Strange, obscure & often forgotten badge-engineered cars

That process is called badge engineering, and it has been used many times over the years, usually for brands owned by the same manufacturer but occasionally by collaborating manufacturers. Such as this Fiat Fullback, sister to the Mitsubishi Triton/L200, and built in Thailand.

From hundreds of possible examples, we’ve picked a representative 41 to describe here, listed in alphabetical order. Cars which differed from the originals in specification, styling details and in some cases drivetrain are considered are acceptable, but we’re going no further than that.

Acadian was a General Motors brand which, from 1962 to 1971, marketed very slightly adjusted Chevrolets on the Canadian market and sold by Pontiac-Buick dealers. The first Beaumont was a version of the Chevy II, while the second (pictured) was a rebadged and otherwise mildly altered Chevelle.

During the lifetime of the later car, Beaumont became a brand in its own right (GM always did like another brand), and only the Chevy II-based model remained known as an Acadian.

Alpheon was a single-model General Motors brand which operated briefly in South Korea. The single model in question was a locally-built second-generation Buick LaCrosse (itself a close sibling to the Opel Insignia), but Buick had no presence in the country, and there were no plans to create one. Renaming it as a Chevrolet seemed inappropriate, and the Daewoo brand was about to be discontinued.

Alpheon was created in 2010 simply as a name under which to sell this specific car. Both were discontinued five years later when GM Korea began importing the Detroit-built tenth-generation Chevrolet Impala.

For almost the first century of its existence, the suggestion that Aston Martin might put a badge-engineered Japanese city car on the market would have inspired hard stares and rude retorts. Nevertheless, it actually happened in 2011.

The Cygnet was a Toyota iQ with a higher level of equipment, some cosmetic restyling and a startlingly higher price tag. It sold very poorly, and Aston has never attempted anything similar since. Only 300 were made however, and that rarity has meant they retain their value very well; they are a surprisingly common sight in posh parts of London.

Like Acadian, Asüna was a General Motors brand dedicated to the Canadian market. During its very brief period of operation in the early 1990s, it sold three models which GM had very little to do with, other than importing them from Japan and South Korea.

They were the Sunrunner, the Sunfire and a sedan known either as the SE or the GT. The first of these was one of the most badge-engineered vehicles on the planet, being sold around the world as the Suzuki Escudo, Suzuki Vitara and Chevrolet Tracker, among many other names.

Still to this day the smallest car Audi has ever put on sale, the 50 was almost exactly the same thing as the first-generation Volkswagen Polo. Since Audi got there first in 1974, and had built what the company reports (with devastating precision) to have been 43,002 50s by the time Polo production began on 31 March 1975, it would be correct to say that the Polo was a badge-engineered 50.

However, Audi persevered with the 50 until 1978, while the Polo, now in its sixth generation, is still with us, so it’s easier, if less accurate, to think of them as being the other way round.

BMW entered the motor industry in 1928 through its purchase of Fahreugfabrik Eisenach. That now largely forgotten company was at the time producing a car called the Dixi, which was an Austin Seven built under licence in Germany.

The car, known as the 3/15 was steadily updated by its new owner, but it was only when this was replaced in 1932 by the 3/20 that BMW could no longer truly be said to be building badge-engineered Austins.

When you speak of the C-Crosser, you also speak of the Peugeot 4007, which was exactly the same thing. Both were badge-engineered versions of the Mitsubishi Outlander SUV, the first of the three to be launched in 2005.

It would be wrong to describe the Mitsubishi as a badge-engineered Citroën or Peugeot, since it was almost entirely the Japanese company’s work, though the French did supply engines (as did Volkswagen). The co-operation wasn’t a great success, and did not survive into the next generation of the Outlander.

The General Motors Kappa platform was used for several concepts and four production sports cars. Of the latter, the Pontiac Solstice had its own distinctive styling, but the Saturn Sky and Opel GT were virtually identical apart from their badging.

Less familiar to western motorists was the Daewoo G2X, essentially the same car as the Sky and GT but, like the Opel, only ever available with a turbocharged engine as fitted to the Red Line version of the Saturn. It wasn’t a big hit, with only 179 examples reported as having been sold from 2007 to 2009.

During the very complicated early history of GM’s presence in South Korea, the Daewoo Royale was introduced in 1978 as the replacement for a car called the Saehan Rekord.

