What is badge engineering? | Enthusiast 101

If you’re a newcomer as an automotive enthusiast, badge engineering is a term you’re likely to run across sooner or later. So what is badge engineering?

Badge engineering, also known as rebadging, is the creation of two or more differently branded automotive models from what, at least below the surface, are essentially identical vehicles. It is a common practice among automakers that produce multiple automotive makes, such as GM with Chevrolet, Cadillac, and Buick.

Contents Introduction to Badge Engineering History of Badge Engineering Degrees of Badge Engineering Badge Engineering Today Successes of Badge Engineering Failures of Badge Engineering Badge Engineering: The Bottom Line

Introduction to badge engineering

There a connotation to the term badge engineering that is inherently derisive, in the sense that it applies to a process of creating a new automotive model that may, ironically, include no new mechanical development or product design whatsoever.

That said, not every example of badge engineering warrants ridicule. There are great success stories of badge engineering. And there are also astounding failures, with a vast range of “meh” in between.

In addition to applying logos and model names to vehicles that are foundationally the same, automakers also often use other means of differentiation, such as adding enhanced trim elements, interior designs and materials, and accessory packages to maintain a higher-end image for badge-engineered cars designed to sell under their most prestigious brands.

It is this effort to create a premium vehicle on a not-so-premium platform that has led to some of the more salient product-development missteps in the history of the automotive industry.

History of badge engineering

To truly get your head around the answer to the question of “what is badge engineering,” some historical context is helpful.  Pinning down the precise origins of the term “badge engineering” is challenging. In searches of the open web and several commercial research databases, the oldest usage examples found of the term were from the late 1960s and early 1970s.

But the practice is clearly much older. And it is evident that the origins of the practice significantly pre-date the earliest usages of the term. For example, the Morris Memories website reproduces a discussion, from a 1969 news article from a publication that the site does not name, of an “era of badge engineering” between the British automotive marques Austin and Morris that began when the two automakers merged in 1952.

Moreover, William S. Locke’s book Elcar and Pratt Automobiles: The Complete History dates the practice much further back to the earliest days of the automotive industry. In the book, Locke cites what he believes is the industry’s first example of badge engineering: in 1917, an automaker called Texan used bodies manufactured by a company called Elcar to make 1918 model-year vehicles under the Texan brand.

While the practice of outsourcing body shells to third parties has been widespread in the automotive industry and can result in substantively different models being built on the same bones, the Elcar–Texan case seems defensible of being a true example of badge engineering. According to Coachbuilt.com, “Not only did Elcar supply coachwork for others firms, they even constructed complete automobiles—the 1918 Texan automobile was a badge-engineer Elcar.”

That said, it is arguably sometimes unfair to assert, as an absolute, that starting with an existing body shell to create a new model is always a case of badge engineering in its purest sense. This brings us to the matter of degrees of badge engineering.

Degrees of badge engineering

In addressing the question of “what is badge engineering,” it is important to understand that the definition can vary. Sometimes the issue of degrees can lead to varying opinions on where the term rightfully applies, or how it might sometimes be misapplied.

If you stick with the strictest definition of badge engineering as a simple application of a different names and logos to vehicles that are otherwise identical inside and out, you can find many grey areas where the use of the term could be considered misleading or unfair. Different models that start with the same basic platform of a body and chassis sometimes end of taking quite distinct paths.

As an example, let’s take a look at the Chevrolet Camaro and the Pontiac Firebird.

Historically, GM, the parent company of both the Chevrolet and Pontiac marques, has been well known for efforts to achieve production economies by drawing on what we car nerds like to call common “parts bins” to create different models across their divisions.

In some cases, this has resulted in very different vehicles. But if you park, say, a 1968 Pontiac Firebird next to a 1968 Chevrolet Camaro, the similarity of the basic shapes is undeniable—so much so that television “build shows” have noted the potential to take, for example, a salvaged Firebird body and restore it as a Camaro.

