QOTD: What’s The Worst Badge Engineered Car Ever?

Platform sharing is a fact of life. Everyone from Porsche to Peugeot is at it, because building cars is an expensive business, and most of the times that’s fine with us. With different sheetmetal, engines and interiors, a Bentley Bentayga looks and feels totally different to a Volkswagen Touareg, and your average car buyer would never guess that a Hyundai Ioniq 5 shared so much as a screw with a Kia EV6.

But carmakers aren’t always willing to put in the effort necessary to distinguish one product from the next. Yeah, we’re talking about lazy old fashioned badge engineering. Toyota might claim its chassis tune makes the GR 86 feel different to a Subaru BRZ, but it’s a shame it didn’t put some effort into the styling, the way it did when it turned BMW’s Z4 roadster into the Supra coupe.

But the Japanese sports car twins are far from the only guilty parties. And at least you can tell them apart by their grilles and bumpers. In Britain in the late 1960s, when penny-pinching BMC made badge-engineering an art form, a Mk2 Austin Mini Cooper and Morris Mini Cooper really were absolutely identical apart from the writing within the same-shaped badges on either end.

What do you think is the worst badge-engineered car of all time? Here are a few of our least favorites to kick the conversation off.

Pontiac GTO

If you’re going to bring back one of the most famous name plates in the history of the American car after 30 years away from the ring, you better make sure it’s a knockout.

The rebadged Aussie Holden that Pontiac tried to pass off as the 2004 GTO, though, wasn’t fooling anyone. The car itself wasn’t bad, and the LS engines were strong, especially in later 400 hp LS2 guise from 2005. But the body and interior had as much personality as a shop mannequin and the car had zero GTO credibility as a result.

Saab-Lancia 600

Saab rebadging the rust-prone Lancia Delta hatchback to sell to Swedes tramping though arctic Scandinavian winters sounds as logical as the Department of Defence contracting Victoria’s Secret to knock up a few flack jackets for the Green Berets. And in case you were wondering, there was no Integrale, just an 84 hp 1.5.

Cadillac Cimarron

America’s Big Three have been at the platform sharing game for decades, but for the most part the cars created within the sub brands of the Ford, GM and Chrysler empires maintained their own style and character. With the Cimarron though, a tarted-up front-wheel drive Chevy Cavalier conceived to fight sporty European imports and offering as little as 88 hp from a 1.8-liter four, Caddy made a grave mistake.

Aston Martin Cygnet

Surely one of the most daring examples of badge engineering ever, Aston Martin’s attempt to pass off a 97 hp Toyota IQ city car as something that could sit in a showroom alongside a $270,000 DBS understandably brought the company a torrent of abuse. Ironically, though, Cygnet values have held up far better than those of Aston’s sexier sports cars from the same period.

So, what do you think? Leave a comment and let us know which you think is the worst badge engineered car ever.

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