Invasion of the Body Snatchers: Badge Engineering

Platform sharing is the broad process of standardizing the underpinnings and building a variety of vehicles on that base. It is discussed in a separate page of this site and is an acceptable and necessary practice in today's globalizing auto industry.

Badge Engineering is a derogatory term describing a subcategory of platform sharing: badly executed.

Shared becomes badge engineered when a builder markets a nearly identical product under different brand names, or badges.

Many people refer to badge engineering when they really mean platform sharing.

What Is and Ain't Badge Engineering

The evaluation of a product as badge engineered is subjective, opinions will differ. Badge engineering is building different versions of the same vehicle with a few superficial changes in styling. These differences are usually limited to the headlights, tail lights, and plastic front and rear fascias.

Another pejorative is "grille-swapping."

Interior fabrics, textures, and switches are another area where sleight of hand is used to fool consumers, usually into paying a premium price for an undistinguished car.

Substantial changes to the sheetmetal, dashboards, option packages, and powertrain exempt the vehicle from the category.

To me, when the upper greenhouse and doors are the same, there might be a problem. The majority of car buyers will not notice this, even on the most blatant examples.

If you could easily swap fenders between the two cars, I lean toward "rebadged".

There is a strong incentive to dress up a standard model and create a luxury entry. This is how Infiniti, Acura, and Lexus got their toehold in the difficult US upmarket. But these builders quickly put daylight between their luxury and mainstream divisions.

In contrast, Lincolns have steadily declined to the point that they are mostly fixed up Fords as the company focused on its floundering premium European acquisitions.

As a positive example of twinning, the Pontiac Solstice/Saturn Sky roadsters show how bodywork can produce a distinct identity despite nearly identical profiles and underpinnings.

Brand Dilution

Platform sharing is seen as an engineering panacea, but if not done wisely can become a marketing disaster.

Excessive badge engineering goes beyond simply annoying car enthusiasts.

Just alike product is symbolic of the larger process that destroyed the US auto industry.

American management, myopically focused on next quarter's earnings, has pushed costs ahead to future quarters and onto successive managements for decades. They make union deals for future retirement and health benefits that cannot be paid. They delay product development even when profits are fat.

There is no excuse for Ford and GM not building modern transmissions, with at least 6 speeds, for all these years. Now they have formed a joint venture to try to catch up. Every investment is postponed, the Japanese lead in the critical areas like hybrid and clean power systems.

The worst ploy is extending the powertrain warranty. To me this is the same as saying our stuff is no good. Ten years from now current management, and maybe the company, will be history.

This is especially true when the warranty extension coincides with a scandal, mass recall, or other debacle. With Hyundai top brass under indictment, who would trust a warranty claim projected years into the future?

The Detroit big 2.6 automakers have painted themselves into a corner with 20 years of too similar offerings. With too many brands and dealers to feed, they have resorted to blatant badging of duplicate cars in the Chevy/Pontiac/Olds/Buick/Caddy, Plymouth/Dodge/Chrysler, and Ford/Mercury/Lincoln brand ladders.

As a result, value has been hollowed out of the US auto industry. Brands that took years of multi-million dollar ad budgets to build are diluted, sometimes irreparably.

A car brand's symbol or logo is often a representation of the brand's identity and personality. Mistakes, like the Ford Mondeo based Jaguar X-Type, downgrade the intangible value owners derive from the marque. Volvo's safety message identity was diluted after Ford had its way.

GM, using Opel, Chevy, and Subaru assets, clobbered Saab's unique personality and heritage, alienating its core clientèle.

The best brands, like BMW, just don't have this problem, although a fully optioned beemer is seriously pricey.

Not The First

Look alike cars is hardly a new trend.

My father's first car, purchased in 1945 after returning from Stalag Luft One, was a black 1940 Ford Coupe. The 1940 Mercury, with the brand only one year old, was barely distinct. A bored out flathead V8 provided a small performance advantage over the Ford. Four inches added just ahead of the firewall stretched the wheelbase to give the Merc a longer hood.

Who remembers the real British Mini, the first front transverse engined economy car?

Today's BMW "New Mini" retro car had identical twins as ancestors: Austin Seven Mini and Morris Mini-Minor.

I spent many hours stuffed into the right seat of an Austin Healey Sprite. Since a well-tuned 1200 cc WV Beetle would outrun it, Sprite's main competition was its clone, the MG Midget.

I bought a new Pontiac Ventura, a cloned Chevy Nova, in 1974. GM created versions of the Nova for every division but Caddy.

Nova, Oldsmobile Omega, Pontiac Ventura, Buick Apollo, all GM A-bodies, had very minor differences in sheetmetal.

It was the same at Ford and Mercury and Dodge and Plymouth and Chrysler,

How about this list of GM J-platform front drive compact look alikes from the '80's: Cavalier/Sunbird/Sunfire/J2000/Cimarron/Firenza.

The real pain there was the Cadillac Cimarron, which wasn't a proper Cadillac at all. As if this brand damaging badge engineering was a success, GM tried again with Catera. "The Caddy that zigs" was a rebadged Opel Omega with few luxury virtues.

As a result of these gaffes, Cadillac, like Lincoln, was devalued as a luxury nameplate. Detroit practically invited the Japanese upmarket push.

GMC at one time was a heavy duty truck, but slowly became a Chevy with extra chrome.

The Lamdba Triplets: the Emperor's New Clothes

Here is an example of the process at work in today's market.

Some have claimed that "rebadged" has been applied too often to GM's Lambda midsize SUV platform.

Because the GMC Arcadia, Saturn Outlook, and Buick Enclave don't look exactly the same externally, some say they are not considered badge jobs.

But with a fourth version of these good sellers on the way, reportedly to mollify Chevy dealers, I think GM's new clothes are a bit transparent. Cadillac and Saab Lambdas could be next.

Yes, the grilles and headlamp nacelles do not exchange, but only the Buick has enough value added to earn distinction. Buick's "QuietTuning" tricks, including acoustic laminated windshield glass, hydraulic engine mounts, and acoustic foam injected into the body structure, create value directly related to the brand's historic image and demographic. Ironically, this is almost an intangible, unrelated to the external appearance.

Outside, the greenhouse profile of the triplets, between the A and C-pillars, is the same.

Consumers should go beyond semantics, asking whether the upscale product they are considering is distinct enough to justify thousands of dollars in brand premium pricing. Is there some added-value content, or just badges and chrome?