1968 Chevrolet Camaro SS. Photo: GM Corporate Newsroom.

1968 Pontiac Firebird. Photo: Spanish Coches (Wikimedia Commons).

At the exterior level, the differences between the first generation Camaro and its Firebird counterpart consist of trim elements like the classic Pontiac “nose” on the Firebird’s front fascia and decorative, non-functional air dams on its rear quarter panels.

But there were other differences between the first-generation Chevrolet Camaro and Pontiac Firebird that were not so superficial. At GM, the “parts sharing” approach across the divisions has often not applied to powertrain components, for example.  

The Chevrolet, Pontiac, and Buick divisions of GM all made small-block V8s, and some had the same displacements. But the same displacement did not necessarily mean the same engine. The divisions had their own powertrain development operations and, even when the displacements were the same, the divisions sometimes arrived at the same displacement number through different combinations of bore (cylinder diameter) and stroke (cylinder height).

In the 1968 model year, a 350-cubic-inch displacement V8 was available in both the Camaro and the Firebird. But the Pontiac H.O. 350 V8, which was good for an impressive-for-the-time 320 horsepower, was not the same engine as the 350 V8 available in the Camaro, which produced 265 horsepower.

The differences were in keeping with the specializations that evolved over the decades among the GM divisions. Pontiac was known for an edge in both performance and luxury accoutrements, whereas Chevrolet was the rawer, accessible, no-pretentions brand with strong American-heartland appeal. 

There are other examples of badge-engineered pairs that are far less divergent, however.  Consider the Dodge Dart and Plymouth Valiant, built through four generations, starting in 1960, on the Chrysler A-Body platform until succeeded by the Dodge Aspen and Plymouth Volare re-skins in 1976.

At least at the base model level, before you get into variants like the Dodge Dart Swinger or the 340 Duster, the differences were mostly window-dressing. The degree of parts interchangeability was high, with some body and interior components easily swappable. Due to their plentiful production numbers, these models were a dream for owners who wanted to keep an aging Dodge Dart or Plymouth Valiant going by making industrious use of parts from you-pull-it junkyards.

With some exceptions at the level of higher-performance submodels, the mechanicals were essentially identical. A Chrysler LA V8 engine at any given displacement level, such as the ubiquitous 318 cubic-inch version, was the same powerplant whether it was mounted in a Dodge Dart or a Plymouth Valiant.

At Chrysler, there was less of a phenomenon of divisions almost “going rogue” and to an extent competing with one another within the family as sometimes happened among Chevrolet, Pontiac, Buick, and Cadillac under GM.

Badge engineering today

We have heavily focused here on examples from the 1960s and 1970s, like Camaro–Firebird and Dart–Valiant as classic cases whose high visibility makes them excellent illustrations of the principles of badge engineering. But that should not be construed as implying that badge engineering is any less pervasive today.

GM, for example, continues to rely heavily on the practice, especially in situations where they get caught with their pants down, with sudden market shifts requiring them to introduce new models quickly. They tend to rely heavily on overseas automakers that they have acquired or partnered with over the years, like Opel and Holden.

Consider the Opel Mokka, a crossover from the German marque Opel that is marketed in the U.S. as the Buick Encore. Similarly, the second-generation Chevrolet Cruze was marketed in Australia as the Holden Astra.

The international twist that pervades badge engineering as practiced today can sometimes seem bewildering or even off-putting to the consumer who scratches below the surface. A well-intentioned effort to “buy American” can sometimes result in an unwitting purchase of a car that is not American-built at all.

With GM slapping U.S. brands on cars built by international partners like Suzuki, or with Jeep—how “American” can you get?—sharing the Renegade platform with the Fiat 500X, the very notion of brand loyalty becomes quite problematic. And now, there are even rumors circulating that the next Dodge Charger may be a badge-engineered Alfa Romeo Giulia.

Badge engineering is also common among pickup truck models, with the Chevrolet Colorado and the GMC Canyon being notable examples from GM, and among SUVs such as the Ford Expedition and the Lincoln Navigator.

Some critics of the Porsche SUV and crossover models, introduced out of the necessity of broadening the automaker’s market base in the face of declining sports car sales, are examples of badge engineering as an attempt to cash in on the brand’s prestige by applying it to classes of vehicles outside its performance-based heritage.

However, this is another example of degrees of badge-engineering, as discussed above. While it is true, for example, that the Porsche Cayenne shares its basic platform and many components with the Volkswagen Touareg and the Audi Q7, the Porsche version has received engineering enhancements to deliver the more spirited driving experience expected of a Porsche. Quality control on the factory floor is claimed to be much more meticulous for the Porsche models as well.

Badge engineering may not always be as obvious today as it might have been with examples from the past like the Dodge Dart and Plymouth Valiant. But especially when you factor in the more subtle approaches, there is more badge engineering going on now than ever. As Michael Gauthier wrote in Car Scoops earlier this year, badge engineering today is a “truly global phenomenon.”

Successes of badge engineering

As some of the examples we’ve looked at here already imply, badge engineering, when done well, is nothing that an automaker should need to hide or feel ashamed of. While the practice has resulted in some embarrassing failures—some of which we’ll look at shortly—it has also had its share of admirable successes.

Here are just a few examples of badge engineering at its best. The list is ranked not on an objective measure such as sales numbers, but on admittedly subjective criteria such as the level of impact within certain segments of the market and importance within the automotive industry.

1. Chevrolet Camaro–Pontiac Firebird. This pair tops our list of all-time badge-engineering successes for all the reasons looked at above and more. The vehicles started with an essentially identical platform and created their own brand stories and devoted followings, culminating in the development of legendary performance versions like the Camaro Z28 and IROC, the Firebird Formula, and the Firebird Trans Am.

2. Mazda Miata–Fiat Spider 124. On the face of it, a collaboration between Mazda and Fiat may seem among the most unlikely imaginable—or it would if not for Mazda’s longstanding history of collaborating with other automakers. Beyond creating a way for Fiat to breathe new life not only to the spider but also into their overall brand, the 124 Spider is a great case study in badge-engineering at its best precisely because it went so far beyond the simple act of placing one automaker’s badge on another automaker’s car.

Fiat took the Japanese bones and made them their own, enhancing the Miata platform with more Italianate design cues. They also added their own Fiat engines, with the availability of the feisty Abarth engine being a touch that truly sets the Fiat 124 Spider apart as a distinct choice from the Miata. Nickname it as a “Fiata” if you will, but the Fiat 124 Spider for these reasons has earned its own special niche in the market.

3. Toyota 86–Subaru BRZ–Scion FRS. If sales figures were a criteria for making our list of badge engineering success stories, this badge engineered trio of 2+2 sports coupes would probably not be on it. Sales (according to CarSalesBase) of 4,146 units by Toyota last year and 3,834 by Subaru are hardly stellar, even in a climate in which sports car sales continue to drop.

Mazda, the standard-setter in the accessibly priced sports car category, sold more Mazda MX-5 Miatas last year than Toyota and Subaru combined sold of the Toyota 86–Subaru BRZ pair, which is produced under a joint venture between the two automakers and, until 2016, was also marketed as the Scion FRS under Toyota’s now-defunct, Millennial-targeted Scion marque.

But this badge-engineered trio deserves note for its very existence. Low-production sports cars often mean high prices, but sports cars are not Toyota’s bread and butter. By continuing maintain a presence in the under-$30,000 sports car segment, Toyota demonstrates their commitment to the enthusiast niche of the market and to the value of motoring as an experience beyond “Point A to Point B” utilitarianism.

The Toyota 86 starts at $26,985 in the U.S. for the 2020 model year, and it’s laudable that, at that price, they’re continuing to deliver a vehicle that lives up to Toyota’s reputation for reliability while also offering an engaging driving experience—and a vehicle that’s perfectly usable as a motorsports platform for those who wish to go that route.

