Do you remember the Isuzu Oasis? How about the Hollywood Graham or the Sears Allstate? There have been a lot of cars over the years that have pretended to be members of one family when it was plainly obvious that they belonged to another clan.
Cross-branding has gone on almost since the automobile’s inception, and in fact it’s rumored that there was almost a Curved Dash Ford before there was a model T. Well, yeah I made that last one up, but it’s no crazier than the match-ups that really took place.
Of course, not every match is one that’s made in heaven and today I’d like your opinion of which of them you think was the least well thought out. Thinking of cars like the Aston Martin Cygnet and Cadillac Catera, what do you think was the worst instance of automotive cross-branding?
Image: Moto24
Hooniverse Asks- What's the Worst Instance of Automotive Cross-Branding?
By Robert Emslie
Feb 27, 2015
Kamil Kaluski 
Jeff Glucker
I understand why it was needed (bureaucracy, amirite?), but it’ll never be more than a rolling punchline.
Its parent vehicle didn’t live up to the expectations of the lower-income youth market, but maybe it’ll appeal to the opposite!
Update from Wikipedia: “The Cygnet was cancelled due to disastrously low sales, with the car reaching only 150 units in the UK rather than its annual target of 4000”
Collector’s item! Buy two, drive one, moth ball the other!
I already tried!! Can’t seem to find one for sale!! 🙂
Only 150 units sold?
I know two people who have them. I already thought it was weird but now that I know the total number it’s even weirder. There are two permanently on display at the Edinburgh Aston Martin dealer too, one of which isn’t registered. So I can account for four of the total production run within twnty miles of each other. That’s super-weird…
This was never meant to be a standalone car, I think the idea was that they’d flog em to existing Aston Owners as an “accesory” and try bring down their average CO2 rating. To be honest, I have no idea how Aston gets around EU CO2 average rules, no turbos, no hybrids, and unlike Ferrari aren’t part of some big conglomerate that can sell loads of Fiat 500s to balance out one F12
I’ll say it. This Toyota has been poorly cross-branded from the start. There is no distinct difference between them, even visually. It’s terrible. And HOW is it a Subaru? Because of the boxer motor? If it had something unique to offer, I’d understand the need for a the 3-tiered branding. But a Subaru that is $25-30K sits languidly in the showroom next to the spectacular and useful WRX, while the one built 9 times more often rots in Scion dealers.
As a marketer, this one just made me angry.
How is it a Subaru?
Isn’t it made by Subaru for Toyota?
There are several America-to-foreign rebadgings that I thought were especially awful.
The Mitsubishi Raider (Dodge Dakota) is definitely not a Japanese compact truck. It’s an ugly, bulbous abortion.
The Isuzu i-series of pickup trucks (based on the Chevy Colorado, obviously) was also clearly not an Isuzu anything, but it’s not like that brand had any integrity or original products by then.
Its predecessor, the Chevy S-10-based Isuzu Hombre, at least pulled off the Japanese look a little bit.
There was nothing about the Saab 9-7X that was even remotely “born from jets.”
The Saab’s interior was especially terrible. Look at all that cheap GM black plastic just plopped in the middle of a bunch of fake wood. Blech.
Goddamn I’m itching for an edit or delete function for these comments so I can fix the image width.
The Isuzu i-Series is even more confusing when you know that the Colorado/Canyon pair shared a platform with this:
You can tell by the doors. So there WAS an Isuzu with different and more Isuzu front styling they just didn’t use.
Here’s more GM truck rebadge madness: the Holden Colorado and the Isuzu MUX. Both are based on the Thai-made Chevy Trailblazer (which is a Colorado with SUV body)
The Dodge Attitude, just because they didn’t bother to take any of the Hyundai badges off.
That Pontiac/Opel is still in production.
Now called Daewoo Nexia and made by “Uz-DaewooAvto”
Does it have to just be cars or just brands? Because this Corvette really sucks.
The C5 version will blow it out of the water.
Chrysler TC by Maserati
NO! I don’t want to remember!
(brings knees up to chin & curls up into a ball on the floor)
NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!
Say it with me, “This isn’t a Chrysler 300. This is a Lancia Thema.”
Repeat several times a day and you’ll begin to believe it.
Let’s do the reverse. This is a Chrysler Ypsilon, not a Lancia
Well, it DOES look a bit like a smaller PT Cruiser. Which was really a Plymouth…
Low hanging fruit, I know. But:
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I’ve driven the 3.2 V6 versions of both of these plenty of times, and I’ve made my peace with Porsche having an SUV. But I can’t excuse the fact that the VW feels 95% as good as the Porsche.
The VW always seemed several million times more honest.
There should have been an image of a Touareg and a Cayenne there. NIBBLES: REGURGITATE!
Dude, you so don’t know what you’re doing…
Ahem
It’s funny how much classier looking the VW version is.
Dodge Alpine. The car was borrowed from Simca and the model name from Sunbeam.
Where was the “Dodge Alpine” sold???
Spain, Turkey.
Honda Crossroad, The most unreliable Honda ever made. No surprise when just one glance shows that it’s a rebadged LandRover Discovery
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Could someone leave clear instructions on how to post images?
It’s HTML like before, but if you have to adjust the width the width itself has to be in quotes, so it would say width=”500″. So between you would put img src=”http://thisis.theimage.iwant.jpg” width=”500″
And it’d look like this:
I hope that was clear, I don’t know how to make HTML show up as text rather than code.
Between the pointy bracket things.
Yeah, this thing TOTALLY made up for not putting the Microbus Concept into production…
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The most unreliable Honda ever made. The CrossRoad.
http://playswithcars.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/6.jpg