Change Our Mind #2: Rebadging Your Car Should Be Banned

We’ve all seen them. ‘M’ tricolour badges on BMW 120ds. The not-so-lesser-spotted Mercedes C220 CDI ‘AMG’. Golf TDIs proudly wearing the ‘R’ insignia. And then there are the truly mad ones, like Audi ‘S’ badges popping up on the back of a ratty Renault Clio. A flying B-for Bentley adorning an ex-Uber Chrysler 300C. 

I’m talking, of course, about fake badging. The act of adding a badge to a car that was not present when it left the factory. Usually, in an effort to dupe the onlooker into believing the car in question is faster and more expensive than it actually is.

Plainly, this is pathetic. Anyone nerdy enough to tell a BMW M3 apart from a 316i M Sport by noting its exhaust count and wider wheelarches doesn’t need to read the badge to know whether they’re looking at a £200 per month finance special, or a 450bhp tyre-melting monster. 

Also, what are you hoping for, sat behind the wheel of your pretend E63 turbo-diesel? That a real E63 will pull up alongside, blip its volcanic 600bhp V8 and enquire as to the possibility of a drag race? How big’n’clever are you going to feel then, slowcoach?

The Badge Brigade protest ‘it’s an M Sport’, or ‘it’s AMG-line mate’ – like they get to buy into the club because the car’s got a me-too body kit. This is wrong. You wouldn’t paint ‘SIX BEDROOMS’ on the wall of your terraced house to dupe neighbours into thinking you’d had an extension, after all.

You wouldn’t tag Facebook holiday photos from your rainy stag-do in Great Yarmouth as ‘megabantz with the lads in Jamaica’. You don’t draw extra black circles on the back of your iPhone to make-believe it’s got more cameras than the new one you bought five minutes ago and whoops, it’s been superseded.

Adding badges to a car isn’t harmless fun. Debadging a fast car is cool, but doing the opposite is like dodging a war draft with made-up bone spurs and then walking around wearing army uniform. And medals. 

Right then, glad we got that cleared up. No-one disagrees, presumably. Or would you like to step into the breach, and change our mind..?