No, the Toyota 86/Subaru BRZ/Scion FRS trio ain’t no Miata, in terms of the legendary reputation and ultra-loyal following the Miata has acquired. But it’s a great option to have available in a segment that continues to put the sports car hobby in reach of enthusiasts whose pockets aren’t so deep.

4. Chrysler 300–Dodge Charger. Again, sales are not a ranking criterion for this list, even though, strictly speaking, the Dodge Charger–Chrysler 300 pair has certainly had its share of successes over the years.

But even more noteworthy is the creativity that FCA has applied to the badge engineering practice in this example. With the Dodge Charger and Chrysler 300, the automaker has taken a single platform and built two quite different cars for two quite different customer profiles.

While it can deliver plenty of performance when equipped with a HEMI V8, the ultimate appeal of a Chrysler 300 is as a distinguished cruiser for someone looking for an upscale vibe.

The Dodge Charger, on the other hand, is for someone who basically wants a four-door muscle car. You might not get quite that if you opt for the V6, but at least you’re getting a big sedan with a look—“sinister,” as FCA is fond of describing the visage of the Charger and Challenger—that’s more aggressive than most of the segment. 

5. Chevrolet Tahoe–Cadillac Escalade. While it might be somewhat of an exaggeration to suggest that the Cadillac Escalade created the domestic luxury SUV segment in the U.S., it certainly played a powerful role, along with Lincoln’s Navigator, in solidifying a niche in which U.S. automakers could compete with high-end, full-size luxury SUVs like the Land Rover Range Rover and the Mercedes G-Class.

Introduced in the 1999 model year, the Cadillac Escalade caught fire in the early 2000s and peaked in sales in 2006. The Escalade helped reinvent Cadillac in an era when they were struggling for a sense of identity as something other than an older-person’s automaker.  

A peak sales year of 39,000 units, from the perspective of sales figures across all categories of vehicles, isn’t record-setting. But for a niche luxury vehicle that is a strong performance.  And as an example of what can go right with badge engineering it’s stellar.

The Cadillac Escalade took the simple truck-based SUV platform of the Chevy Tahoe—which itself was a modification of the platform for several GM trucks, including the Chevrolet Silverado, Chevrolet Avalanche, and GMC Sierra—and built an eye-catching, comfortable, large luxury vehicle that resonated in the market in a history-making way.

Failures of Badge Engineering

You have to take the bitter with the sweet, so after the above look at badge engineering success stories, welcome to the Badge Engineering Hall of Shame.

1. Cadillac Cimarron – Chevrolet Cavalier. As much as the Escalade is an example of badge engineering done the right way, the Cadillac Cimarron is perhaps the textbook example in automotive history of what can go wrong with badge engineering.

The Cadillac Cimarron was conceived in the height of a period of the U.S. automotive industry’s history that is now known as “The Malaise Era.” Domestic automakers were flailing in the face of rising fuel prices and competition from Japanese and European marques. Cadillac, as a producer of huge luxury land yachts, was especially vulnerable in this climate, with their reputation as an older-person’s brand on the ascendancy.

In a move that in hindsight seems desperate, the automaker tried to build something to pass off as a luxury car on the bones of an entry-level economy sedan—the J platform, which was the foundation of several small GM sedans, among them Buick Skyhawk, the Oldsmobile Firenza and, most visibly and successfully, the Chevy Cavalier.

Short of a limited durability that makes it a relatively rare sighting today, the Chevrolet Cavalier was nothing to be ashamed of in itself. It was a reasonably comfortable small sedan that offered a surprisingly smooth and solid driving feel, especially considering its size. It made a nice urban commuter but could hold its own on the highway as well, where it was deceptively roomy inside and did not have that fragile, wrapped-around-you feel of some economy cars.

But as a Cadillac the platform simply didn’t work. The Cimarron quickly became a joke, failing to gain acceptance as a small luxury car the way GM wanted it to. It’s almost as if GM tried too hard to make the Cavalier into a Cadillac. Brand elements like the Cadillac hood ornament, the colonnade-style grille, the winged Cadillac badge logo on the taillights, and the shiny Cimarron nameplate in oversized script on the trunk had a tawdry, glued-on appearance.

