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’m a big fan of grille badges (aside from the corporate logo), so I dig the Audi S/RS/Quattro badges. Not many cars say the model on the grille.

  2. I’m a big fan of grille badges (aside from the corporate logo), so I dig the Audi S/RS/Quattro badges. Not many cars say the model on the grille.

  3. My father had a ’64 Thunderbird with the name arrayed across the front of the hood in separate blocky letters. It’s ridiculous and extravagant, but I’ve always liked it.

    For car badges, I like heraldic designs, such as Alfa Romeo’s. Plus it’s got a snake with a crown. Hard to beat that. BMW’s is especially elegant.

    Least favorite: Toyota’s. Bland, unimaginative.

  4. My father had a ’64 Thunderbird with the name arrayed across the front of the hood in separate blocky letters. It’s ridiculous and extravagant, but I’ve always liked it.

    For car badges, I like heraldic designs, such as Alfa Romeo’s. Plus it’s got a snake with a crown. Hard to beat that. BMW’s is especially elegant.

    Least favorite: Toyota’s. Bland, unimaginative.

  5. Model: Superbee, then Roadrunner (“runner” up, ha ha)
    Make: Ferrari, then Bugatti as runner up (was gonna say Alfa Romeo, but I don’t like their badge as much as I absolutely love how they did their name on the engine heads on the classics; add to that the chrome inlet pipes and it looks amazing…but that doesn’t count)

  6. Model: Superbee, then Roadrunner (“runner” up, ha ha)
    Make: Ferrari, then Bugatti as runner up (was gonna say Alfa Romeo, but I don’t like their badge as much as I absolutely love how they did their name on the engine heads on the classics; add to that the chrome inlet pipes and it looks amazing…but that doesn’t count)

  17. This is entirely a personal reason but I aspired to getting an Ion Red Line, so I’m gonna say Saturn’s square chrome badge with the red stripe in the middle appended to the end of the model name. I like how they repurposed it for the Green Line hybrid vehicles, too, and could have seen it being used to demark numerous different things, namely EVs if they had survived to the present day.

  18. This is entirely a personal reason but I aspired to getting an Ion Red Line, so I’m gonna say Saturn’s square chrome badge with the red stripe in the middle appended to the end of the model name. I like how they repurposed it for the Green Line hybrid vehicles, too, and could have seen it being used to demark numerous different things, namely EVs if they had survived to the present day.

  19. I’m a fan of all the different chrome script badges commonly used for model/trim identification in the ’60s and ’70s. A friend has been sporadically updating the chromeography tumblr for years (there are a couple pix of my Corvair on there); one of my favorites of the genre for pure funkiness is the VW Automatic Stick Shift badge.

  20. I’m a fan of all the different chrome script badges commonly used for model/trim identification in the ’60s and ’70s. A friend has been sporadically updating the chromeography tumblr for years (there are a couple pix of my Corvair on there); one of my favorites of the genre for pure funkiness is the VW Automatic Stick Shift badge.

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