Automotive culture is rich and complex, full of subcultures and warring factions and generally a beautiful microcosm of all aspects of the human condition. As such, there’s lots of elements of the culture that are controversial, and sometimes it’s fun to weigh in on these. One of these elements is the practice of re-badging a car with a different manufacturer’s emblems. While often looked down upon, I think this is almost always fun, if not taken seriously, and maybe one of the most subtly punk things one can do with their cars.
I should clarify one thing here: the kind of re-badging I’m talking about needs to be the kind that re-badges the manufacturer’s badges, not the model. Re-badging one particular model of car to be, say, a slightly more upmarket version of the same car is, well, kinda weak. I mean, it’s not the worst thing one could do, but in many ways it’s the exact opposite of a full manufacturer badge swap, because the improve-my-model-from-a-DX-to-an-LX or whatever plays into the inane status culture of car badges, and offers no commentary or insight. It’s just posturing.
Changing the whole manufacturer badging is different.
I was thinking about this because I happened to see this tweet recently of a Nissan Altima quite thoroughly re-badged into a Maserati:
Spotted on BAE, the rarest Maserati Altimibli @alanisnking @DougDeMuro pic.twitter.com/p0IyccDfBr
— Andrew Weaver (@andrewcweaver) July 15, 2023
What I love about this is that to a lot of non-car obsessed normies, this may very well read as a Maserati! And you can’t really blame them; I mean, sure, most of us reading this can tell the difference, but if you’re not really into cars beyond badges, how far apart are these, really?
There’s three basic categories of manufacturer badge swapping, and this is one of them: Low-to-High. Take a mainstream car and give it the badging of something much more expensive. Usually the car’s owner knows it’s not really going to fool anyone who knows anything, and the ire it has the potential to ignite in wealthier owners of the actual premium car brands is a big part of the fun.
It’s subversive in the same way obvious counterfeit designer handbags are: it’s a middle finger to the elite and expensive brands, and if anyone gets really pissed about it, it’s not a bad litmus test for who is a fussy brand-obsessed dipshit, too.
The other category is taking an expensive car and replacing the badging with cheap-car ones, i.e. High-To-Low.
This is a lot less common, but even more punk rock, if you ask me. Rebadging an exotic or extremely expensive car with a down-market brand feels like something only someone very secure would do, and someone who enjoys a good, mildly confusing chuckle. It’s sort of self-effacing, it suggests an understanding of the eye-rolling bullshit of badge snobbery, it also is a great way to piss off the worst sort of purists, and it’s just fun!
Sometimes there will be some reason for the downgraded badge choice, usually suggesting some bit of deeper understanding of the car, like having a Lotus with Toyota badges (they supplied the engines on many of them, you see) or if there’s been an engine swap or something like that.
I can even think of one example where an actual carmaker sort of did this same sort of badge-downgrade: the Kia Elan.
Remember, Kia once sold a re-badged Lotus Elan, with their own engine instead of the one Lotus used, which was an Isuzu engine, anyway.
The last way the re-badging can be done is the most geeky way, the Lateral Re-brand. In this case, one car is re-badged as another of roughly the same stature, for reasons that are likely hilarious to the owner and a few close friends and are baffling to anyone else. Like this Porsche Cayman owner with BMW M318i badges on it. I’m sure there’s a funny story there?
Hell, I’ve done this one myself. See the badge on the abused front not-grille of my old Scion xB Autopian Test Car? That’s a Great Wall badge, because the Chinese company Great Wall once made a version of the xB called the Coolbear, and I had a friend in China send me those badges. Just because I thought it was funny. I’m about certain nearly everyone else who saw it had no idea what the hell it was, and likely didn’t care. But I always smiled when I saw it.
So, here’s what I’m saying: if you feel like re-badging your car to look like another carmaker built it, have at it! Stick a Tesla badge on your 1992 Ford F-150! You know that’s gonna get a lot of dorks all kinds of worked up! Pop a BMW badge on your Subaru BRZ! Put a nice round VW logo in the round hole in your Mercedes-Benz grille!