In total, the Cimarron made what Cadillac was trying to pull off painfully obvious. Instead of doing the right thing and starting from scratch to build a thoughtfully designed small luxury sedan like the European models they wanted to compete with, they took the shortcut of trying to make an economy car look like a luxury car by adding superficial embellishments.

But it didn’t work. The Cadillac Cimarron ended up looking like exactly what it was: a small car trying awkwardly to look grown up, like a three-year-old boy putting on his daddy’s suit to play dress-up.

It didn’t fool the market for a minute. The Cadillac Cimarron was an utter failure of badge engineering. Sales were abysmal, and the model quickly earned its place as a laughingstock of automotive history.

2. Ford EXP–Mercury LN-7. For the 1982 model year, Ford re-entered the two-seater sports coupe market after an absence (at least outside of the purpose-built motorsports segment) of 25 years. The Ford EXP and Mercury LN-7 pair was based on the Ford Escort economy hatchback of the era, re-skinned for a sportier look.

The vehicles feature modifications like a lowered chassis and a more aerodynamic body shape that were supposedly intended to enhance performance and deliver a more spirited, engaging experience for the driver.

In spite of the heavy press hype surrounding their launch, the Ford EXP and Mercury LN-7 promised more than they delivered. Performance was unimpressive, reinforcing a sense that the “sports-car” identity of these models was only skin deep.

According to Automobile Catalog, the 1983 Mercury LN-7 with a manual transmission clocked 14.6 seconds in 0–60 acceleration, unimpressive even for the lackluster performance standards of most of the 80s, and the 1.6-liter four-cylinder engine made a milquetoast 70 horsepower.

Of the two badge-engineered variants, the Mercury LN-7 was the greater failure in sales performance, with fewer than 40,000 units produced over two model years before it was dropped. For the Ford EXP, although the industry has certainly seen models with much worse sales histories, the model was a big disappointment, with fewer than 225,000 EXPs built in seven model years.

The market reception was enough of an embarrassment for the EXP, while still in production, to earn a nickname among some detractors as the “Edsel of the 80s.

3. Chrysler LeBaron K Cars. As we look at the luxury variants of badge-engineered pairs, there’s a theme emerging: taking a relatively cheap car and slapping superficially “luxurious” styling cues on top of it to create a model for an automaker’s premium marques.

It’s a lazy way to make a luxury car. While there is nothing inherently wrong with platform sharing, the outcome depends on the level of thought, creativity, and craft that is put into creating the luxury version.

As a contrasting example of how it can be done right, look at Lexus. Although a number of respected Lexus models have started on the foundation of an existing Toyota platform, by the time the Lexus design and engineering teams are done, the result is a vehicle different enough—in substantive, meaningful ways—to make it almost unfair to characterize as an example of badge engineering.

The Chrysler LeBaron of the K-car era (1982–1988), though, was an example of the lazy approach. K cars were created to be affordable to purchase and own, and they did not prove to be especially durable in the long run. But they were not inherently poor automobiles. The Dodge Aries and Plymouth Reliant looked, felt, and drove like solid small cars—at least while they were in the new-to-lightly-used range of their lifespan.

The quandary was how to port the platform to their top-of-the-line marque: Chrysler. By the standards of the day, the first generation LeBaron (1977-1981) that preceded the K-car version was a mid-size luxury car that shared the Chrysler F platform with the Dodge Aspen and Plymouth Volare, which were successors, respectively, of the Dodge Dart and Plymouth Valiant. The F platform was large enough to work well as a traditional American luxury car.

But during the K-car era, Chrysler, like Cadillac with the Cimarron, wanted to be able to slot a compact luxury car into the lineup—again in the hopes of capturing market share that might otherwise go to small European luxury cars. The result was similar to that of the Cimarron. Arguably, the look of the second-generation Chrysler LeBaron was even more odd and awkward. The land-yacht styling cues on the small K-car platform just looked like they didn’t belong.

