Cars - Badge engineering

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	Cars - Badge engineering

Badge engineering is a term that describes the rebadging of one model of car as another. This often occurs when two companies pool resources by operating a joint venture or merging their operations.

While originally, differences were confined to the badges used on the model, more typically it involves slight styling differences, usually with different headlights and rear lights. The term derives from the pot metal trademark emblems fastened onto the outside of the car, or onto the dashboard (fascia).

It also occurs when an individual manufacturer, such as General Motors, owns a portfolio of different brands, and markets the same car under a different brand in different territories.

Language problems can also mean that a car has to be given a different name in a certain country (for example, the Mitsubishi Pajero is called the Montero in Spanish-speaking countries), although this may not constitute badge engineering, as the car is still sold under the same brand name. Anecdotally, pajero is a colloquialism for masturbation in Spanish.

As it is often extremely expensive to establish a new brand, and can take many years for it to gain acceptance, it is often more cost effective to rebadge a product under an existing name.

For example, cars built by Daewoo, now owned by General Motors, are now only badged as Daewoos in South Korea and Vietnam. In other markets, they are now badged as Chevrolets. Similarly, in Australia and New Zealand, where Daewoo was unsuccessful, they are now rebadged as Holden models.

Conversely, badge engineering occurs with luxury models. Japanese brands found it difficult to shrug off their 'cheap and cheerful' image in North America when luxury models started appearing in the 1990s. So Honda, Toyota, Nissan and Mazda started Acura, Lexus, Infiniti and Eunos respectively. Each new badge adding prestige values that would not be possible without shifting their core brand values of the parent brand. In most Asian countries, Toyota was already a luxury brand, so the Lexus brand was not marketed there. However Lexus has been so successful as a prestige badge engineering exercise that Toyota are now marketing the brand in their native Japan.

The term is also used for the makers of consumer electronics and household appliances sold under different names, especially the house brands of discount merchandisers, who can make specifications that would result in a lower-quality product as well.

Current examples

Past examples

Models produced under licence

These lists do not include models that have been produced by other companies under licence, such as versions of the Mitsubishi Colt produced by Proton in Malaysia or the Renault 12 produced by Dacia in Romania.

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