Badge engineering is an extremely common way of getting more value from a vehicle design. It is the laziest way to platform share. Need another vehicle? Create a new name, slap some badges on, perhaps vary the trim a bit and voila a new model is born. Consumers generally aren’t fooled but its a heck of a lot cheaper than its more respected cousin, platform sharing, since there isn’t any big sheet metal or mechanical changes. One of the earlier adopters was the British Motor Corporation (BMC) in the 50s to 70s. They churned out Austin, Morris, MG, Riley versions of the same cars. General Motors got into in a big way starting in the 1970s (think all the Nova variants) and with gusto in the 1980s. The worst offender I can think of is the poor first generation Suzuki Escudo/Sidekick. It wore the following badges and names:
Suzuki Escudo (Japan)
Suzuki Sidekick (North America)
Suzuki Vitara (Australia)
Chevrolet Tracker (North America)
Geo Tracker (North America)
GMC Tracker (Canada)
Asüna Sunrunner (Canada)
Pontiac Sunrunner (Canada)
Santana 300/350 (Spain)
Chevrolet Vitara (Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela)
Suzuki Nomade (Chile)
Wow, that is eleven variants on the same vehicle. Sure there are some different names for different markets but consider in Canada the same vehicle was available at different times with six different names! So can anyone think of a more badge engineered vehicle?
