Ugly, weird, silly, and just plain stupid car rebadges

[Turbo]

Quirky rebadges of cars is something that has always fascinated me. However, there are no places in this forum to discuss these types of cars. Therefore, here is the thread to discuss the questionable rebadges of cars throughout history.

Here are a few examples:

1. Cadillac Cimarron (the obvious one), based off the Chevrolet Cavalier. The idea of taking a clunky, poorly-made economy car and transforming it into a luxury vehicle just makes no sense to me. It sold terribly, tarnished Cadillac's reputation as a brand, and is greatly hated among "car people".



2. Honda Crossroad, based off the Land Rover Discovery. It's not a terrible car or anything, but who on earth thought Honda would be able to get away with rebadging a Land Rover and not fooling anyone? These were sold in Japan, and a few other Asian markets.



3. Maserati MC12, based off the Ferrari Enzo. Basically, Maserati took one of Ferrari's best looking designs and made it look tacky, and, let's face it, pretty ugly.

 

[Heldenzeit]

How about Alfa Arna? Nissan bodies with Alfa engines and gearboxes. I think I'd rather have it the other way round.

 

[SVX]

Isuzu Aska rebadges. Rebadges of the first generation Legacy, as well as Accords:

Then the Isuzu Oasis:

Honda Domino as the Gemini:

Suzuki Cultus as the Geminett:

Then you have the Geminett-II, based off the Leone:

Then, to cap it all off, something similarly silly to the Mazda Roadmaster. The Isuzu DeVille Statesman, also based off a Holden:

 

[Turbo]

Fun Fact: The first generation Chevrolet Aveo was rebadged around the world 13 different times. Here are all of it's names:

Chevrolet Aveo
Chevrolet Kalos
Chevrolet Nexia
Daewoo Gentra
Daewoo Kalos
Holden Barina
Pontiac G3
Pontiac G3 Wave
Pontiac Wave
Ravon Nexia R3
Suzuki Swift Plus
ZAZ Vida

 

[EngieDiesel]

1. Cadillac Cimarron (the obvious one), based off the Chevrolet Cavalier. The idea of taking a clunky, poorly-made economy car and transforming it into a luxury vehicle just makes no sense to me. It sold terribly, tarnished Cadillac's reputation as a brand, and is greatly hated among "car people".

The reason for this was because a certain Bavarian car company had begun gaining a notable foothold in North America, and GM wanted to have an entry in the luxury compact market to compete with them. But of course, this is early '80s GM we're talking about so they wanted to do it as cheaply as possible, and rather than engineer an entirely new platform suitable for the task they just figured they could stick leather seats and a Cadillac crest on the smallest car in their lineup, double the base asking price and no one would be the wiser.

Of course people caught on immediately, because they didn't even try to disguise that this was basically a tarted-up Cavalier. And rather than admit their mistake and discontinue the car, GM continued to sell it for six years, dragging Cadillac's reputation through the mud in the process. It is always fun to see one of these pop up in auto trader publications though, usually billed as a "rare luxury car" with a hilariously optimistic asking price.

 

[Famine]

2. Honda Crossroad, based off the Land Rover Defender. It's not a terrible car or anything, but who on earth thought Honda would be able to get away with rebadging a Land Rover and not fooling anyone? These were sold in Japan, and a few other Asian markets.

Rover did.

British Leyland, later Rover, and Honda were technical partners for much of the 80s and 90s, right up until the point BMW bought the Rover Group in 1994. Many BL cars were actually Hondas - the Rover 200/Triumph Acclaim were a Honda Ballade, then a Honda Concerto, the Rover 400 was a Concerto and then a Civic, the Rover 600 was a Honda Accord, and so on.

With no presence in Japan for Rover, and no SUV to capitalise on the SUV trend for Honda, it was simply a case of putting a car into a market cheaply with a recognised badge. Although the whole thing went tits up when BMW bought Rover.

 

[Tornado]

The GM minivans, from Lumina APV to Uplander, are the most triumphant examples I think; since they were all pretty ugly, weird, silly and stupid from the start no matter which version you got.

Maybe the Pontiac Le Mans, which was a rebadged version of a poorly made licenced clone of a car that GM had themselves originally designed.

2. Honda Crossroad, based off the Land Rover Defender. It's not a terrible car or anything,

I suspect it probably was by virtue of being a Land Rover Defender.

Maserati took one of Ferrari's best looking designs and made it look tacky, and, let's face it, pretty ugly.

I liked the MC12 much more the first time around when Ferrari called it the F50, but you basically just said they took the Enzo and made it suffer from the same things that the Enzo already was. It's also not really a rebadge.

