Five badge-engineered bombs

AMC and Renault cooperated on a large luxury sedan, but it was Eagle and Dodge that had to sell them to the public. Photo by Chrysler

A look back at cross-branding car exercises gone wild

Badge engineering is a time-honored tradition in the automotive industry -- it wasn't long ago that even Rolls-Royce and Bentley sedans could only be distinguished by their grilles and badging. Thankfully those two veteran British marques have developed their own identities (due, ironically, to German ownership), but badge engineering is alive and well on more pedestrian cars today.
Quicker prototyping and cheaper manufacturing technologies have made badge-engineered cars a little more difficult to spot today. But not all that long ago grilles and badges were just picked out of parts bins on the assembly line. The results varied in popularity, and sometimes they clashed with their supposed brand to such a degree they became at best redundant and at worst a long-term albatross for the marque.
Here's a look back at some badge-engineered cars that fell flat despite their manufacturers' best intentions.

The Catera may have made a pretty convincing Opel, but in Cadillac form it struggled to find its audience. Photo by Cadillac

Cadillac Catera (1997 - 2001)

In the late 1990s Cadillac needed a smaller car that was still luxurious, and the company showed remarkable restraint by not rebadging a Buick or Oldsmobile of some sort. What General Motors did rebadge was an Opel Omega, which at the time was the German brand's largest offering. Built at the old Opel plant in Russelsheim, which was already used to slapping Vauxhall badges on its right-hand drive offerings, the Omega received a new grille, trunklid, and assorted small details from the Cadillac parts bin, retaining the 3.0-liter V6 which was the top engine in the Opel range. The suspension was also softened up a bit, though the standard Omega was hardly a BMW 5-series competitor in its original form.
Marketed in the U.S. as "The Caddy that zigs," the Catera promptly zagged right past potential customers despite the use of cartoon ducks and Cindy Crawford in advertisements for the car. No amount of aftermarket vinyl roofing or gold badge gilding could convince the market to take notice -- though vinyl roofing businesses certainly prospered from the car.
Why it fell flat: The basic recipe was sound, but the car wasn't up to BMW or Mercedes standards, and long-term reliability managed to disappoint. The Catera in many ways was a stopgap car thrown out to the market before the arrival of a purpose-built small Cadillac (the CTS), and buyers seemed to sense it was a halfhearted effort.
Repercussions: The Catera spent just five years on the market and was replaced by the refreshing CTS, introduced to the public by Trinity and Morpheus in "The Matrix Reloaded," thereby restoring balance to the universe.
Where can I find one now? On eBay out of Florida with sun-baked paint, a bubbling vinyl roof and badly delaminating tinted windows.

The Navajo was a slow seller when it was new, despite the fact that it was virtually identical to two-door Ford Explorers. Photo by Wikimedia Commons

Mazda Navajo (1991 - 1994)

This Ford Explorer clone debuted along with the original Explorer because Mazda and Ford were best buds at the time and bummed rides from each other when one of them was running short in a particular segment. The Navajo was only offered in two-door form, with about the biggest visual difference being the black plastic grille that didn't do its looks any favors. The Navajo was offered in two trim levels during its relatively short lifespan, some of which featured equipment that was not standard for the corresponding Explorers, though it lacked a luxury version that would have had amenities on par with the Eddie Bauer Explorer.
Why it fell flat: Sales never really took off despite an attractive list of standard equipment, and the Navajo was discontinued after the 1994 model year. The culprit for many years was suspected to be the Ford Explorer itself, which was well on its way to becoming a status symbol of the 1990s. People either had a Ford Explorer or they didn't, and paying about the same amount of money for a two-door Explorer with a Mazda badge apparently was not cutting it.
Repercussions: When the Explorer was extensively redesigned for the 1995 model year, the Navajo was left behind. Mazda would go on to receive a rebadged version of the Ford Escape years later, sold as the Mazda Tribute, though that model would also fall short when it came to sales.
Where can I find one now? On Craigslist with an item description numbering less than 100 words mostly warning tire kickers and lowballers to stay away, and offering four photos taken with an outdated cell phone in portrait orientation.