Mess with all the brands! Keep things confusing and fun. Make those PR people earn their six bills a week, and get those one-brand loyalists all worked up.
This is how to fight the scourge of status and badge-snobbery in automotive culture: keep everyone nice and confused.
Slightly different rebadging: our 2007 Odyssey has been backed into in parking lots a number of times and once lost the “yssey”. It is too old for us to really care, but my wife found some letters on the internet so we now drive a Honda Oddity.
The only car I’ve rebadged was my Saturn Astra. After Saturn closed shop I bought an Opel Grill and trunk badge. It went from being a car noone recognized to a car that noone recognized.
Cop 1: “Put out a BOLO for a silver Opel Astra.”
Cop 2: “Do what now?”
You got me thinking I should rebadge my CTS to say “NOT CTS-V”, so people will stop trying to race me.
I otherwise agree, I love seeing people personalize their/there/thear car. This is certainly one “punk” way to do it.
But.. my Corolla came with Chevy badges on it from the factory. I could put GE or Maytag badges on it to designate it as the appliance it is.
Based on my experiences with those brands doing so might make your Geoyota less reliable.
Sad but true these days.
I agree that upmarket badging is kinda lame, but I think I’d like to make my base model Subaru Legacy a Brougham.
Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!
I once saw “Turbo S” badging from a Porsche on a Honda Odyssey.
I often wonder about the thought process there.
One I thought about awhile back just cause it’s cool & way different is to get a Gordon Keeble badge made for one of my shitboxes. I mean, a turtle with laurels: that’s enough reason for it, right?
A turtle in a puddle of urine, even! It’s the best.
Good one, Torch!
-I actually went and checked about the urine, even. D’oh!
It’s real! https://www.carandclassic.com/auctions/1964-gordon-keeble-nvywmg
Well, damn. That’s cool! I knew the tortoise had wandered into the shot—but somehow missed the puddle or urine. Now I really want one.
Thanks man!
What about Type-R badges on a Corolla or GrandAm, is that allowed?
So, I now have a WRX & a Z3 M. (Roadster: I don’t have MCoupe $ to throw around)
I kinda want to swap the WRX & M badges. Or just pull the M and put AMG STI there instead. Anyone who knows cars would know that a Z3 with 4 exhaust outlets isn’t the 4banger-and I don’t GAD about anyone who doesn’t
Also, there’s prancing moose badges for volvos and such, looks like Ferrari or Lamborghini horse or bull. A variation on the theme.
The prancing moose never ceases to get me to smile.
I saw many of those in the vast northern expanse of Canadia.
I thought about getting the Lambo version for my S60. But my family said they would not ride in it if I did. I have a boring family.
One of the guys I work with has his V60 badged up with prancing moose and has equipped it with period-appropriate white OZ wheels and a slight drop. Looks quite nice with the blue paint.
I’ve considered swapping a GMC Savana grille onto my Chevy Express, because I like the looks better. But then I feared the confusion and possible trouble if I ever got pulled over. Cop with my paperwork in one hand while the other hand moves to his weapon: “This is a GMC but your registration says Chevrolet.”
I had an xB when they had been around only a few months and most people didn’t know what they were, I de-badged it and swapped the hood emblem for the JDM bB badge. People kept asking what the hell it was.
But then I feared the confusion and possible trouble if I ever got pulled over. Cop with my paperwork in one hand while the other hand moves to his weapon: “This is a GMC but your registration says Chevrolet.”
That’s what the VIN is for.
I see a lot of older Chevy and GMC pickups with the “wrong” brand tailgate on them, especially if it’s a color match.
Another kind is the rebadging for a badge-engineered vehicle. Pontiacs badged as Holden’s are common enough.
I always like that one. Opel badge on Buicks works too.
Someone near me rebadged a Buick Cascada as a Vauxhall.
Hey, guess what?
https://photos.app.goo.gl/cyGvJ8ndfKeEpBtM9
That’s outstanding!