The reason for this was because a certain Bavarian car company had begun gaining a notable foothold in North America, and GM wanted to have an entry in the luxury compact market to compete with them. But of course, this is early '80s GM we're talking about so they wanted to do it as cheaply as possible, and rather than engineer an entirely new platform suitable for the task they just figured they could stick leather seats and a Cadillac crest on the smallest car in their lineup, double the base asking price and no one would be the wiser.

It wasn't even a matter of cheapness, I don't think, so much as laughable amounts of cynicism/arrogance on the part of Cadillac's management. Doubly so since GM already had an interior designed for the car that would have been much closer to the 3-Series than the Chevy's Cadillac started from was; or they could have at least used the Oldsmobile's as a base instead of simply lazily splashing leather around. The later Cimarron, while still pretty pathetic (though arguably not the most pathetic car on Cadillac lots at the time) had much more differentiation from the Cavalier that it was still obviously based on and might have worked for a little while if it was what had launched in 1981. Instead they just repeated the Lincoln Versailles disaster



The main difference Cadillac probably could have done in the small amount of time they had but still didn't bother with (aside from using a better interior to start from) would have been to make the V6 standard when it debuted, which was more than possible since the J-Body was made up of a lot of X-Body parts from the start and the engine was already developed for the X-Body before the Cimarron had come out. That would have been a big boon to the car over its brothers alone; but coupled with the shoddy way Cadillac marketed the car and the corporate infighting the brand had been having with Buick and Oldsmobile that probably contributed to its creation just as much, I've always really thought what Cadillac was after instead of a BMW competitor was simply a desperate chase for sales volume. That it was allowed to continue after Roger Smith stripped the brand managers of their authority to greenlight new models is the even more shocking thing.

 

[FerrariF1GT]

The Toyota Cavalier. What an insult to the Toyota brand name, eh?

 

[RocZX]

Lincoln Mark LT-
An overpriced F150

Subaru Forester rebadged as Chevrolet Forester

 

[EngieDiesel]

It wasn't even a matter of cheapness, I don't think, so much as laughable amounts of cynicism/arrogance on the part of Cadillac's management

Frankly, it was probably both. GM had a history of corner-cutting in that era, and it's not too hard to think they would assume Americans would give preference to anything that had an American badge on the front just out of principle.

Anyway... if we're talking about stupid rebadges:

Plymouth Neon, Dodge Neon. Often seen sitting right next to each other on the same dealer lot, thus completely defeating the purpose of rebadging them in the first place.

 

[Turbo]

2013-2015 Dodge Attitude, definitely the laziest rebadge job I've ever seen. I'm not joking you, they literally sold this car with both a Dodge and Hyundai badge on it. How pathetic. It is a Hyundai Accent (obviously) and is sold in Latin American Markets.



2016+ Dodge Attitude, slightly better than it's predecessor, but still a terrible badging job. This time it's based off the Mitsubishi Attrage.

 

[RandomCarGuy17]

Would this count?

 

[Turbo]

Would this count?

Yup. That generation especially, since it basically was a GMC Yukon Denali wearing a Cadillac badge.

 

[Valkyrie427]

The Isuzu i-280. Literally a Chevy Colorado/GMC Canyon with some different bits glued on (or with double-sided tape). According to Wikipedia, they sold 1,377 of these, which is surprising. Who knew that 1,377 people would want one of these?

 

[boiltheocean]

3. Maserati MC12, based off the Ferrari Enzo. Basically, Maserati took one of Ferrari's best looking designs and made it look tacky, and, let's face it, pretty ugly.

Alternative view. Maserati took one of Ferrari's best looking designs and went racing with it, the road car was just a byproduct of the regulations. Ferrari were not interested in going GT racing so Maserati took it upon themselves to build the most successful car of the era. It was probably the last top of the range competition car we'll see as regulations now mean companies like Ferrari, Porsche and McLaren cannot enter the hypercars they build today.

 

[Northstar]

The Isuzu i-280. Literally a Chevy Colorado/GMC Canyon with some different bits glued on (or with double-sided tape). According to Wikipedia, they sold 1,377 of these, which is surprising. Who knew that 1,377 people would want one of these?

View attachment 660251

I had no idea those were that rare, I've actually seen like 4-5 driving around. I'm guessing the appeal was similar to the Geo Notacarolla in that it's the same car, for a slightly lower price.

Alternative view. Maserati took one of Ferrari's best looking designs and went racing with it, the road car was just a byproduct of the regulations. Ferrari were not interested in going GT racing so Maserati took it upon themselves to build the most successful car of the era. It was probably the last top of the range competition car we'll see as regulations now mean companies like Ferrari, Porsche and McLaren cannot enter the hypercars they build today.

