I’m curious as to why a car maker would ever market the same car, in the same country (or even a different country) as two different things - I’m thinking of the Ford Tempo/Mercury Topaz for instance- it seems like a huge waste of advertising and marketing dollars to come up with two names for the same thing.
Costs and because people are dumb enough to buy such things. Seriously. Designing a new car from scratch is pretty expensive, to save costs car makers “rebrand” some of their models to save development costs. People buy these things because they might like the look of one incarnation better than another one, there might also be options/pricing differences as well, and people some times think that one division builds better vehicles than another (generally, such cars are built on the same assembly line and they slap on the different branding components as needed).
Less cost. Those are both Fords, so they can share from the same parts bin for both vehicles less cosmetic parts. This is pretty prevalent in American automakers.
It used to be that divisions within Ford, GM, etc had their own unique vehicles. Nowadays, that’s really not so true anymore, with a few exceptions.
It’s called name badge engineering.
All they have to do is engineer a new name badge.
Typically one of the siblings will have better trim or different options.
Back in the day an Austin Healey Sprite and an MG Midget were exactly the same car, except the MG came with wire wheels standard. If you bought the Austin, the wires were an option.
In the case of the Ford and Mercury, the Mercury has a nicer interior (better carpet and seats) and sells for a few loonies more.
Actually, car makers have done this since as far back as the Great Depression (if not further). And allow me to present a particularly horrific example of rebranding.
But reviving an old nameplate in the form af an all new car from the dustbin of automotive history is quite a bit different than building the exact same car with slight cosmetic differences, calling it two different names and then selling it at two different dealerships under the umbrella of the same manufacturer.
Back in the days when GM/Ford had the lion’s share of the market, it made sense, and for the most part there were real differences between the brands - GM use to have a seperate engine development line for each brand, for example. For brands that are actually doing well, like Toyota/Lexus, or Audi/VW/Bentley, it does still work, because by and large Toyota and Lexus have vehicles different enough from each other to make it work. The Tempo and Topaz are the same because Ford was doing it wrong ™, and it would be one reason why Ford never makes any money (apologies to Balthisar and Rick, I know they turned a small profit last quarter).
GM does the same thing, except instead of 5 brands they have 12 (or something, I can barely keep track) so they can waste even more money.
You will note that one of the things they have done is kill the Mercury brand in Canada. If they were smart they would ax it in the rest of the world too - it was a pointless brand back in the days of the Tempo/Topaz and it’s still pointless today. Both Ford and GM are struggling to turn things around and a key goal is to either make the brands different enough from each other or kill them, and killing a brand is a very expensive process, as they have to basically buy out all the dealers. It cost GM something like $1b to kill Oldsmobile.
There was a day when British Leyland had a mind numbing collection of brands. Guess where they are now.
Why do people have to be dumb to buy into such things, though? I know for certain what the differences are between a Fusion and a Milan are, for example, but prefer the Milan and would purchase one in favor of the Fusion. I’m not implying that I know some secret differences, only stating that I like the Milan better. Move on to the MKZ, and there are real differences, and it’s not just “badge engineering” any more.
In the cases where there are differences, it’s not stupid, but when you hear people saying things like, “GMC built trucks are better quality than Chevy trucks.” you’re dealing with stupidity. They’re made on the same assembly line, by the same employees, and the only differences between most of them are minor cosmetic ones. And the folks building the components (engines, etc.) often don’t know what brand vehicle they’re going to wind up in when they’re making them.
Granted, there’s nothing stupid about preferring the looks of one car over another, but to somehow think that one is somehow better than the other in terms of quality, when the only differences are purely cosmetic, is, for lack of a better word, stupid.
The Cimerron and the Chevy Cavalier were basically the same car, so it was a rebrand job. (The Cimerron had leather seats which the Cavalier didn’t offer.)
Actually, there is a much better word: ignorant. The people making these sorts of claims don’t generally know much about the inside-outs of the automotive industry; they only know what they’ve read or been told, and also their own limited experience with the brands in question. That’s not stupidity, it’s ignorance.
