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Question of the Day: Most heinous act of badge engineering?

Badge engineering, in which one company slaps its emblems on another company's product and sells it, has a long history in the automotive industry. When Sears wanted to sell cars, a deal was made with Kaiser-Frazer and the Sears Allstate was born. Iranians wanted new cars in the 1960s, and the Rootes Group was happy to offer Hillman Hunters for sale as Iran Khodro Paykans. Sometimes, though, certain badge-engineered vehicles made sense only in the 26th hour of negotiations between companies. The Suzuki Equator, say, which was a puzzling rebadge job of the Nissan Frontier. How did that happen? My personal favorite what-the-heck-were-they-thinking example of badge engineering is the 1971-1973 Plymouth Cricket. Chrysler Europe, through its ownership of the Rootes Group, was able to ship over Hillman Avanger subcompacts for sale in the US market. This would have made sense... if Chrysler hadn't already been selling rebadged Mitsubishi Colt Galants (as Dodge Colts) and Simca 1100s as (Simca 1204s) in its American showrooms. Few bought the Cricket, despite its cheery ad campaign. So, what's the badge-engineered car you find most confounding? Chrysler Dodge Automakers Mitsubishi Nissan Suzuki Automotive History question of the day badge engineering question

Fiat Chrysler, surprise, had to buy a lot of emissions credits

The world of carbon emissions uses some unusual units of measure. Take, for example, 8.2 million megagrams. Who needs to know how much that is? Someone at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, that's who. FCA had to buy that many greenhouse-gas emissions credits from greener automakers, Reuters says, citing a report from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Because its vehicles' collective fuel economy continues to trail the industry average, FCA purchased the emissions credits at of the end of 2014 in order to meet US emissions regulations. About two-thirds of those credits were acquired from Toyota, while the rest were purchased from Tesla and Honda. Daimler and Ferrari, not surprisingly, were among the other automobile companies that had to acquire emissions credits in order to meet US greenhouse gas regulations. Because the price for these credits is set privately by the companies, the EPA didn't disclose how much FCA had to pay to stay on the green side. The reason for the millions FCA likely spent is because the company is making a slow progress building and selling cleaner cars. The company did increase average fuel efficiency by about one mile per gallon to almost 22 mpg for the 2015 model year, but it wasn't enough. Such a performance likely only put the automaker in a last-place tie with General Motors. The emissions credits purchased from Tesla are notable because that California-based maker of electric vehicles has long generated substantial revenue by selling various credits to its less-electrified counterparts. In 2013, Tesla sold more of California's ZEV credits than any other automaker, but Nissan took that title in 2014. While these are not the same as the EPA's GHG credits, they do offer another way to track which automakers are meeting the targets and which need help. Related Video: News Source: ReutersImage Credit: Flickr/Ian YVR Government/Legal Green Chrysler Fiat Fuel Efficiency mpg

Five automakers now being investigated by NHTSA for airbag woes

It appears that Toyota's renotification to owners of recalled vehicles from last year is just the tip of the iceberg for what could potentially be a much larger industry-wide recall. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is opening a preliminary evaluation investigation into roughly 1.1 million vehicles from Chrysler, Honda, Mazda, Nissan, Toyota and parts supplier Takata regarding faulty airbag inflators in several models.
NHTSA has received six reports - three directly, two from Takata and one from Toyota - of vehicles with ruptured airbag inflators from 2002-2006, which resulted in three injuries. So far, all six incidents have occurred in high humidity areas like Florida and Puerto Rico. According to Toyota's latest recall announcement, the inflators may have an improper propellant that could cause it to rupture in a crash and the bag to deploy abnormally.
This new investigation follows a previous recall from April 2013 of about 3.4 million vehicles worldwide for the airbag inflators from Takata. As Autoblog reported, Toyota jumpstarted the new situation when it found that the original list of serial numbers for the faulty part was incomplete and discovered more cars in need of replacement. Honda and Nissan told us that they were investigating whether further models would need called in again as well. Mazda told Autoblog: "Regarding the current Takata situation, we're working closely with NHTSA and investigating the situation, but nothing else to report at this time." Chrysler Group responded to us with the statement: "Chrysler Group engineers are conducting the appropriate analysis. The Company will cooperate fully with the National Highway Traffic Administration."