What’s Your Favorite Car Badge? Autopian Asks

Badge Aa Ts
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As car enthusiasts, we love cars—that’s a given. But it goes so much deeper than that. We love race tracks, we love old gas pumps, heck—some of us have a jonesing for taillights. And yes, some of us go crazy for badges. So what’s your favorite?

I’m not immune to this. I’ve always had a taste for good design, though unlike Adrian, I’m not particularly good at it myself. I like typefaces and logos and nice swooshy lines. More than all that, I like it when they’re used tastefully to perfection. I’m detail-oriented. The little flourishes on a car can make it or break it for me.

My favorite badge is a classic of the Rad era. It’s from the Volvo 740 Turbo, of which I was lucky enough to own one myself. It was a beautiful wagon with exquisite proportions and clean lines. But more than that, the badges were absolutely on point. 

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My favorite of all time. And I owned one!

Just look at these things! A sleek, modern typeface that said this thing was from the near future. A great number paired with the best automotive word of them all – TURBO. When that wasn’t enough, they slapped INTERCOOLER on there as well so you really knew this car had the works.

It wasn’t just limited to the rear end, either. Volvo scattered additional Turbo badges around the body, on the fenders, and on the front grille to boot. Hilariously, the model is joking referred to as the Jurbo, because of the shape of the T used on the script-format badges.

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Awesome badging.
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Still awesome. Still Jurbonic.

If you asked me for my favorite brand badge, though, I certainly wouldn’t say Volvo’s. It always came across a bit old-hat to me. Instead, I’m a fan of the lions. I dig the Holden roundel, but the marching lion of Peugeot really does it for me.

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I’m pretty sure that neither European medieval heralds nor the French artists at Peugeot have ever seen a real lion. Yet still, I rate the badge.

I’ll also give honorable mentions to the griffin of Vauxhall, and the scorpion of Abarth. Carlo Abarth chose the yellow field for the Italian town of Merano, and red as the traditional color of Italian motorsport. The scorpion was because that was his Zodiac sign, and because it fit the brand’s philosophy—”small but mean.” That’s just rad to me.

Abarth Logo

Of course, this isn’t Autopian Tells. It’s Autopian Asks. We want to know what your favorite badges are. Maybe you love Skoda’s little round thing, or the way Nissan puts that special S on the Skylines. Sound off, and lament the fact that you can’t post images in the comments. We’ll use our imaginations. Go!

Image credits: Lewin Day, Peugeot, Abarth

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114 thoughts on “What’s Your Favorite Car Badge? Autopian Asks

  1. I tend to remove badges from my vehicles when possible. Some badges have cool designs (like the Abarth badge shown above) but I think badges (particularly elaborate or colorful ones, again like the Abarth badge shown above) make a car look busy and distract from the styling.

    While I am not a fan of two-dimensional badges on modern cars, I like ostentatious hood ornaments on old land yachts. I’m not sure if a hood ornament counts as a badge, but if they do, the Cadillac crest from ’80s and earlier cars are my favorite. The Spirit of Ecstasy hood ornaments are also awesome, although they better be considering how much a Rolls costs.

    1. Honorable mention for the various GM model specific crests from the ’80s maybe?

      Like the Monte Carlo emblem, or (my fav) the Fiero’s flattened chicken shield.

    2. Cadillac logo was great. It’s been on a gradual downward trend since 2000 though. Bring back the ducks and the details. I don’t hate it today, but it’s a shadow of its former glory.

  2. I tend to remove badges from my vehicles when possible. Some badges have cool designs (like the Abarth badge shown above) but I think badges (particularly elaborate or colorful ones, again like the Abarth badge shown above) make a car look busy and distract from the styling.

    While I am not a fan of two-dimensional badges on modern cars, I like ostentatious hood ornaments on old land yachts. I’m not sure if a hood ornament counts as a badge, but if they do, the Cadillac crest from ’80s and earlier cars are my favorite. The Spirit of Ecstasy hood ornaments are also awesome, although they better be considering how much a Rolls costs.

    1. Honorable mention for the various GM model specific crests from the ’80s maybe?

      Like the Monte Carlo emblem, or (my fav) the Fiero’s flattened chicken shield.

    2. Cadillac logo was great. It’s been on a gradual downward trend since 2000 though. Bring back the ducks and the details. I don’t hate it today, but it’s a shadow of its former glory.

    1. On Corvairs (which only ever came with one engine displacement at a time: 140 CID in 1960, 145 in 1961-63, and 164 from 1964-69), some years had an adapted version of those badges on the rear decklid with the advertised horsepower instead. So you can tell by looking at mine that the original owner paid the extra $27 to upgrade from 95 HP to 110 HP (gross!).

    1. On Corvairs (which only ever came with one engine displacement at a time: 140 CID in 1960, 145 in 1961-63, and 164 from 1964-69), some years had an adapted version of those badges on the rear decklid with the advertised horsepower instead. So you can tell by looking at mine that the original owner paid the extra $27 to upgrade from 95 HP to 110 HP (gross!).

