Editorial: We Don't Need No Stinkin' Badges

Back in Motown’s heyday, in-house design giants like Harley Earl set the automotive fashion trends. Rockets, airplanes, Googie, breasts—vehicular taste-makers drew inspiration from the pop culture gestalt. Today’s car designers are no different. Specifically, they’ve turned to urban parade makers for their sheetmetal cues, favoring designs that evoke the wretched excess of a rapper’s bling. Unlike Earl and his cohorts, contemporary car designers suffer from Marty McFly Complex: they try dangerous things to show that they’re not creative cowards. The Ray Gun Gothic designs of day’s past had “it.” Our time’s blingmobiles are just plain embarrassing.

Yes, it’s true: bling lives. Although MTV’s Pimp my Ride has jumped the shark, anyone who’s anyone (i.e., someone who wants everyone to think he’s someone) still feels obliged to take a perfectly decent automobile and add several hundred pounds of accessories: spinners, woofers, gold plating, and neon. Anti-stock is the new stock. Or, as the marketing folks at the accessory-based Scion brand so aptly put it, hundreds of thousands of consumers are united by individuality.

Locked as they are into a three to five year lead time, automakers are just now unleashing designs that echo the PMR generation’s obsession with avoiding Prudy Square. Exhibit A: the ridiculously oversized badges sported by today’s whips.

Driving down our interstate highway system for a few hours, I began to notice the big print badges favored by Ford, Dodge, VW, Mercedes and Caddy.

The new F150 sports a badge on the tailgate that would be at home around the neck of any 80s rapper (should his chiropractor approve), especially when compared to the older truck. The New Dodge Ram trucks look as though they could lose a few pounds—say 100 or so—if only they’d put their logos on a diet.

The Buick Enclave’s badge is so big they had to form the rear window around it. Mercedes once restricted their nostril mounted three-pointed star to a single model (500 SEC I believe). Today’s entry-level C-Class’ snout sports an embedded logo that makes the old Merc long for Enzyte.

Volkswagen has surrendered to the forces of largeness, Big Style. Space shuttle crews report that the ill-fated Phaeton’s trunk-mounted logo can be seen from low-earth orbit. At the same time, BMW’s kidney-shaped grills have become swollen, bloated and distended parodies of themselves.

So why the bling thing? In much the same way that hunters spritz themselves with deer musk and a doe’s rutting blood in order to afford themselves some natural cover, perhaps the uber-badges allows manufacturers to look as if they’re hip to the bling thang, and allow them to attract prospects in heat for some new wheels.

The badge engorgement also reflects federal safety and fuel economy regulations. The government is asking all automakers the same questions; it’s no surprise they’re all coming up with the same answers. In other words, there’s a reason why today’s cars look strikingly—or not so strikingly—similar. (If not to you, to the average buyer.) Badges have become an increasingly important way to differentiate one design from another.

And yet, pre-blinging defeats the whole point of pimping a ride; it’s no fun to drive in a car sporting the same tasteless crap accoutrements as everybody else. So the tuner crowd are busy modifying vehicles that have already been modified to look like they’ve been modified. Just as the Cold War led to a $75K coffee maker in the B-1 bomber, I suspect things will get a lot worse (read: “bigger and more obnoxious”) before they get better (“back to normal”).

Then again, the ecoNazis may be bling’s undoing. Once some enterprising Greenie (or heaven forefend, a member of Obama’s Task Force) starts looking at factors like the bling-to-gross vehicle weight ratios, we’re likely to be treated to umpteen stories of how Big Bad Detroit is letting their love of self-promotion run amuck, at the expense of resources.

I can foresee a cottage industry for body shops, de-badging trucks and SUVs to assuage the conscience of those that insist on livin’ large in a rolling land yacht.

Then again, again, it could go the other way: blinged-out government eco-badges. How long before the government enlarges carpool lane stickers, or PZEV designations? Big ass emissions test stickers? How long? Not long. I may not get there with you, but I’ve seen the gi-normous hybrid stickers adorning GM’s gas-electric truck. I’ve seen the PC land.

While I’m all for the auto industry trying to get in touch with their “inner customer,” I’m not so thrilled about the blingalicious look of their new product. If I wanted to drive around a billboard, I would. If they’re going to insist on having their names writ large across the backside of my vehicle, then I should get paid to drive their ads across my city. Less is more.