QOTD: The End of Braggadocious Cars?
Cadillac’s decision to take the practice of boasting through badging into the future generated a fair bit of buzz yesterday, and no shortage of snark, either. Rather than go the time-honored displacement route, the brand choose to slap its upcoming models with a metric, rounded-up torque figure, thus allowing ICE-less electrics to get in on the game.
Is this the beginning of the end for fenderbragging … or the start of a new beginning?
While Fiat Chrysler remains the power badge king, few automakers host engines up to, and including, a 392 cubic-inch V8. Boast while you got ’em, I guess. It won’t last. The continuing truck wars promise years of Cummins vs. Power Stroke vs. Duramax badge dueling, too, as the presence of that engine type had best be made visible to outsiders.
For normal vehicles, though? With 2.0-liter four-cylinders seemingly powering half the world, there’s little exclusivity to be had in mentioning this fact.
Considering Cadillac’s glittering figures aren’t especially accurate and signify a unit of measure still unfamiliar to many Americans (no one wants to do math to figure out what they’re looking at), it would be easy to say this is a pointless effort.
Outside American borders, especially in markets Cadillac wants to make headway in (Europe, where Cadillac’s essentially dead, and China), it could be a different story. There, buyers aren’t used to seeing cubic inches emblazoned on fenders and trunklids; historical measurements like 351, 400, 427, 429, and 454 lose their significance once the plane takes off from JFK. Europeans soaked up decades of Mercedes-Benz metric nomenclature for decades before the strategy started to go pear-shaped.
But Chinese customers gravitate towards American luxury more for the vehicle itself, and the heritage that comes with the brand, than output. It’s looking like Cadillac came up with this new badging strategy simply to have tinsel to place on future EVs. We’ll all be driving them soon, dontcha know?
I’d argue that the most enviable figure an EV maker could slap on the outside of their vehicles is range — not horsepower, torque, or acceleration times.
So, what do you think, B&B — does Cadillac’s badge strategy open up a new world of on-car marketing, or is it just another part of the sad decline of vehicle brashness and individuality?
[Image: Fiat Chrysler Automobiles]
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As items which were once luxury continue to become more and more prevalent the need for badges becomes less necessary. Trim level designations being a prime example. It used to be a quick way to show that one person bought "poverty spec" while another bought not "poverty spec". I appreciate that Mazda, with few exceptions, doesn't really have trim level badges on their cars. Makes it so the only people who really recognize a Sport, from a Touring, from a Grand Touring are the people who are looking for the minor styling differences or lighting changes, or wheel size differences. Car shaming the poors is less necessary.
I shall craft and store my own artisanal electrons at home with cat fur and nylon combs. Let the revolution come! As for fender brags: roof height in inches.