The 15 Oddest Re-Badged Rides

The car biz, in case you haven’t figured it out by now, is both incredibly fickle and hellaciously expensive. Nowadays it’s not uncommon to hear about a manufacturer spending 10 figures to bring a new model to market, and if said new model happens to be a flop well…let’s just say the person that greenlit that project really hopes that backpack does contain a golden parachute and not a bunch of towels from the executive washroom…

With this peril in mind, as well as geopolitical forces and other external factors, it isn’t surprising that automakers occasionally choose to sell rebadged vehicles, i.e. cars and trucks on which another company did all the heavy lifting and all they have to do is cut that company a check or offer some other compensation. The following 15 vehicles (which intentionally do not include whips marketed by sister brands or wholly-owned subsidiaries of the OEM or vehicles that have been re-styled and/or re-engineered to the point of unrecognizability) changed their identities and, in doing so, caused a whole lot of head scratching, some of which continues to this day.