I've always preferred the MC12 over the Enzo, not that the Enzo isn't also great looking. The GT version may be my favorite race car of the 2000's as well.

 

[RandomCarGuy17]

I honestly thought the MC12 was a better looking car than the Enzo, from the front at least.

 

[Rallywagon]

One of my favorite rebadges. Even has a bit of a cult following. The venerable Saabaru!

What's a car company to do when all the "jet fighter" engineers get replaced by the GM parts bin? Buy Subaru's old designs, that's what!

 

[Valkyrie427]

I had no idea those were that rare, I've actually seen like 4-5 driving around. I'm guessing the appeal was similar to the Geo Notacarolla in that it's the same car, for a slightly lower price.

Yup. I saw a silver one in my town not too long ago, maybe around May-ish. I'm fairly certain that I learned of that model's existence from either here or an obscure comment on a Jalopnik article. When I was driving around, the chrome grille stood out to me and I thought "That's odd," until I remembered it from online.

 

[ToyGTone]

Speaking of pick up trucks, The Ram 1200

Basically a rebadged Mitsubishi L200. I haven't saw this truck apart from one time couple months ago. I don't think people who buys trucks from RAM or Dodge would want a mid sized labour truck and simplt prefers the bigger "luxurious" 'Murican V8 monstrosity 1500 on the right.

 

[Rallywagon]

It would be a crime for a guy named rally to miss out on this rebadge.
And to be honest Merkur? That's the name Ford went with?
So, here we have a Ford Sierra, popular car in Europe in the 80's.

The Cosworth variant being quite a popular platform for rally racing with its turbo 4 and rwd. So popular in fact that Ford of USA thought it a good idea to start selling them in the states under a new brand called Merkur. Meet the Merkur XR4TI.

I tend to agree with Ford that it was a good idea to import these cars. The Merkur Sierra, based off some other Ford car I can't think of, could have stayed though. Sadly, emissions and safety standards changed in the late 80's, and the brand was shut down due to the prohibitive costs to bring those cars up to the new standards.

 

[Panoz]

The Kia Elan.

Made possible after Kia bought the rights to the car after Lotus ended production of the model. Two noticeable differences of the Kia version was a Kia designed inline-4 engine that replaced the Isuzu unit from the Lotus and redesign taillights.

 

[EngieDiesel]

Yup. That generation especially, since it basically was a GMC Yukon Denali wearing a Cadillac badge.

Though surprisingly enough, the early-gen Escalade is often cited as the thing that saved Cadillac, largely because the hip-hop community and some popular celebrities of the day deemed it cool. Had that not happened, it very likely would have been axed at same time as Oldsmobile.

Highly ironic that Cadillac's reputation was almost ruined because of an obvious rebadge and then eventually restored by one.

 

[RocZX]

Infiniti ESQ- rebadged Juke Nimso for China only

Rebadging Chryslers as Lancia. Why?
Lancia Thema

Lanica Flavia

Lancia Voyager

 

[Valkyrie427]

Rebadging Chryslers as Lancia. Why?

We've gone from this...

To this...

Lancia Voyager

 

[Turbo]

Though surprisingly enough, the early-gen Escalade is often cited as the thing that saved Cadillac, largely because the hip-hop community and some popular celebrities of the day deemed it cool. Had that not happened, it very likely would have been axed at same time as Oldsmobile.

Highly ironic that Cadillac's reputation was almost ruined because of an obvious rebadge and then eventually restored by one.

Indeed, chances are if Cadillac never introduced the Escalade to it's brand in the late '90s, it would go belly up just like it's relative, Oldsmobile, due to not selling enough cars to stay afloat.

 

[homeforsummer]

3. Maserati MC12, based off the Ferrari Enzo. Basically, Maserati took one of Ferrari's best looking designs and made it look tacky, and, let's face it, pretty ugly turned it into a multiple FIA GT race and championship winner

 

[05XR8]

The Kia Elan.

Made possible after Kia bought the rights to the car after Lotus ended production of the model. Two noticeable differences of the Kia version was a Kia designed inline-4 engine that replaced the Isuzu unit from the Lotus and redesign taillights.

I could have used those plates for my V8 Falcon "5.4L XR8".

This. really...
Holden Apollo

 

[RandomCarGuy17]

Lancia Voyager

hahahahaha, I never thought I would see the Grand Caravan rebadged as that.

 

[MisterWaffles]

hahahahaha, I never thought I would see the Grand Caravan rebadged as that.

What's funny is Volkswagen couldn't even make their own minivan.