About
About Badge Engineered
Badge Engineered tracks who owns which car brand, and who owned it before. Pick a year from 1900 to 2026 and the map shows every brand at the headquarters of the company that controlled it at the time.
- 69brands
- 22groups and investors
- 190recorded stakes
- 126years covered
The name
Badge engineering is the car industry's habit of selling one car under several brand badges. The Holden Commodore was sold in America as the Pontiac G8. The Toyota Passo and the Daihatsu Boon are the same car. It happens because brands get bought, sold and shared between parent companies, and that ownership is what this site maps.
How to read the map
- Each badge is a company. Brands sit at the headquarters of whoever controlled them that year, so a brand moves across the map when it changes hands.
- A solid arrow means control: a stake of 50% or more. A dashed arrow is a minority stake. Arrows run from the shareholder to the company it holds.
- Ringed badges are parent groups and outside investors, such as the Agnelli family's holding company or Porsche SE.
- The orange bars on the timeline mark years when ownership changed.
Where the data comes from
Stakes are compiled from company annual reports, stock exchange filings, company press releases and established news coverage. Percentages are rounded. Where reports disagree, the figure most often cited is used and the entry carries a note.
Some short-lived or very small holdings are left out. Joint ventures that only build cars, without either side owning the other, aren't shown. The badges are original monograms drawn for this site. They are not manufacturer logos, and no carmaker is connected with or endorses Badge Engineered. All brand names belong to their owners.
Get the app
Badge Engineered installs like an app, with its own icon, full screen and no browser bars. Once installed, the map and every brand page work offline.
- iPhone and iPad: open the site in Safari, tap the Share button, then Add to Home Screen.
- Android: open the site in Chrome and tap Install app at the top of the map, or use the menu and choose Install app.
- Computer: in Chrome or Edge, click the install icon at the right of the address bar.
Corrections
If you spot an error, send a correction with a link to your source. Each one is checked against its source before anything changes.
Privacy
- The site sets no cookies and has no user accounts.
- Visitor numbers come from Cloudflare Web Analytics. It counts page views in aggregate, without cookies, and doesn't track you across other sites.
- Your light or dark mode choice is saved in your own browser and never sent to us.
- The corrections form stores what you type in it. Your email address is optional and only used if we need to ask about your source. Your IP address is turned into a one-way code for spam limits and is never stored as is.
- The form's spam check is Cloudflare Turnstile, which follows Cloudflare's privacy policy.
This section will be updated before any advertising is added to the site.
Affiliate links
Some pages may include links to books, scale models and other products. If you buy through one of those links, Badge Engineered may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Links are marked as sponsored.
Contact
Badge Engineered is an independent hobby project. For anything other than data corrections, email: