24 Rarest Badge-Engineered Cars Of The 2000s

Badge Engineering Creates Cannibalism

via Pinterest

When an automobile manufacturer decides to launch something new, it creates excitement across the market. Only, when the carmaker decided that the new car must be spread across all of its marques, it creates in house cannibalism.

In the ‘80s and ‘90s, every carmaker was furiously rebadging its cars for maximum sales and GM led this failed premise with its W body cars, none of which looked very good or did very well in their heydays. What are we talking about? Well, think Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, Buick Regal, Pontiac Grand Prix, and the Chevrolet Lumina. All the same car.

It can also lead to far too many examples of the same car, and GM erred again with its GMT360 platform in the early 2000s. The blatant use of this platform resulted in not one but six inexcusable examples of a bad SUV. And these bad SUVs were not just across GM, but across other brands, it was partnering with. Put the Buick Rainier, Chevrolet TrailBlazer, GMC Envoy, Oldsmobile Bravada, Isuzu Ascender, and Saab 9-7X together, and you get why badge engineering is a such a dirty word in the automobile world.

NEXT: These Rebadged Cars Were More Successful Than The Original