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.

Puegot
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”

  2. So many great badges out there, hard to choose the top 10 favorites, heck, the top 100 favorites, but a particularly charming one is for the 1957 BAG Spatz: https://roarington.com/media-house/directories/manufacturers/spatz
    https://www.lanemotormuseum.org/collection/cars/item/spatz-1957/
    And Denzel, an old German tuning house, which built some of their own sports cars as well as providing speed parts for air-cooled VW engines, had a seriously cool and excruciatingly Brutalist art deco logo where they did an impressive job of somehow conveying the letter E without using three crossbars: http://photos.imageevent.com/mrokrasa/vwcarscoachbuilts/vwlowlightghia1959/giant/20150925_133054%20a.jpg

  3. So many great badges out there, hard to choose the top 10 favorites, heck, the top 100 favorites, but a particularly charming one is for the 1957 BAG Spatz: https://roarington.com/media-house/directories/manufacturers/spatz
    https://www.lanemotormuseum.org/collection/cars/item/spatz-1957/
    And Denzel, an old German tuning house, which built some of their own sports cars as well as providing speed parts for air-cooled VW engines, had a seriously cool and excruciatingly Brutalist art deco logo where they did an impressive job of somehow conveying the letter E without using three crossbars: http://photos.imageevent.com/mrokrasa/vwcarscoachbuilts/vwlowlightghia1959/giant/20150925_133054%20a.jpg

  10. I’m fond of the early Citroens with the huge, skinny chevrons covering nearly the entire grille. Also, the early Mazdas with a lowercase m in a rotor.

  11. I’m fond of the early Citroens with the huge, skinny chevrons covering nearly the entire grille. Also, the early Mazdas with a lowercase m in a rotor.

  12. Cloisonné emblems bring joy, especially 80s/90s and even the first bit of the 00s Pontiac emblems (like my 92 SSE), and of course the GN emblems.

    I always thought Buick also picked a great font for the trunk emblem of 90s 3800 supercharged cars, the upright font that just said “SUPERCHARGED”.

    Also on my Cutlass Ciera International fenders there’s the emblem with all the various flags on it, which I always thought was cool since I was a kid.

  13. Cloisonné emblems bring joy, especially 80s/90s and even the first bit of the 00s Pontiac emblems (like my 92 SSE), and of course the GN emblems.

    I always thought Buick also picked a great font for the trunk emblem of 90s 3800 supercharged cars, the upright font that just said “SUPERCHARGED”.

    Also on my Cutlass Ciera International fenders there’s the emblem with all the various flags on it, which I always thought was cool since I was a kid.

  18. This isn’t my real (which is to say serious) answer, but my cheeky answer is the ‘Ride Engineered’ badge that Ford used to use ca. the late 70s on the dashboard. I want to put one on everything.

    1. Oooh dash plaques! My two all-time favorites have to be the Ford Thunderbolt’s “this is an experimental purpose built vehicle so the interior may not be up to our usual standards” and the Shelby “warning – competition brakes” one.

      The coolness can’t be overstated.

  19. This isn’t my real (which is to say serious) answer, but my cheeky answer is the ‘Ride Engineered’ badge that Ford used to use ca. the late 70s on the dashboard. I want to put one on everything.

    1. Oooh dash plaques! My two all-time favorites have to be the Ford Thunderbolt’s “this is an experimental purpose built vehicle so the interior may not be up to our usual standards” and the Shelby “warning – competition brakes” one.

      The coolness can’t be overstated.

  22. The “TURBO” on the Saab 99 Turbo where the “O” looks like a turbo turbine.

    When can I post pictures? Because this needs a picture.

  23. The “TURBO” on the Saab 99 Turbo where the “O” looks like a turbo turbine.

    When can I post pictures? Because this needs a picture.

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