The license plate lol
Then there is the Performance fakes. It has been around since the 60’s. There are way more yenko’s SS’s, R/T’s, Shelby. They often have massively incorrect size of badging or miss the small stuff, so again can be spotted by many car people. but to many of the sheep that cannot tell the difference between a scout 2 and a bronco, it passes the muster.
Challengers these days are the worst up badging. I suppose because the parts are so interchangeable on the outside?
My wife put a Mazdaspeed badge on her Mazda 5 which really should have happened.
There is plenty of extra room at the back of the engine.
I first thought my late 2013 Mazda5 had a Skyactive engine. The Mazda3 had it! So disappointed!
Word!
I put Mazdaspeed stickers on the inside of my 1989 626’s front and rear windshields (near the top where they weren’t in the way). Same model year as the year they won LeMans with the 787B. The stickers were small and unobtrusive, so few if anyone else other than those in the car could see them, but I knew they were there, and I was hoping they’d inspire the car to be a bit more peppy.
It would be tempting to put an Abarth badge on my car, just because it’s a very cool badge.
I’d put an Abarth badge on my toolbox, which is my repository for cool automotive badges and other knickknacks that can be decorations.
I might need to get another toolbox (or, really, a workbench would be better) soon. Not because I’m out of space for tools, but running out of space for stickers and badges.
Also, rebadging is so much cooler than debadging. If you’re going to the trouble of removing badges, replace them with something fun. Bonus points if you mix and match.
Ok, so this is one I’ve been contemplating for a while but haven’t decided quite how I feel about it: badging my Smart with MB logos.
It’s not really up or down, not even lateral. I mean, it’s an MB. I have to get parts from MB. It has an MB model designation. I would find it amusing in the same way I can’t help but smile thinking about an Aston Martin Cygnet. Having this little thing zipping around with TriStars on it would amuse me. I’ve even gone so far as to see if I can hack together or 3d print a W451 badge in chrome in that nice MB underlined font for the rear.
But since the MB is so close to the truth it feels like maybe it would come off as “trying too hard”. Thoughts?
I think that people who don’t know might wonder, but people who do know would be with you on it. And the people who don’t know probably wouldn’t judge because they wouldn’t know what they were judging.
I’m with Drew here. You like it? Do it. People like us will smile & thumbs up. Normies probably won’t notice
Do it. It’ll make you smile, and that’s all that matters. If it counts for anything, it would make me smile too.
Really all you need is a proud Sliver Arrow atop the hood. And a nice AMG badge for the rear.
AMG badge = a bridge too far
Granted, that takes me fully into tongue-in-cheek territory, which isn’t a bad thing, but I’m more of a dry wit sort.
Do what makes you happy. Haters gon hate.
I appreciate the ‘like it? do it.’ responses. That reassures me the IYKYK crowd doesn’t find it in bad taste, which upon reflection I think was my biggest concern and not so much haters, who I give 0 for. For whom I give 0? Whatever.
I already considered Lancia Thema badges for the 300…
Less interesting, but also fun, is the badge swap for same brand, different market (or year, or whatever). Until Kia screwed up their logo, the Korean market badges would swap right on, and they looked much nicer. And some people got confused and thought they looked like a Lexus badge.
All the time I had my 350Z I was trying to find some nice vintage Datsun badges.
I might go looking for some Subaru badges for my GT86.
Really? I want some GT86 badges for my Scion FR-S.
I bought a spare GT86-fighting-pistons fender badge for my toolbox. It’s a cool badge.
I just want to replace the boring triple-oval Toyota badges front and rear with the more interesting badges of the company that actually built it.
I should put Hyundai badges on my Kia
Once again, this is madness, and I am all for it.
I’mma put a Unimog badge on my Scion toaster…
actually no, I’m going to pull the SMEG logo off an actual toaster…
The entire line of SMEG kitchen appliances makes me laugh everytime. Instant Red Dwarf associations pop in to my head. I seriously would love to have a SMEG fridge in the garage. But they aren’t cheap. And I am.
What, you don’t have $40,000 to drop on a refrigerator?
Dolce&Gabbana + SMEG
smoke me a kipper, I’ll be back for breakfast..