I’m not sure about now, but in the past the only difference between a Es250 (350?) and a Camray was the badges and the mat in the trunk. (1998 I was part of a comparison group. We had the two cars side by side.) Also Lexus came out with a version of a Landcrusher that was pretty much identical to what Toyota was selling. Toyota is nobody special, they can badge engineer with the best of them.
I’ve also wondered why an automaker (usually japanese) will manufacter a car for GM or FORD that competes with it’s own practically identical model (I’m thinking Corolla/GeoMetro…tho that might not be done anymore). You saw this a lot in the past.
My guess is because some people will only buy “american”…even if they know the car is essentially a toyota or whatever.
“By and large”. The Camry/ES and Landcruiser/LX are indeed more or less identical, but none of the other Lexus models have any badge engineered Toyota counterparts in their respective markets.
When was the last Buick that wasn’t a rebadged Chevy or Pontiac? The last Mercury that wasn’t a rebadged Ford? Lexus has taken the cake in that market because GM/Ford went and did their own brands in.
GM and Ford’s overseas operations have been much more successful than their home operations and one big reason is that their brands aren’t killing each other. E.g. GM China’s three brands - Chevy (rebadged Daewoo economy cars), Buick (Chinese market only RWD mid-level luxury sedans based on Holden platforms), and Cadillac (ultra luxury, led by the Escalade and Chinese market only stretched STS flagship sedan) compliment each other well and except for the Buick Excelle/Chevy Lacetti there is essentially no badge engineering. GM’s record profits in China and Europe are almost enough to offset their massive losses in North America.
e.g. The Escalade in China starts at the equivalent of USD$160,000, compared to, say, $154,000 for a Porsche Cayenne S and GM has no trouble selling them. Is the Escalade(A rebadged Chevy Tahoe) really a better truck than the Porsche?
Amazing. And no, I don’t think it is. It’s certainly not faster, that’s for sure. I just can’t picture little Chinese people tooling around in a 5,000lb Escalade.
The Geo Metro was a Suzuki, and GM owns part of Suzuki, so that’s why that happened. In the case of Toyota and GM or Honda and GM, the reason is so that they can slash development costs. To take a design from the drawing board to production can cost as much as $1 billion, or more, especially if you’re pouring money into developing new technology. Getting a foreign company to help you with those costs benefits everybody and is less likely to get you ensnarled in anti-trust issues than if you picked domestic partner. (GM, Ford, and Chrysler had to fight to get the Partnership for Next Generation Vehicles going, which is an operation designed to speed the development of more fuel efficient/alternative engery vehicles, because government regulators were opposed to the creation of the organization.)
To be fair, there are some differences between many rebranded car lines; for instance, the Saab 9-2 (a nominally rebadged Subaru Impreza) had some different suspension components and a different ECU profile that (according to many reviews) gave a smoother acceleration profile. And I swear every Buick, although a rebadged version of some other GM vehicle, has had the original suspension replaced with rubber-coated marshmallows in order to appeal to the members of the AARP demographic who don’t want to notice that they’ve just plowed through a farmer’s market and have half a dozen street revelers stuck in various parts of the powertrain.
However, there are some egregious examples of rebranding; the Mercury and (now defunct) Oldsmobile brands, the afformentioned Lexus-ized Toyota Camry and Land Cruiser, and some of the abominable things done by the British car industry before it tanked like a John Travolta film. The only excuse for this is that most people are really, really stupid or that the various brands have managed to juggle option packages so you can’t get what you want from Brand A so you have to upgrade to Brand B. Welcome to brand management, which is Seal #5 in the impending dissolution of human civilization.
I swear that’s the funniest shit I’ve read in awhile. I see so many blue-haired folks at the carwash, squinting over the steering wheel of their Buicks in their all-encompassing sunshades just barely cognizant of where they are, how to be loaded onto the conveyor and having to yell “neutral, please” multiple times at them before getting an acquiescent response.
My parents had a Buick Century in the mid 1980’s, and that was the car I learned how to drive in. Talk about a non-handling POS. The tires would squeal in protest at modest turn angles, the ride was so bouncy, but…the front bench seat was lovely, and that massive 3.0 litre V6 powerplant is the stuff of hot-rod fables…