With the K-car LeBaron, we see yet another example of how American automakers lacked either the skill or the will at the time to create small luxury cars that were well engineered and designed from the ground up. It is difficult to fathom how models like the Cadillac Cimarron and the second-generation made it to market. At best, they reflect acts of desperation to establish a presence in the small luxury car segment, but at worse they imply a cynicism about what the American consumer could be persuaded to buy.

Here’s how Lee Iacocca, Chrysler’s chairman at the time (as quoted by UPI on September 9, 1981), described the second-generation Chrysler LeBaron at its unveiling: “They are luxury cars, intermediate size, front-wheel drive, with 40-mile-per-gallon highway performance. And they are going to prove, once and for all, that American workers are just as dedicated, and just as hard working, as any workers in Yokohama, Japan, or the Black Forest of Germany.”

But especially in relation to German luxury cars of the era, the comparison was over-ambitious to say the least. Picture a Mercedes of the era alongside the K-car LeBaron. The comparison is absurd. The Mercedes 380SL, for example, was designed from the ground up as a tasteful, small luxury convertible, and it shows. The Chrysler LeBaron convertible, on the other hand, was an attempt to force a luxury car onto the bones of an ordinary econobox. And it shows.

The one redeeming quality of the second-generation Chrysler LeBaron is that, over the years, its odd, awkwardly-integrated design elements, such as the faux wood-panel option, have given the model a level of ironic, contrarian appeal to some collectors.

4. Ford Pinto–Mercury Bobcat. The Ford Pinto, an early effort by Ford to enter the subcompact car market, was a high-selling vehicle. In a quote that is often repeated but seldom attributed, the Pinto has been described as “a car nobody loved, but everybody bought.” Its reputation became all but irredeemably tarnished by a safety issue—fires after rear-end collisions, attributed controversially to a design that placed the fuel tank close to the rear bumper with little protection in between.

However, if you set aside the safety issue, you can make a case that much of the malign the car received was unfair. It had its virtues, including well-proven workhorse four-cylinder engines that were installed in the 1971–1974 models. These reliable engines already had more than a decade of history in vehicles Ford produced for the European market, such as the Ford Anglia and the Ford Capri, and even found their way into some British sports cars.

Like the Mustang II that was based on the Pinto platform (though with too many body-design differences to consider it a true case of badge engineering), the driving experience of a Ford Pinto can be pleasantly surprising, offering a tight steering feel, nimble handling, and a general feeling of solidity unexpected for its size. In the case of both the Pinto and the Mustang II, it is often apparent that many who have summarily blasted these vehicles over the years have never driven one.

All that said, the very concept behind the Pinto’s truly badge-engineered fraternal twin—the Mercury Bobcat—was ridiculous. Featuring pasted-on luxury accoutrements like an ornate chrome grille that looked like they belonged on a substantially larger car, the Pinto-to-Bobcat badge-engineering effort can be looked at as an early predecessor of the ghastly Chevy-Cavalier-to-Cadillac-Cimarron fiasco.

5. Ford Fox Body Mustang–Mercury Capri (1979–1986). When Ford introduced the Fox Body Mustang in 1979, it was the beginning of a return to glory of the Mustang nameplate that had been tarnished by the much maligned—though arguably in some respects underrated—Mustang II.

For some admirers of the classic era of Mustang, the appeal of the comparatively boxy Fox Body design took a while to catch on. But it aged well, like a good wine. It was the product of an era of U.S. automotive design that was mostly about pure, clean, straight lines. So in that sense one can make a case that the design was a valid re-interpretation of Mustang in its contemporary context.

Thanks in large part to the availability of a 5.0-liter V8 that could deliver a formidable exhaust tone and spirited performance for its time, the Fox Body Mustang did indeed catch on in the marketplace and over the years acquired a base of ardent enthusiasts, in spite of flaws such as a tendency to age into a rickety rattletrap.

Mercury’s variation on the theme, the Mercury Capri, was another story. Compared to the awful examples discussed above of the Chrysler LeBaron and the Cadillac Cimarron, the Mercury Capri was actually not a bad effort on Ford’s part to reinterpret the platform for a more luxurious marque.

