What car would you re-badge back?

[Drew Dowdell]

What car would you re-badge back?

An Opel Omega sold in the US as the Cadillac Catera who's owner turned it back into an Opel

"Re-badging" and "Badge Engineering" are 4-letter words amongst auto enthusiasts. Car companies do it to shave the cost of developing a whole new vehicle. Usually in the process, the brand identities of both the donor and recipient brands get muddled. In our example above, Cadillac was trying to shoot for the European entry luxury market by importing and re-badging the respected in its home market, but decidedly not luxury, Opel Omega. The Omega probably could have sold successfully on it's own merits had it not been sold at Cadillac dealerships and priced accordingly.

Dear departed Pontiac had two imports from down under. The G8 and the GTO originated from GM's Holden Division. Holden's SS line fit in with Pontiac's sporting image perfectly. The GTO came first. It's design language fit Pontiac, but it fit Pontiac about 5 years too late. By the time the GTO came ashore, it ended up looking like a previous generation Grand Prix coupe. Pontiac followed up with the G8 that actually led Pontiac in a new styling direction rather than following an old one. Unfortunately, General Motors as a whole was too far gone and Pontiac's days were numbered.

But enough of the history lesson. What say you faithful C&Ger? What car sold as a rebadge in the U.S., if you got your grubby little hands on, would you convert back to it's original brand? Would you be like our friend up there and convert a Catera to an Omega? Would you do a Pontiac to Holden swap? Or would you go the easy way out and rebadge an Eagle Premier as a Renault?

[Robert Hall]

How about badge a G3 as a Daewoo Kalos? That would rock.

But seriously, I'd rebadge a GTO as a Holden Monaro or a G8 as a Holden Commodore SS, and try and get the Holden fascias and some HSV goodies...or to really confuse the squares, badge it as a Vauxhall or Chevy Lumina SS....

Edited May 18, 2011 by Cubical-aka-Moltar

[daves87rs]

Ummm...

[Blake Noble]

Actually, I've always wondered how difficult it would be to take the Catera and make it into a Commodore cosmetically.

[PurdueGuy]

Astra

[vonVeezelsnider]

I think the idea of badging a Regal back to Vauxhall is appealing.

[Croc]

Actually, I've always wondered how difficult it would be to take the Catera and make it into a Commodore cosmetically.

Well...the Commodore and the Omega aren't exactly the same car. From my understanding, Holden pretty much ran with the Commodore to make it great, and as a result it diverged a bit from the Omega.

[daves87rs]

Astra

+1

Just no Aveo please....

[Camino LS6]

Actually, I've always wondered how difficult it would be to take the Catera and make it into a Commodore cosmetically.

Well...the Commodore and the Omega aren't exactly the same car. From my understanding, Holden pretty much ran with the Commodore to make it great, and as a result it diverged a bit from the Omega.

True.

In fact they changed quite a bit, well beyond a simple re-badge.

To the question at hand, I'd consider the Holden/Pontiac to Chevy conversion for certain cars.

After all, all of the parts already exist.

[Dsuupr]

Pick any and/or all current Opels and bring them under Buick or ?? brand. The Vivaro and/or Movano would make a great update to the old GM vans. Maybe give it to GMC so they are truly different than Chevrolet. Or Meriva or Zafria to Buick.

[§carlet §wordfish]

I would've kept the Merkur Scorpio badged a Ford, and brought it over in '85 instead of introducing the Taurus. Of course then we would've ended up with an ever uglier third-generation model.