Badge Engineering

Badge engineering is an ironic term that describes the rebadging (that is, the replacement of the branding trademark) of one product (especially automobiles) as another. Due to the high cost of designing and engineering a totally new model, or establishing a new brand (which may take many years to gain acceptance), it is cheaper to rebadge a single product multiple times than to create different models for separate brands. In general, no actual engineering occurs.

The term derives from the trademark emblems fastened inside or onto the outside of the car. While differences were originally confined to the badges used on the model, more typically it involves slight styling differences, usually limited to the headlights, tail lights, and front and rear fascias. More extreme examples involve differing engines and drivetrains.

Badge engineering is now common, but it should not be confused with platform sharing within a company. Platform sharing is different from rebadging, as an automobile platform may be used in many different ways and applications, such as using a single platform to produce and sell a sedan and a sport utility vehicle. Two such products are different vehicles, whereas badge engineering involves the sale of essentially a single vehicle.