The other night, as we all descended into Mercedes’ secret basement (accessible only by a correct sequence of pulls on various Smart door handles) and donned the ceremonial cloaks for the weekly Autopian World Domination business meeting, I had an idea I thought I could raise after the Any Other Tail Lights part of the agenda. We should do awards, like those other hoity-toity magazines and websites. And I had a pretty good idea what our first award category should be: The Most Lazy-Assed Badge Engineering Job on Sale.
What hath wrought this staggering lighting bolt of journalistic integrity, you may ask? Gathered friends I have an answer. If you’ll indulge a bit of British colloquialism, bloody hell do I have an answer. If it pleases your honor, may I present Exhibit A: The newly released Dodge Hornet.
“But Adrian, you’re from the Land of Badge Engineering, Great Britain,” you’re likely shrieking. And it’s true. Throughout the fifties, sixties and seventies as Austin Morris begat BLMC begat British Leyland, and oh god it’s so depressing, they pioneered the art of doing the absolute bare minimum to differentiate various nameplates.
Would you like your 1963 ADO16 as an Austin, Morris, Riley, MG, or a Wolseley? It happened because the British car manufacturing empire was imploding faster than it could find customers, and the government was forcing all these companies to consolidate. However, having gotten a taste for it, BL did it again in the seventies with ADO 71, which was an Austin, a Morris, a Wolseley, and in 1982 an Austin again, and I’m so very tired.
Let’s back up slightly before we dive in. I’ve mentioned British Leyland, but they’re far from the only guilty parties. If ever there’s been an automotive screw up in the past, you can bet GM will have an example, so let’s have a look.
In 1982, GM crimped out the J-car, its supposed import fighter. It appeared both sides of the pond with superficial trim and sheet metal changes. But that was merely leaving a fragrance in the little room for the main event, the 1982 A-bodies. They had even less differentiation, leading to a famous 1983 Fortune magazine cover, which lined up the offending turds side-by-side in the same “I drank too much red wine” color. Buick Century, Chevrolet Celebrity, Oldsmobile Cutlass and Pontiac 6000, and if they thought they could get away with it, there was probably a Corvette version mocked up somewhere inside the Tech Center as well.
That was the level of utter contempt GM was treating its customers with at the time. And you know what? Like BL, GM was hemorrhaging market share and consolidating its divisions in pursuit of cost savings. Now, there’s nothing wrong with badge engineering per se, you just have to be clever how you do it. The soon-to-be-flushed Buick Encore is an Opel (Vauxhall) Mokka with a tri-shield badge and not much else. But that doesn’t matter, because you can’t buy the Opel version in the US, and I can’t buy a Buick here in the UK.
But you will be able to buy an Alfa Romeo Tonale or a Dodge Hornet, and now we have the internet full of pictures and smart asses like me pointing out the differences. Or in this case, the complete lack of them. So let’s do that.
The news is not quite as grim at the front, because the Hornet does have a new hood stamping. Dodge would have had no choice in this, because you can see the Alfa hood contains a cut out shape for the roundel in the center. But other than that, it’s a case of new lights, a new front bumper, and not much else. In fact, the size and shape of the lamps is exactly the same on both cars because the underlying structure is identical. If you look at the large lower black grill on both cars, in the center at the bottom is a flat surface area. Behind this is most likely the active cruise sensor, so keeping this in the same position will have saved some recalibration work. It’s a bit harder to tell from the photos if the parking sensors (the little round guys) are in the same places but these attach to the bumper so they may have had some latitude to alter their position slightly (full disclosure: I am not an engineer).
The shut lines between bumper and fender and hood and fender are an exact match up because, drum roll please (who is the musician around here?), as we move around to the side it’s underwhelmingly clear the sheet metal is exactly the same. You could unbolt the doors from the Tonale and bolt them straight on the Hornet (good news for David in about thirty years time). Even the mirrors are identical (or carry over, as we professionals say).
At the back, it’s a similar story to the front. Dodge had no choice but to make a new infill panel on the tailgate below the lights, because the original had a cutout for the roundel like the hood. The light graphic is different (although I expect the functionality is identical), but the rest is Tonale all the way. It’s only the lower cladding which has changed slightly; the rear reflectors remain in the same place which is a legal thing – homologate one and you’ve done both. The overall shape is very similar but the Hornet does away with the extraneous fake vent of the Alfa, reducing cost. Well, all that money they’ve saved they surely splashed it all over the interior, right? Right?
Now, slight caveat, I’m not an interior designer and have never worked on interiors (most designers specialize in one or the other. They do sometimes cross over, but not often), but it looks like the only thing that has been changed is the IP (instrument panel) upper. That is, the top piece of the entire dash across the width of the car. But although the vents are a different shape, the center screen and IP cluster are the same parts. The only other thing that looks to be ever so slightly altered is the start stop button on the steering wheel. Same pasta, very slightly different sauce.
Remember we joked about designers being lazy? I want to be absolutely clear that none of this is the designers fault. Designers do as they’re told, and I guarantee you the Auburn Hills guys were absolutely dying inside doing this. This is corporate fuckshamblery pure and simple, and I’ll explain why.
The Alfodge Hornale is going to be built at a Stellantis corporate plant in Pomigliano d’Arco, Naples, Italy. A production line can only handle a certain amount of complexity, which is why it’s not surprising there’s so little differentiation between the two cars. This leads us to another point; it makes a certain amount of sense on a financial spreadsheet. Doubtless some MBA type looked at the numbers and thought, Hey, we can make another car for minimal investment and plug a bit of a gap in the Dodge line up. But here’s the thing.
The Hornet is very clearly an Alfa Romeo and not a Dodge. Light graphics aside, nothing about the shape, surfacing or details shares any visual DNA with the rest of the Dodge line up. The swoopy C-pillar screams curvy Euro CUV and not downsized chiseled American attitude. Not only that, there are not that many media images of the Hornet available, which suggests they don’t want people doing what this article has just done, which really is the sort of shit GM would have tried forty years ago.
[Editor’s Note: I see the advantages of Dodge’s move, so I can’t really hate on it, though I’m not a designer. And Adrian is making some good points; I get why he’s worked up, and I kind of dig it. -DT]
Dodge and Alfa executives will argue that these cars are pitched at different parts of the market – the Alfa towards the premium end and the Dodge more accessible. But this is marketing bullshit – you’ve just admitted your premium Italian BMW alternative is cheap enough to be offered as a domestic American brand. And for those heartland American customers, the car is built in Italy, and doesn’t really look like a Dodge at all.
Somewhere in a C-suite in the Ren Cen, a bunch of executives are laughing and thinking, Man, Stellantis is trying the same stunt we didn’t get away with forty years ago! Aren’t they fucking stupid!
Lead photo credit: Stellantis
Glad I bought a distinct Volvo…but China is manufacturing some identical replicas to Polestar
“corporate fuckshamblery” Thanks for adding to my sentence enhancer spice rack.
I like it despite the inferior badge and Mexican Americans will buy it in droves as loyalists to the brand.
I could have 3 for what I spent on my top-of-the-line Volvo!
I have a 1st gen Toyota Matrix. Unless you peeked inside, the Pontiac Vibe and the Matrix had a good differentiation on exterior panels. I love the wrap-around glass look on the Matrix, and the more angular look on the Vibe.
I had to remind my mechanic to check Pontiac parts and forums/videos to fix a few problems I had.
VW and Audi spring to my mind. They are selling twins with different badges all the time. I’d like to mention Porsche Cayenne and VW Touareg the are the same. My cheap first gen Skoda Fabia had interchangeable exterior parts with more expensive corresponding VW Polo. I had both at the same time. Somehow poeple bought cheap Skoda cars and expensive Audi cars the same time although they looked similar and shared most parts. Stellantis are following the same path as VW.
People keep mentioning VAG, but they’re platform sharing, which is using the same underlying kit of parts to produce different vehicles. With Audi/Skoda/VW and Porsche, almost everything the customer can see or touch (known as the A surfaces) is completely different. Will some mechanical parts swap? Sure, but that’s where the cost savings are made and it generally doesn’t affect the customer experience.
The Hornet and the Tonale are the same car, bar the lights and bumpers (and wheels). It’s much more akin to what GM, BL have done in the past.
The only real reputational damage I see is to Dodge if these cars have maintenance issues like other recent Alfa models that have hit U.S. shores.
The Alfas quickly gained a reputation for spending nearly as much time in the shop as on the road here in America. Granted, the worst offenders have been the performance models, which carries over to every other car in the lineup.
Reports I’ve seen on the Tonale suggest it’s more reliable than most of the other cars in Alfa lineup so it may be the case that the Hornet will be a bargain, allowing us to get an Italian-made CUV at a discount.
Fully agree. I’m about as anti-dodge as you can get right now but if this little thing is reliable I may need to check them out. I dig it.
I think the Dodge version looks better than the Alfa.
I’d argue that Stellantis picked the wrong brand by choosing Dodge as the rebadged Alfa. Chrysler is dead in Europe and has the fewest models in it’s lineup. Use the Alfa in Europe and a badge engineered Chrysler in North America. Absolutely nobody is cross shopping Alfa and Chrysler in the US, so even with the Alfa version sold here, I can’t see either cannibalizing sales.
Also, as a message to Stellantis, give us North Americans some Chrysler badges Peugeots and Citreons already.
In some way Premium Alfa sharing with Accessible Dodge makes sense — Dodge’s current lineup is two cars evolved from a platform that shared some components (Suspension, Transmission, some electronics) with Mercedes Benz. The Charger and Challenger still ride better than many newer cars at much higher price points. But what about Dodge’s other vehicle, the Durango? Yeah, that’s a three row Jeep Grand Cherokee with some Dodge badging and styling.
I’d have loved to see some more differentiation but I think they did well with what they had, especially for $30k.
In some way Premium Alfa sharing with Accessible Dodge makes sense — Dodge’s current lineup is two cars evolved from a platform that shared some components (Suspension, Transmission, some electronics) with Mercedes Benz. The Charger and Challenger still ride better than many newer cars at much higher price points. But what about Dodge’s other vehicle, the Durango? Yeah, that’s a three row Jeep Grand Cherokee with some Dodge badging and styling.
I’d have loved to see some more differentiation but they did well with what they had, especially for $30k.
I created an account to ask this honest question. Why were the Toyobaru twins given a pass on doing exactly this?
M
My main thought on this is that the 86 and BRZ are niche sports cars. To get them into production they needed to collaborate to make a profit. They also don’t hide this, they don’t pretend to be different. The tonale and hornet are small SUVs it’s not hard to make a business case in this highly profitable segment. Toyota and Subaru sit in the same market segment both mainstream brands. Alfa Romeo is a “premium” brand. Dodge just isn’t. All I think of when I think of dodge is the caliber and the cheap and nasty journey. (I don’t live in North America and we never got the challenger or charger)
Ah okay, when you put it that way it makes more sense to me. The Toyobaru twins are two flavors of the same car level playing field, whereas the Dodge and Alfa are playing in two separate market segments, while being essentially two flavors of the same car. With that in mind, the Dodge seems like a fantastic value.
This exactly.
That’s a great example, and really they shouldn’t have been at the time (or now).
“The Hornet is very clearly an Alfa Romeo and not a Dodge.”
I completely agree. Now having said that, is that a truly bad thing? Dodge desperately needs some CUVs.
Also, I’m not sure how much cross-shopping would go on between Alfa and Dodge. Personally I think Stellantis should have either Alfa or Dodge in any given market, not both. And given they’re both supposed to be performance brands, there will be a lot of overlap.
Now while I agree this is a lazy badge engineering job, it’s not as bad as the Dodge/Plymouth K-Car badge engineering jobs done by Chrysler in the 1980s.
Dodges should be Dodges. At least the damn Challengers had Dodge engines and very distinct bodies.
One of the things I loved about Dodges and many of FCA’s products were that you could look at them from a mile away and you could tell what they were whereas most other cars fall into the generic sedan, hatchback, CUV, SUV, and Pickup truck shapes.
At a distance this is just another generic CUV
Up close it’s a generic Italian CUV with a Dodge badge, cladding, and decals slapped onto it.
It’s shameful beyond words.
An upside: it will probably be more refined and quieter than it’s competition, given that the Alpha is competing further up the food chain.
There is one thing this article touches on briefly, but which I think is more important than the “badge engineering”. Are they really going to build this in Italy and bring it to the US? That tells me that this probably won’t be a high volume car like the Chevy Equinox / Ford Escape which would seem to be the main competition. Maybe 50,000 or so a year when the others are selling 200k+ ? If they were “serious” about this car, it also wouldn’t be made in Italy but in North America (probably Mexico, based upon how the things work nowadays).
The Journey was a pile, but it sold decently. The only way this thing sells if it is priced aggressively, which I doubt will happen.
Yes, it’s going to be built alongside the Tonale in Naples. Presumably the cost savings more than offset building it somewhere in North America, because Dodge doesn’t exist in the European market.
“ fuckshamblery”
Brilliant! Adding this to the repertoire, thanks! And the rest was as incredibly insightful as ever!
Before this week I’d never even hear of the Tonale and only found out it was available in the US today. Alfa has always been terrible at marketing here in the US, I doubt this will steal any sales from them. shoot, they might gain sales with all this publicity.
That 2nd to last paragraph really sums up my issue with badge engineering. Either the Chevy Cavalier is a really sweet deal, or you’re getting swindled on that Cadillac Cimarron.
While these two SUVs are clearly identical, they also look like every other tall station wagon out there.
They all look like generic rounded blobs.
I’m sure the Dodge designers, that still exist, were happy as hell to do what they did. Seriously it meant they had a job still, something that I’m sure many were worried about. The sweater was never in Chrysler for the long run and that is why the Dodge brand has been neglected for so long.
Which brings us to the other reason that they couldn’t make much differentiation between the two models. They just didn’t have the time. This needed to be on the market 3-4 years ago, but the sweater intended to have FCA married off by then. Too much new stuff would have taken too long to design and tool for and pushed the introduction date that much farther down the road. Another reason they likely cheeped out was even though this is in one of the hottest segments, with the Dodge brand never really being a player, it surely would have been hard to justify projections of any significant initial volume. Low volume means a high amortization load per unit and a more expensive vehicle that would hamper the volume even more.
I know the Tonale was delayed, reportedly because the CEO wasn’t happy with it. I said it elsewhere but my suspicion is the Dodge was a last minute addition to the program (probably two years from job 1).
Dodge really should have had something in this category years ago as it’s where the volume is. Afaik it’s all variations of the FCA small wide platform which is underneath the Renegade, so there’s really no excuse, other than someone didn’t want to spend a lot of money doing a whole car.
One thing I haven’t seen mentioned in the Hornet/Tonale articles: Dealerships. There is only one Alfa dealer in Utah, and none in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, or South Dakota (doing a quick search of my region; I’d guess there are others). There is a Dodge dealer in almost every town over 10k people. Maybe we’ll be seeing more Tonales in the Dodge dealer service lots?
A friend had a Mini in Montana and loved the car. Until it broke down and required a flat-bed tow to the nearest dealer in SLC for warranty work (8+ hour drive each way). She took a loss and unloaded it shortly after.
I must admit this is a bit of blind spot in my knowledge. In the UK this sort of thing is not such an issue, and I need to be reminded that a lot of US purchasing decisions are dictated by which dealerships you have in town.
In the US, everyone will be looking at the Alfa and calling it a badge-engineered Dodge.
Much like they look at Mazda’s MZR engine and think it’s “really a Ford Duratec” even though it’s actually the other way around.
For some reason this mis-attribution of an engine’s origin always bugs me. Like the 2nd generation of focus (that the US didn’t get) where Ford started throwing turbo 5cyls in there to get some speed. Of course these were Volvo units with Duratec slapped on it. Still had folks calling it a Ford unit despite the white blocks coming into production long before Ford had a stake in Volvo.
We have people on this site (supposedly “car enthusiasts”), in this very comments thread calling the Stelvio based on a Cherokee, so you should probably lower your expectations for the regular ‘murican car buyer
This isn’t lazy and no American consumer will care that the Hornet is an Alfa, unless the Hornet is imbued with Alfa’s legendary quality control. Or consumers believe the Hornet will be built with Alfa quality. Dodge dealers will sell a ton more Hornets than Alfa dealers will sell Tonales. It makes sense to differentiate the cars, especially as ditching the distinctive Alfa grille is really all that is necessary to make the Hornet look like a Dodge. I had no idea the vehicle was an Alfa until I read this article.
