Badge engineering is when a company takes one particular car, truck, SUV, or minivan body, changes some of the looks, parts, and interior, and markets it as a different brand.
GM, Ford, and Chrysler have done it for around 70 years. Toyota, Honda, and Nissan do it with their luxury brands. Volkswagen does it with a number of their foreign brands, ones we don't have here, like Skoda and SEAT.
Let's start with badge engineering done correctly.
Behold, the Pontiac G8 (2008-2009).
It's true that Pontiac is no longer with us, and this is a great tragedy. In the G8, General Motors finally had a fun Pontiac again, one that offered V6 and V8 engines at a reasonable price. The car was an absolute hoot to drive, and just about every car magazine labeled it as a return of the America muscle car.
It also got decent gas mileage with the smaller engines, to appease the environmentalists. The largest engine, a 6.2L V8, made 415hp and was available with a 6 speed manual. Gas mileage wasn't even a suggestion.
It was a hilarious joke.
So, how's it badge engineering?
It's an Australian car.
A Holden Commodore to be precise.
Let's say it all at once, "Twins..."All they did was put a Pontiac split grill on the front of it and called it good.
So, why is this a good example of badge engineering? After all, they didn't do that much to it.
Simple, Holden isn't sold in America. The average consumer probably didn't know that the G8 was just a warmed over Australian product.
But, the car looks like a Pontiac, and that's important. If they tried to market the Holden as a Buick, it probably would have flopped. Buick's target customer doesn't generally care for muscular, angled sedans. Pontiac buyers do.
That's the secret with badge engineering. Companies have to find exactly which product will sell for which brand and to which customer. They have to change enough to make it an independent product, but still use the same parts to keep costs down.
It's a high stakes balancing act with a brand's perception (how it's viewed) on the line.
The G8 will live on as a Chevrolet Caprice built only as a cop car. Here it is:
However, GM won't be making one for us civilians.But that's what police surplus auctions are for. In four, five, or six years from now one of these will be up for auction. Police cars have uprated engines with more power and better suspension.
For every lucky person that can get their hands on one, that makes overdrive necessary.
This subject of re-badging reminds me of the brouhaha that GM went through in the 70's or 80's when they standardized on a few engines. Ford and Chrysler had shared engines across their brands for years. GM, on the other hand, had a 454 c.i. for Chevy, 455 c.i. for Olds, 327 c.i., 328 c.i. (for Pontiac, if I remember right), etc. It was silly, so they reduced the number of engines and engine plants and shared them like the other companies.
ReplyDeleteIf memory serves, a 327 was available for Oldsmobile, built in a different plant and perhaps a different design than the Chevy 327. When GM standardized on the Chevy 327, they put it in the Oldsmobile as well. Then they were sued because they sold Oldsmobiles with Chevy engines--Olds buyers wanted Olds engines.
I don't remember what the outcome was. Maybe it blew over with the problems caused by putting Diesel cylinder heads on a gas engine and selling it as an Olds Diesel. (That was a bad idea--a very bad idea.)
Standardization of parts and designs reduces costs and often leads to better products. Cosmetic changes, badge engineering, give the buyer some choice. We are seeing standardization as Oldsmobile, Saturn, Pontiac, Plymouth, Merkur, and the like go away. Cosmetic changes such as Dodge Charger/Chrysler 300, Nissan Z/Infiniti G (sort of), and even Chrysler Town & Country/Volkswagen Routan ;) give us the opportunity to still have a car that is different than our neighbors'.
You may feel overdrive is necessary; surely YMMV.