The practice of badge engineering another company’s cars can have some unexpected consequences…
Back in 1996, Toyota sold their own Toyota-branded version of the Chevrolet Cavalier (above) to the Japanese domestic market. The Cavalier was a major flop in Japan and most people forgot about it, but now the auto-sleuths over at Automobile have discovered that the Toyota Cavalier left a bizarre legacy: because all Cavaliers were built in the USA in GM’s factories, the Toyota emblems and badging for the JDM model were added to GM’s parts catalogue and assigned GM part numbers. That’s right, you can buy the badge of one of the world’s largest automakers from the dealerships of its chief rival.
What a crazy, incestuous world we live in.
Loading ...
Comments
Click here to jump to Add Comment box
How do you get a picture next to your name?
Get a Gravatar. Click here to find out more.
so who’s the big daddy of them all!! Is GM the Pappa Bear and secretly owns Toyota *eerie music* !
That is strange indeed, but i’m sure the same happens here in Australia with the old Suzuki’s rebadged as Barinas, The Nova/Corolla and the Lexcen/Berlina (ooh spooky GM toyota combinations again! I know my mate’s olf Barnia had a (stock) Suzuki Motor and even the VIN Plate was a suzuki one!
Don’t forget two of the biggest dogs on the Australian market - Nissan Pintara/Ford Corsair
Where will we see photos of Ford badges come out of??? Ferrari?! lol
Did a bit of that badge swapping here in the 90s too didn’t we…………
Camrys became Apollos ,Nissan Patrols were Ford Mavericks,ect and the weird thing was that was when we had a workshop at that time the cost of spare parts for the same cars were different!
Yeh we got the VN and VP Commodores rebadged as Lexens in the late eighties early nineties
In the States, Toyota has also built several cars for GM. Corolla/Nova, Corolla/Prizm, Matrix/Vibe. I wonder if it’d be possible to get a GM badge from Toyota.