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.
I’ve dreamed of putting an ///M badge on my Jeep XJ for a while now.
It’s as close to an M-car as most others I see around here with aftermarket M badges (usually on a 318/320d), plus at least I’ve got a straight-6 and RWD.
I love when you can do this in Forza because the badges on the original are stickers. My favourite is my formula drift Holden Maloo that’s got a 2019 Porsche 911 RSR livery on it, complete with Porsche badge.
This article really nails it. While rebadging can often be extremely tacky, under the right circumstances it can be very funny in a subversive way, so yeah, very much punk. I love it when I see the occasional Opel rebadged as a Vauxhall, or silly stuff like Porsche badges on a Daewoo (or vice-versa). I also like altered badges, like the Prancing Moose or this fantastic Land Rover badge saying Lada Niva instead (it’s just a decal, sadly). Engine/drivetrain swaps are also a good excuse for rebadging I think. Whenever I daydream of electric conversion options for my Renault 4 I always think it would be cool to adapt a Nissan EM61 motor from a junked Leaf and add the “EAF” letters after the “RENAULT 4GTL” badge.
There was a Prius in my hood with an M badge on it.
My blue 1983 Citroën 2CV Club’s grey plastic grille was somewhat broken, so I cut out all the plastic inside the frame. But only with the fine wire mesh it looked kinda stupid..
So I found A big round Mercedes-Benz badge from a big “Düsseldorfer” heavy van (or maybe it was a “Bremer”, I don’t remember as it was 25 years ago) in a junkyard and stuck that in there. Looked great!
Must have been from a Düsseldorfer, the Bremer had a rather small star.
Some years ago I had a red and grey Kawasaki Vulcan Nomad motorcycle. The reproduction Nomad script emblem for a Chevy Looked great on the saddlebag.
I’m considering rebadging my Geo Metro Convertible, once I paint it, as a Suzuki Firefly. That should confuse the hell out of Officer Friendly. Running the plates will come up with a Chevrolet, as the registration says it’s a Chevrolet Geo Metro, but it’s designed and built in Japan by Suzuki. What we know as Metros were sold in Canada as the Pontiac Firefly.
Middle-aged car buffs such as me would understand the gentle humor. And Officer Hardass would probably give me a ticket.
In Denver area, I saw a red Mitsubishi Cordia (1982–1990) rebadged by the tightwad owner as an Alfa Romeo GTV (1974–1987) or Sprint GT (1976–1989), including the steering wheel.
I wasn’t fooled…
Wholeheartedly agree. I always assume badge-swappers are car people, makes me happy. Anything to make the streets more fun and interesting. Giant ghastly rims on an old Buick? That person really digs their Buick; I am all about it. Honda Civic Lyft/Uber with chintzy chrome door edging surrounding every panel, stick-on hood vents, and AutoZone ‘sporty’ wheel covers? That driver is probably very proud of their new race car, and I love to see it.
To be fair, a used Maserati has the biggest Altima energy of any luxury sedan in existence.
I enjoy a good rebadge for the giggles to the point where my VW 411 has “CAMERO” custom license plates (a carryover from its previous Camaro-racing owner) and it still rocks “Porsche Cayenne”-style script claiming it’s a “Parsh Puffalump.” I mean, it’s got a 914 engine out back, so it works.
Also, I named my Puffalamp (a lamp with a Puffalump on it who greets me on my desk) “Bruce” after this running bit from classic Jalopnik: https://jalopnik.com/flushing-mad-scrill-down-the-terlet-name-your-porsche-214338
Also^2, it brings me great joy to see that nameyourporsche.com is still going, complete with updated badge styles. You, too, can flush mad scrill down the terlet to name your car “Bruce!”
On a related note, the VW 411 joke that the model number meant “4 doors 11 years late”.
I’va had a fanciful thought about taking a Cayman with an IMS-rekt engine, replacing said engine with a healthy, warmed up Camry V6, and having a “Caymry” badge made for the tail in the same font as the original. My Porsche-loving buddy thought me mad. He is not wrong.
There’s a couple of Nissan gtrs around here highly modified riding with sentra and maxima badges. Half the used Chevy SS I see seem to have at leat one holden mod.
DT should rebadge his ZJ as a Jaguar.
Put a hood kitty on that thing.
Now you make me wonder if I should put Jeep badges on my Jaguar XJ.
DO IT!
Does the ‘Shitbox Edition’ badge that I bought off of Facebook and stuck to the tailgate of my F-250 count? Because I laugh my ass off every time I see it.
Just a word to the wise on rebadging. I’d converted one of my Yugos into a “BMW” “164” with some creative badgework. Then I got pulled over. Officer Oblivious wanted to know in no uncertain terms why this car that was clearly a BMW was wearing tags issued to a Yugo. Help was called for, help arrived. Stuffed my ass in the back of the cruiser while Oblivious and Not-Helpful walked around the car for an hour. Finally one of them decided that there might be an identifying number on the car somewhere, maybe on the dashboard? Voi fucking la, it really is a Yugo! But how can that be, with roundels and a kidney grille? But the number says it is! But how can it be? They played this dumbshow for an additional half hour, but couldn’t agree on a way to make it a stolen BMW, which would have made their day.
Eventually I was freed and ticketed. Didn’t bother trying to talk my way out of it.
Oops. That is the problem when idiots are given ‘authoritay’.
Ticketed for what infraction?
If I had a BRZ, I thought I would change the grille to resemble more of an old Austin Healey and rebadge it accordingly, maybe calling it a 2400 Sprite (the old Sprite script was pretty cool). Then I thought, Healey got in bed with everyone and the twins are already badge engineered as was the 2nd gen Sprite/MG Midget, so what if Donald was still around for a badge-engineered version of a BRZ. So, I did a rough design for a combined Subaru-Healey badge with a large 4-pointed star in the center that had the vertical points greatly reduced and the horizontal points stretching across to evoke the wings of the A-H (or the majority of British marques, it seems) with the text across its width and the other six stars of Pleiades on the sides above and below the wings.
Had a 73 Dodge Dart I stuck the Turbo badge from a SAAB on the rear right under the Dart. It kind of fit. Had a lot of fun with people who would argue with me there were no Turbo Darts.
Oddly, I do mostly agree with the article and the comments.
However, I am Australian and this have some strong feelings regarding a certain gold bowtie and it’s frequent placement upon the nose of Holdens throughout the country.
And those strong feelings are simply, stop it, they SUCK.
Hear me out though.
I understand where it started, back in the day, the 350 Chev was the engine swap go-to, much as the LS is today, and I can understand that as part of the modified car scene, it made sense to promote that you’d taken that step by sticking the Chevy bow tie in the grill of your desired tire smoke machine. I don’t have qualms with old Holden HQs or WBs or the like with a sneaky bow tie that implies there’s a mean Chev donk under the bonnet. I get it.
My issue lies almost exclusively with the Commodore. Now, there are a few examples of genuine Chevrolet badged cars that exist, I get that, but the thing is, no one here who now ties their Commo is thinking about them, no. It’s some weird, un-Australian flaunt about their LS powered SS V8 Commodore, that I’m somehow supposed to respect? It’s a factory engine, it’s not exciting, but worst of all, it’s not just the V8s, it’s the Buick engined cars, it’s the Alloytecs, it means and implies nothing, and these are the people who cheer Holden in the V8SC series, or who cried bloody murder when it went under, who apparently support our small, local industry, why the hell cover that with a Chevy badge? Why not flaunt your Holden proudly for it’s unique place in the global car scene.
I just don’t GET IT. And sure, maybe that’s me, it’s subjective, it’s an opinion. I just don’t get it, and it’s just far too common, it’s horrifically overdone, so there’s no joke about it, it’s not novel, or thought provoking. It’s tiring. Holden is dead, Australian domestic car culture is dwindling, there’s a rich history so few really know about and instead of supporting that, you’d prefer to throw an eBay bowtie down where the mighty lion once stood?
I’m just not here for it.
/endrant
And it’s the ugliest badge out there.
Lots of folks up here were putting Holden badges on the Chevy SS or Pontiac G8.
But this I actually understand, because at its core, that’s what the cars were, Holden Commodores and Caprices, which you never got, so throwing the domestic market badging on is a bit of fun. But really, my complaint is more akin to Holden badges on a Camaro.
there’s a guy in my town who’s put vauxhall badges on his VE ute.
that’s far more creative and humorous.
That bowtie makes that Porsche look a bit like Hitler.
Ferdinand was involved with the MB SSK so it checks out
Now I really want a 911 with VW badging. Old school Beetle-era VW badges, of course.
Came here to suggest this. 100.
There’s a guy rolling around town that added a bunch of Type R badging to his Honda Element. He’s fully committed to the gag and it actually looks halfway convincing if I didn’t know any better. It’s pretty great, in fact.
I put one on my Odyssey, on the right side where the Touring badge would go (if I didn’t have an EX!). I’ve had a couple dads do a double take and then chuckle – and it makes me smile every time I see it!
I’ve never been able to snap a picture of the car as the only times I’ve seen it is in traffic/at a stoplight, but someone in my area (Chicago suburbs) has what I *think* is a Chevrolet SS…and they have completely rebadged it as a Holden. Emblem on the hood, and on the trunk…and as I creeped next to them in the right lane approaching a stop light I saw they’d rebadged at least the steering wheel too with a Holden badge. Am not a Chevy fan at all but thought it was pretty cool to see a Holden badge in the Midwest.
There’s a second gen Saturn Vue (the one that ended up as the Captiva) running around my area with Vauxhall badges. Someone sourcing foreign market badging for a mundane car is the right kind of weirdo.
Given the Chevy SS is just a re-badged Holden Commodore, is that considered re-re-badging? Un-badging?
Un-rebadging.
Sidebadging.
Upbadging is bad (like Cadillac badges on a chevy), downbadging is respected (chevy badges on a caddy), and sidebadging is a respectful nod for those “in-the-know”.
There’s another fella in the Chicago suburbs that rebadged their 6th gen Buick Regal to an Opel Insignia
My opinion depends on the intention. Putting a badge on your car as a funny gag is totally cool with me. Once I snapped the T off a Mercury Tracer badge and put it on my Omni GLH “Racer.” But there are plenty of narcissistic people trying to upbadge their car to genuinely try to convince others their car is something better than what they have. Those people can and should be mercilessly mocked. Thankfully there’s already a Facebook group for that.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2859615094056170/
I worked with a guy who had a Monte Carlo that had the o removed to make it a Monte Carl.
I could use some advice on this exact topic.
The Saab badges on my Saab 9-5 have faded into nondescript silver nothings. What’s the best solution?
Option 1: delete entirely, leaving anyone behind me to wonder “why does that sedan have a ‘nine to the fifth’ badge on it?”
Option 2: the lateral rebrand. The most direct choice would be Opel, but I’d happily consider any GM brand.
Option 3: Volvo badges, for maximum Swedish confusion.
Option 4: any addition suggestions?
clearly you need Fauxrarri prancing moose emblems
How about a Scania badge?
I second the Scania badge
Upvote for Scania truck badges. Great idea!
May be difficult to source, but Spyker since they almost bought Saab.
There’s no “almost” about it. Spyker did buy Saab, it just didn’t turn out well for them afterwards.
Koenigsegg?
I would apply all the same arguments for manufacturer rebadging to model rebadging – not sure why Jason is so against it, maybe because it’s quite easy, widespread and a topic many a car forum have been set alight for.
Still, if I see some clapped out M47-engined diesel E46 saloon with CSL badges I will at least admire the aspiration. You do you, people!
I’m more of a no badge or down-badge character myself.
On topic, I think truck/bus drivers are really good at rebadging, especially back when most designs were quite generic (in Europe), you could badge your MAZ as a MAN and feel cool about it.