Badge Bastardisation

Have manufacturers gone too far with the dilution of their halo brands?

As I was driving down the M50 the other evening in the dull dusk light, up ahead of me in the middle lane, I could see a new, rather shiny C-Class Mercedes. From a distance I could see it had all the aesthetic bells and whistles and a plethora of badges adorning it’s boot lid. “Oh, a C63 AMG” I thought to myself.

I was wrong.

As I drew closer, I could now clearly see that this car was indeed wearing an AMG badge on the right-side of it's bootlid. However, on the left-side it read ‘C220 CDI’.

I was angered.

Partly because the driver was doing 90kmh in the middle lane, but that’s another day’s rant.

BAH!

No, what irked me so, was that I felt cheated. As a die-hard car nut, I had got all giddy and excited at the prospect of seeing a performance car out in the wild, only to be disappointed by imitation. Imitation that was concocted at the hands of the manufacturer.

People putting performance badges on their run of the mill saloons and hatchbacks has been going on for years. The number of S4 and RS4 badged TDi Audis you see running around and M-badged 316is that scatter the land are endless. These badges were placed there by owners, or perhaps previous owners, to give an impression that they have succeeded in life, but to those of us who know, it’s obvious fraudulent behaviour.

Who cares about what us 1% of petrolheads thinks though, we’re the minority. If someone wants to put a carbonfibre wrap on their A-Class and proclaim it’s a Formula 1 car, so be it,, it’s their property, do as you please, if it makes you happy.

M, for Misleading

It’s just that now, the manufacturers have seen the marketing scope of all this tomfoolery. Selling the idea of their upmarket models to those who can’t afford them.

The aforementioned AMG badged Mercedes’, BMW M-Sport, VW R-Line, the list is infinite. Audi were one of the earliest adopters of this approach. At first it was just badges and bigger wheels, but now you can buy diesel Audi A6s with the big, muscular, flared arches once reserved for their RS models exclusively.

So, has this dilution of their haloed divisions made a mockery of the brands? Well for awhile that’s how I felt. We enthusiasts were being duped, and personally I felt betrayed. Was nothing sacred?

The real deal doesn’t need badges

Now though, I think it’s rather a good thing. Performance badged variants of rather prosaic models are becoming so common place, it's allowing the truly special stuff to fly under the radar, so when you do see the real deal, it ignites that giddy excitement I so lust after. No more so when that haloed car is de-badged, because there’s nothing cooler than that.

-John Quinn

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