Other than its name and a few styling changes, the Royale was essentially an Opel Rekord E, and therefore also more or less the same thing as the contemporary Vauxhall Carlton and Holden Commodore.

Quite unlike anything else marketed by the brand, the Brisa was sold as a Dodge only because of an arrangement between companies which otherwise rarely worked together. It was in fact a first-generation Hyundai Accent (pictured) manufactured in Venezuela from 2002 to 2006.

The Brisa name was also used for a completely unrelated Kia of the 1970s, which was a variant of the second-generation Mazda Familia.

Usually, if you think you’re looking at a fifth-generation Mitsubishi L200 truck (also known as the Triton or Strada), you’re quite correct, but sometimes you’re not. If it was built between 2015 and 2019, it could actually be a Fiat Fullback, unless you’re in the Middle East, in which case it’s far more likely to be a Ram 1200. Badging and very minor details apart, they are all the same.

Since 2020, a similar situation has pertained to the Fullback’s successor, the Fiat Titano, which is actually a Peugeot Landtrek.

The Sedici, a compact SUV available with front- or four-wheel drive, was a rebadged Suzuki SX4, and built in the Suzuki factory in Hungary. We were reasonably impressed by it, saying, “Certainly there is no notable reason to avoid it.”

It was revised in 2009 (as pictured here), but there was no Fiat equivalent of the Suzuki’s successor, the SX4 S-Cross, which arrived in 2013. Fiat’s current model of this type is the 500X, related to, but not a badge-engineered version of, the Jeep Renegade.

Fiat’s investment in Chrysler’s after Chrysler went bankrupt during the global financial crisis led, among other things, to the creation of the most recent model known as Dodge Dart, which was itself based on a larger version of the platform used for the Alfa Romeo Giulietta.

Fiat then converted the Dart (though the changes were minimal) into the Viaggio, which was sold in China. It then went a step further and created the Ottimo – basically the same car, except that it was a five-door hatchback rather than a four-door sedan.

The big-selling Ambassador was developed considerably over its very long production life from 1957 to 2014, but it was at first – and at heart remained – a rebadged Series III Morris Oxford.

There has been talk of Hindustan Motors introducing a new Ambassador in the near future, but if this happens it’s unlikely to have much relationship to the old one.

Both the first and the second (pictured) generation of the Isuzu Trooper were sold by GM’s Australian division with the model name Jackaroo. The earlier model was the first four-wheel drive vehicle in Holden’s history.

Used since the 19th century, the word jackaroo refers to a young man working on a sheep or cattle station.

Honda has marketed two SUVs called Crossroad. The second was all in its own work. The first, dating from the 1990s, was a rebadged Land Rover Discovery, a situation made possible by the fact that Honda had a business arrangement with Rover at the time.

Its 3.9-litre engine is still to this day the largest ever fitted to a road-going Honda production vehicle, and Honda’s only production car V8.

Isuzu is famous for, among other things, its pickup trucks. Who has never heard of the Rodeo, the D-MAX or the Hombre? Well, perhaps the Hombre might not have registered with you.

It was a mildly restyled version of the Chevrolet S-10 sold briefly in the late 1990s. Its successor, the i-series, bore a similar relationship to the S-10’s successor, the Chevy Colorado/GMC Canyon.

The Flavia we’re looking at here had nothing to do with the one sold throughout the 1960s and later renamed 2000. This one was hardly a Lancia at all, but a very slightly altered Chrysler 200 convertible (itself a reworked Chrysler Sebring) sold in left-hand drive European markets.

It was introduced in 2012 and abandoned two years later due to the introduction of the new 200, which had no Lancia equivalent.

Mazda used the 121 name for several of its models from the mid 1970s until the early 21st century. The one of interest here was, except on the closest inspection, almost indistinguishable from the fourth-generation Ford Fiesta – the one which resembled a fish until it was facelifted in 1999.

Both cars were produced until 2002. There has been no Mazda 121 of any kind since then.

NMC stood for New Mobility Concept. That name was used – or at least its initials were – for a rebadged Renault Twizy, which Nissan said had been “developed in response to rising numbers of senior citizens and single-member households, along with increasing use of automobiles for short-distance trips by up to two people”.