    1. Interesting! The logo itself is visually cool, but I dislike how the “Tiburon” is actually hard to see as raised letters rather than painted or otherwise visually distinctive.

      1. You caught me before I edited it. I changed the link to the Tuscani logo I was thinking of. I really like the logo but yea the name underneath either as Tiburon or Tuscani is definitely too hard to see.

    1. Interesting! The logo itself is visually cool, but I dislike how the “Tiburon” is actually hard to see as raised letters rather than painted or otherwise visually distinctive.

      1. You caught me before I edited it. I changed the link to the Tuscani logo I was thinking of. I really like the logo but yea the name underneath either as Tiburon or Tuscani is definitely too hard to see.

  3. I think lots of the typical nameplates (Chevy, Ford, Toyota…) have elegant simplicity in their logos. (Dishonorable mention: Kia’s new logo stinks.) But that’s to be expected.

    I generally like simple, small-ish badging. Letting the world know it’s a V8 with a badge is fine (although I guess there’s not many proudly proclaiming “I4” or “I6” that way?), diesel, hybrid, PHEV, or EV indicators, and maybe the trim level.

    For example, I’ve seen a few Ford Expedition Max Limited, and it’s easy to identify. The badges are simple on the back and you know some basic things about the vehicle from them: it’s the extended-length model, and it’s got all or most of the bells and whistles. Admittedly that’s very much a wealth indicator too, but I think that’s almost intrinsic to car ownership at this point.

    4×4 is fine too when it’s not some enormous graphics package on the side of a truck bed. Just a small badge is fine.

    I like my car mostly plain, but I will repeat: I detest when cars don’t have their models written anywhere, and especially when it’s not on the back. Okay, you’ve got a friggin’ Ferrari or Lambo, cool. What exact type is it? Oh, I have to rip my dashcam footage and do a reverse image search?…never mind then.

    Much as I hate BMW, Mercedes, Infiniti, Volvo, Mazda, etc. and their obsession with alphanumeric code model names, at least they’re nice enough to put them on the vehicle.

    1. Jeep’s current refusal to notify the model on the back end is always frustrating. Yeah, we all know which one’s the Wrangler, but… And esp. annoying not too long ago when there were a bunch of very similar models running around.

    2. I wish Kia had gone with the Korean logo I would often see put on Stingers; I’m on the fence on whether it was actually good, but it was better than the current one and it least it wasn’t generic as hell like the old logo.

  4. I think lots of the typical nameplates (Chevy, Ford, Toyota…) have elegant simplicity in their logos. (Dishonorable mention: Kia’s new logo stinks.) But that’s to be expected.

    I generally like simple, small-ish badging. Letting the world know it’s a V8 with a badge is fine (although I guess there’s not many proudly proclaiming “I4” or “I6” that way?), diesel, hybrid, PHEV, or EV indicators, and maybe the trim level.

    For example, I’ve seen a few Ford Expedition Max Limited, and it’s easy to identify. The badges are simple on the back and you know some basic things about the vehicle from them: it’s the extended-length model, and it’s got all or most of the bells and whistles. Admittedly that’s very much a wealth indicator too, but I think that’s almost intrinsic to car ownership at this point.

    4×4 is fine too when it’s not some enormous graphics package on the side of a truck bed. Just a small badge is fine.

    I like my car mostly plain, but I will repeat: I detest when cars don’t have their models written anywhere, and especially when it’s not on the back. Okay, you’ve got a friggin’ Ferrari or Lambo, cool. What exact type is it? Oh, I have to rip my dashcam footage and do a reverse image search?…never mind then.

    Much as I hate BMW, Mercedes, Infiniti, Volvo, Mazda, etc. and their obsession with alphanumeric code model names, at least they’re nice enough to put them on the vehicle.

    1. Jeep’s current refusal to notify the model on the back end is always frustrating. Yeah, we all know which one’s the Wrangler, but… And esp. annoying not too long ago when there were a bunch of very similar models running around.

    2. I wish Kia had gone with the Korean logo I would often see put on Stingers; I’m on the fence on whether it was actually good, but it was better than the current one and it least it wasn’t generic as hell like the old logo.

    1. Yes! It grabbed my attention as a kid because it was just so symmetrical and clean. Brilliant, timeless design.

      (Interestingly, my understanding is that the three-diamond logo is a variation on Mitsubishi’s original logo, which represented a propeller, in keeping with their aircraft business. So along with BMW’s roundel, that makes two current car logos that can be traced back to propellers.)

    1. Yes! It grabbed my attention as a kid because it was just so symmetrical and clean. Brilliant, timeless design.

      (Interestingly, my understanding is that the three-diamond logo is a variation on Mitsubishi’s original logo, which represented a propeller, in keeping with their aircraft business. So along with BMW’s roundel, that makes two current car logos that can be traced back to propellers.)

  5. The light-up P O N T I A C on the decklids of certain ’80s and ’90s Pontiacs.

    Always on 2-doors, it was the perfect bookend to pop-ups on the front to signal not-too-distant-future, and I appreciate the ingenuity of having the license plate lamps do double duty. It just encapsulated the silly yet somehow cool feel of Pontiac in those days.

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