Styling cues of the Fox Body Capri reflect an attempt to maintain a sense of the distinctive European flair of the original Capri, a captive import marketed in the U.S. from 1970–1978 as a standalone model independent of the domestic Ford, Mercury, and Lincoln marques.

The design elements that helped maintain that European vibe for the Capri were smoothly integrated. The black front fascia had a sporty feel, featuring a low-profile rectangular grille with slightly softened corners. At its edges, the grille transitioned smoothly into recessed bays for the rectangular headlights, of which, as on the Fox Body Mustang, there were two on each side. And a frequent but not quite universal element was a black trim piece on the D pillar that accentuated the fastback slope at the rear of the Capri, which was available only as a 3-door hatchback. All of these elements blended nicely into the basic structure of the Fox Body Mustang’s bones.

As a badge-engineered twin of the Fox-Body Mustang, the Mercury Capri showed many signs of being thoughtfully conceived and executed. Of the all of the examples of badge engineering that we’ve looked at, in terms of the resulting car itself, the Mercury Capri is probably one of the better ones in a design sense.

Ford certainly gets an A for effort on the Mercury Capri, which even earned some of its own distinctions on the motorsports circuit. Quoted in the Christian Science Monitor (May 7, 1982), Ford Special Vehicle Operations Department Director Michael Kranefuss, looking ahead to performance plans for the Fox Body Mustang and Capri, said that “we use motorsports to develop the performance and technological capability and image of our products and create excitement in our dealerships.”

Among the on-track achievements for the Capri was the championship run of Wally Dallenbach Jr. in the 1985 Bendix Brake Trans-Am racing series, as noted in the Houston Chronicle (May 18, 1986).

But the Mercury Capri still winds up on our badge-engineering failures list for the simple reason that, unlike its Mustang twin, time has not been kind to its memory. Fox Body Mustangs are currently gaining momentum on the collector market as the cohort that coveted them and dreamed of owning a hot 5.0 GT version during their high school years age into the lifestage where they have the means to think about acquiring emerging classics from their past.

The Capri, however, is not gaining this level of traction in the collector market. In spite of the tasteful design touches, the Capri is all but forgotten as little more than Mercury’s me-too version of the Mustang, created as an easy way to give what was ostensibly one of Ford’s luxury brands something to sell in the category.

In a recent episode of The Smoking Tire Podcast (October 31, 2019) featuring guests Anthony Partridge and Helen Stanley of Goblin Works, Matt Farah gave a characteristically terse and blunt assessment of the current status of the Fox Body Capri.

“Anyone in America that likes Fox bodies, and us under 50, couldn’t give a fuck about the Capri,” Farah said.

One of the most significant reasons for this is that Ford did not create enough differentiation for the Mercury Capri to give consumers a compelling reason to choose it over the Mustang.

As a badge-engineered variant of a vehicle with a brand story as legendary as the Mustang, the Capri, with almost no brand story of its own, was doomed to be, at best, an also-ran in the Mustang’s shadow. There was nothing inherently bad about the Capri in itself. It was just a bit arbitrary. There did not seem to be any compelling reason for a Mercury version of the Mustang to exist.

Badge engineering: the bottom line

The successes and failures covered here only scratch the surface of the high and low points of badge engineering outcomes over the history of the practice. Our lists above are by no means comprehensive, but the examples they include are strong illustrations of what can go right and what can go wrong.

In the Dodge Charger and the Chrysler 300, for example, we see the success of badge engineering in serving two different market segments with two diverging brand stories that have helped carry the automaker through a challenging time during the first two decades of the 21^st Century.

But failures, ranging from the Ford EXP and Mercury LN-7 to the Cadillac Cimarron, stand out as an embarrassing scrap heap of badge engineering gone wrong—with the missteps originating in miscalculations of the market zeitgeist at best or, in the worst cases, simple laziness or cynicism in the approach to automotive product development.