The Dodge Monaco was only available from 1990 till 1992, alongside the Eagle Premier. Photo by Wikimedia Commons

Dodge Monaco (1990 - 1992)

What would become the Dodge Monaco was initially an AMC and Renault project, which, as far as beginnings go, should have raised alarm bells even back then. But by this time, AMC was basically in the business of selling Renaults, and the two companies needed a large sedan to place atop the heap populated by reworked versions of European Renaults. The Giugiaro-styled body of what was envisioned as the Renault Premier had a sleek coefficient of drag, and the best engineering available to both companies was poured into the project. The Premier boasted an advanced suspension system, a modern interior, and relatively high-quality materials, with an an AMC inline-four and a PRV V6 offering reasonable amouts of power.
The Premier ultimately fell victim to poor timing -- AMC started to unravel just as the sedan entered production. Chrysler would inherit most of AMC, and the very first Premiers left the factory with a mishmash of Renault and Eagle badges attached to various surfaces. As things settled down, Chrysler resurrected the Dodge Monaco nameplate as a companion to the Eagle Premier in 1990 in an effort to keep sales moving. At the same time, Chrysler was working on its LH platform which would borrow heavily from the Premier's engineering.
Why it fell flat: The Premier suffered from an identity crisis from the start, and by the time it was suddenly rebadged as an Eagle -- an all-new brand created out of thin air for AMC leftovers -- and then as a Dodge, consumers weren't really sure what they were buying. The underlying technology may have been good from the start, but there was really nothing tying the Dodge version to the Monacos of years past, which could still be seen on the roads at the time.
Repercussions: Sales struggled despite deep price cuts for both the Dodge Monaco and the Eagle Premier, and it would be replaced by the LH-chassis Eagle Vision/Chrysler LHS/Dodge Intrepid; a year later Chrysler would get rid of Eagle all together.
Where can I find one now? The junkyard. The Eagle and the Dodge version of the car disappeared pretty quickly, and because the mechanicals were unique, it was hard to have the car serviced anywhere but Eagle dealerships -- while those lasted. Owning a Dodge Monaco past the mid-1990s was only slightly easier than owning a Peugeot.

The Asuna Sunfire was available for just one model year, and only in Canada. Photo by General Motors

Asuna Sunfire (1993)

Created as a follow-up to another fizzled Canada-only brand, the imaginatively named Passport, Asuna was loosely related to General Motor's equally short-lived Geo brand. A catchall brand for all sorts of captive imports marketed by GM, the Asuna Sunfire started out life an as Isuzu Piazza, and would be offered as the Isuzu Impulse in the U.S.
Canada, on the other hand, would receive the Impulse as the Asuna Sunfire for the 1993 model year. The Impulse was a capable car which would go on to sell reasonably well in the U.S., with modern looks and fun inline-four engines, but the Asuna name just added an unnecessary level of branding to the mix.
Why it fell flat: Asuna as a brand concept was troubled from the start, and the fact that the same car was sold in Canada as an Isuzu just a couple years prior to the appearance of an Asuna version added to the headache. The whole brand was an exercise in badge engineering.
Repercussions: Asuna disappeared as quickly as it appeared, leaving in 1994. The whole Asuna experiment lasted just a little under two years, with the various models being distributed among Pontiac and Chevrolet lineups in Canada. It would be Pontiac in Canada that would come to absorb various Canada-only "specials" all the way through its very last days.
Where can I find one now? On Google Street View sitting behind a gas station in Alberta. Any example of an Asuna-badged car is tough to find even in its native country, with the Asuna Sunrunner (nee Chevrolet Tracker) making up the largest population of survivors.

The early-80s Opel Kadett E was a fine car by all reports, but something got lost in the translation to Daewoo and then to Pontiac. Photo by Mark Brown

Pontiac LeMans (1988 - 1993)

The Opel Kadett had a long history, one that stretched from the pre-war years almost into the present day. Later iterations of this classic sedan would be shared by its parent company, General Motors, with its partners in the automotive business. One such partner in the 1980s was the South Korean manufacturer Daewoo, and it received the Opel Kadett E, which debuted in Europe in 1984, for its own purposes.
In South Korea it was sold as the Daewoo LeMans, but in the U.S. it appeared as the Pontiac LeMans -- a nameplate which, for many, still stirred visions of muscular midsize cars with an attitude and a clear connection to the Pontiac brand. The LeMans may have morphed into the Bonneville in the early 1980s, but American buyers still remembered it more as the GTO's baby brother. When shoppers instead found a rebadged Opel Kadett E, which was already looking a bit outdated even in its home country, the reaction was less than enthusiastic.
Why it fell flat: The Daewoo-built Pontiac LeMans had slightly different exterior styling from the rest of the Pontiac range, and it never really caught on, despite selling well for some time. A cheap interior and no connection to Pontiacs of years past, or contemporary American car design for that matter, made the LeMans seem generic. In Canada, the LeMans was sold as the Passport Optima for a couple years, and then as the Asuna SE and the Asuna GT until that brand itself fizzled out.