It sold in very small numbers in Japan, and was also known as the Scoot Quad for the purposes of a car-sharing scheme in San Francisco. Contemporary reports revealed that both Renault and Nissan badges were visible.

The Firenza is today perhaps the least remembered of the many General Motors J platform cars. Sold in the 1982 to 1988 model years, it was made of largely the same stuff as the Buick Skyhawk, Chevrolet Cavalier and Pontiac Sunbird of the same period, and as the much more expensive and much less successful Cadillac Cimarron.

Each brand applied its own styling to some extent, but at first glance it was difficult for a non-expert to tell which was which.

The recently discontinued Chevrolet Bolt EV was not sold under its own name in Europe, but in some countries it was available as the Opel Ampera-e. Both were built in the GM Orion Assembly Plant in Michigan, though Ampera-e production was not enough even to satisfy the small number of orders Opel dealers received.

The Ampera-e was already off the market by the time the Bolt EV was discontinued at the end of the 2023 model year. A replacement is due in 2026, but the chances of there being an Opel version are infinitesimal, since the German brand is now owned by GM rival Stellantis.

Before General Motors sold Opel and Vauxhall to the PSA Group in 2017, it was quite reasonable that they would both sell a slightly altered version of a Chevrolet. The Chevrolet in question was the Spark, which was designed and built by GM Korea.

Within our definition, the Karl was a badge-engineered Spark, since the styling changes were fairly minor. The Vauxhall Viva (pictured), sold only in the UK, was more precisely a badge-engineered Karl.

Iran Khodro, or IKCO, has both developed its own cars and manufactured ones designed by other companies. One of the most famous examples of the latter is the Peugeot Pars, which still looks very much the Peugeot 405 it really is, even though it has had several updates.

IKCO also builds produces its own versions of the Peugeot 207 and the much more recent Peugeot 2008.

During the short existence of Chrysler Europe, the car normally known as the Hillman Avenger was rebadged as the Plymouth Cricket for North America, where the Hillman nameplate meant nothing. Despite winning the 1971 Press On Regardless rally, it proved to be very unpopular, and was discontinued in 1973, eight years before Avenger production came to an end.

It was followed almost immediately by a new Plymouth Cricket which was once again a badge-engineered car, this time based on the second-generation Dodge Colt.

Although both ends were slightly restyled, only a few seconds’ study would make it evident that the Torrent, a mid-size crossover SUV launched in 2006, was neither more nor less than the first-generation Chevrolet Equinox introduced the previous year.

While the Equinox is heading into its fourth generation, there was only ever one Torrent. Any chance that there might have been more evaporated when General Motors closed Pontiac in 2010, 74 years after its creation.

Some generations of the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution were rebranded as Protons and given the name Pert, an acronym of Petronas EON Racing Team (EON being Edaran Otomobil Nasional, a company established in 1984 as a Proton distributor).

The Pert is most famous internationally for having won the 2002 Production World Rally Championship in the hands of Malaysian driver Karamjit Singh (born 1962), who beat Lancer Evo VIIs into second and third place over the course of the season.

Protons built and sold in the 20th century were usually based on Mitsubishis in one way or another, but the Tiara was a unique case of one which was in fact a Citroën.

Specifically, it was a Citroën AX, that very light small car which was coming to the end of its production life when the Tiara arrived in the late 1990s. The Proton lasted slightly longer, but not beyond 2000.

Like the discontinued Mercedes X-Class, the Alaskan is, barring some minor alterations to the design, a third-generation Nissan Navara.

Introduced in 2016, it became the longest-ever Renault (or at least Renault-badged) toad-going production vehicle, taking over from the 40CV luxury car which had been discontinued 88 years before.

The 750 was the first model produced by Chinese manufacturer SAIC Motor after it bought  the rights to the Rover 25 hatchback and the much larger Rover 75, but not to their names; the Rover name was owned by BMW, then sold to Ford, and then sold on to Tata Motors when it bought Jaguar Land Rover.

The 75 is the more important of the two in this context, since that’s basically what the 750 was, though there are just enough styling differences to make it clear that it was not precisely the same. Introduced in 2006, it remained in production for a full decade, until November 2016.

Except in the tiniest details, the CityRover introduced in 2003 was a Tata Indica designed and built by Tata Motors, which subsequently became – and is still – the owner of Jaguar Land Rover.