Stellantis really had no choice to re-badge the Tonale for Dodge dealers and should consider rebadging the Alfa in the US too. A Hornet is cool. A ToeNail is not. It’s really the worst example of car naming since Chevy sold the Nova in the southern Americas. I’m not even sure Alfa customers will want a ToeNail when they can have a Hornet. Perhaps the European pronunciation works, but in the US, Nogo.
Otherwise, the Hornet is a nicely styled compact SUV with interesting gas and hybrid power options. If it proves reliable, it should sell nicely. The ToeNail is nice too.
There was nothing wrong with selling the Nova in Spanish-speaking countries. No one would interpret that word as ‘no go’.
First off, because that’s not how you describe a car that doesn’t run in Spanish, and second off because ‘nova’ is a word in Spanish. That means the same thing it does in English, ‘exploding star’.
The Nova sold well in Latin America. The ‘it didn’t sell’ thing in business textbooks is urban legend BS.
Thanks for explaining this. I knew the ‘Nova’ thing in Spanish was an urban legend but couldn’t recall the specifics.
Stellantis had plenty of “choice” here. The European side of Stellantis has this absolute fetish with trying to keep the Alfa-Romeo brand alive, even though the brand has utterly dismal sales on a global scale. In 2021, the Dodge brand 8x more vehicles in just the U.S. alone compared to GLOBAL Alfa-Romeo sales.
….and “European pronunciation”? I forgot how the entirety of Europe has a single “prounciation” and that Italian words magically must be pronounced differently in America. No American is going to seriously call it the “toenail”
– It’s attached to the Alfa-Romeo brand, and everyone seriously shopping Alfa-Romeos is going to know that it’s an Italian brand
– Tonale doesn’t really look like a “normal” English word
– If you try to pronounce it using standard American English rules, it doesn’t really come out as sounding like anything correct (and certainly not “toe nail”)
– It’s spelled very similar to “Tamale”
When the GM A Bodies were new cars, there was no such thing as “Reputational Damage” Sure it’s amusing to line them up and point out how much they are the EXACT SAME CAR, but GM sold Imperial (not metric) Tons of these things, for like a decade.
What we see, in hindsight as lazy design; was at the time GM in it’s ultimate final form. They had been building to this for decades, continual platform homogenization to reduce the unique parts list down to a bakers dozen. They couldn’t compete on quality, they HAD to compete on manufacturing efficiency and scale.
Given how much Alfa has struggled to make a dent in the US market I see this as Stella using the Hornet to prop up it’s dev costs for the new Tonale, and actually try to make money on it (the horror!) Dodge needs a product that dosen’t ride an an architecture older than the graduating class of 2022, and Alfa needs to pay for the new assembly line. It’s a win-win, and no one in the target market will care, or possibly even notice that it’s the same car as the other brand. It’s the new Journey, but this time it’s a Hornet!
Also I kinda dig it, especially at the price.
Good points all round, and from a bottom line it makes absolute business sense.
As a designer, it makes my soul weep. Both are storied brands and deserve better.
Now that we’ve got the “Dodge by Alfa Romeo”, and with all this 80s retro craze going on, how long until they bring back the “Chrysler by Maserati”?
Gah how did I miss this! I’ve even read Iaccoca’s biography!
In similar news: “Alfa Romeo is currently crying because they wanted to blow billions of dollars more for a car that already looked like an Outlander Sport more so than an actual premium offering and Dodge is willing to use the same exact CUV to actually make money off it in what will be much more slander to Alfa, of whom wants to fail quickly and never try to be much more than a company dedicated to chassis exercises, besides being an Italian Dodge counterpart.”
Badge-engineering like this isn’t bad when you used to be able to go to GM and Chrysler dealers and look at the same. EXACT. VEHICLES. with a different badge. Like Neon’s and the minivans?
Or the old Silverado/Sierra’s?
It won’t stop me from every getting one.
I found my new favorite word… “fuckshamblery”
I’m sorry you got so worked up that you had to use such a word, Adrian, but I do thank you for the addition to my personal dictionary.
I came to comment on the same “corporate fuckshamblery!” Someone call Merriam-Webster because I think we may have the Word Of The Year 2022! Thank you Adrian!
It’s the ancient British tradition of creative swearing. It’s about the only thing we have left to offer the world.
Your servant sir.