THE CAR IN FRONT IS... A TOYOTA?

It peaked in the late 20th century among the British conglomerates, and now it’s back with a vengeance. But why? Richard Bremner examines the phenomenon of badge engineering

- Richard Bremner

'Badge engineering' is a wry phrase that turned popular in the 1960s because there was an awful lot of it going on, especially in Britain. It refers to the practice of changing a car's brand and/or model identity by the simple expedient of applying different badging to it. In the most extreme cases, that model will be identical to the one from which it was spawned, bar those badges.

For a prime example today, look no further than the Mazda 2 Hybrid, which is the spit of the Toyota Yaris Hybrid. Relatively few not-all-our-own-work cars are born as simply like this, although it's a solution, occasionally desperate, that has been around for almost as long as the car itself.

Mazda isn't alone in adopting a Toyota. Suzuki has pursued the same range-extending practice with its Swace (Corolla estate) and Across (RAV4), while Subaru's Solterra is almost identical to the bZ4X.

Why does it happen? Developing an entirely new car can cost a good £500 million these days. Finding ways to lessen that cost is the perennial task of accountants, engineers and product planners.

Yet it's rare that they will resort to the most expedient method of adding a model to the range by merely rebadging another maker's effort. Such opportunistic car creation is often about more than cost, as an unusually revealing joint communication from Toyota and Suzuki demonstrated back in 2016, when they announced their collaboration.