Motorists in different countries have different requirements. While the Indica was a success in India, it was robustly criticised in the UK as a poor attempt to keep MG Rover in business. As we wrote after it had gone, “A low price wasn’t enough to save the company.”

Once described as “the black, unexplored terrain of Saab history”, the 600 was unusual in that it wasn’t a Saab at all but an almost entirely unmodified Lancia Delta, even retaining a Lancia badge on the front grille.

Launched in Sweden, Finland and Norway in 1980, it quickly developed a reputation for being adversely affected by the salt spread liberally on the roads of those countries when they became icy, and was withdrawn after just two years.

Towards the end of Saturn’s 25-year history, GM’s ‘different kind of car company’ brand produced a minivan called the Relay. It made its debut in the 2005 model year, the same time as the Buick Terraza, the Chevrolet Uplander and the second-generation Pontiac Montana, all of which were the same vehicle, though with very slightly different front-end treatments.

Like the Buick, the Saturn did not survive beyond 2007, though the Chevrolet and the Pontiac lasted slightly longer. Saturn itself was closed down in 2010.

The second-generation Justy was almost identical to the second-generation Suzuki Swift. Oddly, for two cars marketed by Japanese companies, they were both built in Suzuki’s factory in Hungary.

The major difference between the two lay under the skin. By the 1990s, Subaru was globally famous for its four-wheel drive cars. The Justy accordingly came with 4WD as standard.

Subaru began making kei cars in 1958, and continued doing so until 2009, when its first-generation Pleo was discontinued. By now Toyota, a majority shareholder in Daihatsu, had a significant investment in Subaru too, and decided that there was no point in two brands it partly owned developing kei cars separately.

The second Pleo, therefore, was simply a Daihatsu Mira with Subaru branding. Both versions remained on the market until 2018.

The partnership between Subaru and Toyota has led, among other things, to the creation of the Solterra, an all-electric crossover which amounts to a rebadged and very mildly redesigned Toyota bZ4X.

While the derivation of the name bZ4X isn’t immediately obvious, ‘Solterra’ comes from the Latin words for ‘sun’ and ‘earth’, emphasising Subaru’s ambitious claim that this is its “first global EV that aims to co-exist with nature”.

The Autozam AZ-1 was a kei sports car with gullwing doors, developed by Mazda. The Cara was the same thing, but with Suzuki badging.

However, there’s more to it than that. The history of the AZ-1 in fact begins with a Suzuki prototype which was dropped in favour of the less radical Cappuccino and picked up by Mazda. The production version was also powered by the same turbocharged 657cc three-cylinder engine used in the Cappuccino.

The Suzuki Baleno went on sale in India in 2015, and four years later gained a rival in the form of the Toyota Glanza, which was actually the same car. Both models moved into their second generation (pictured) in 2022.

Glanza is derived from the German word Glanz, which can be translated into English as ‘brightness’, ‘radiance’, ‘sparkle’ and various synonyms thereof. Toyota previously used it in Japan for a sporty version of the fifth-generation Starlet.

The British Motor Corporation car codenamed ADO16, always powered by a 1.1- or 1.3-litre A-Series engine, was one of the most popular models in the UK during the 1960s. It was also an extreme example of badge engineering, being marketed by the Austin, Innocenti, MG, Morris, Riley, Vanden Plas and Wolseley brands.

Today, Vanden Plas is perhaps the least well remembered of these. Its version of the car was notable, though not unique, for having an extravagant chrome front grille, but was structurally and mechanically the same as all the others. It had a delightful interior full of polished wood, with picnic tables on the back of the front seats.

VXR8 was the name used for two generations of Vauxhall which weren’t really Vauxhalls at all. In fact, they were Holdens powered by Chevrolet V8 engines and imported from half a world away in Australia.

General Motors cancelled all Holden production in 2017, and that spelled the end for the VXR8.

The Austin A99 Westminster introduced in 1959 was quickly joined by Wolseley’s badge-engineered equivalent. The mechanicals (including a 2.9-litre straight six engine) and Pininfarina-designed bodies were identical, but since Wolseley was a far more upmarket brand than Austin the 6/99 was made to look much grander.

A similar tactic was employed in 1961, when the cars were lengthened and became the Austin A110 Westminster and Wolseley 6/110 respectively.