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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

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."

Nissan Rogue gives brand rare monthly sales lead over Honda

The five top-selling brands in the automotive industry are usually Ford, Toyota, Chevy, Honda and Nissan, in that order. This lineup emerged intact when counting a year's worth of sales for 2013, and there was no reason to expect it would change at the beginning of 2014. But it did. Thanks to surging sales of its all-new Rogue, Nissan managed to pull ahead of Honda to become the fourth best-selling auto brand in January 2014, selling 81,472 units (an increase of 10.41 percent compared to January 2013) to Honda's 80,808 (a decrease of 3.96 percent).
The Rogue led the way for Nissan, contributing an additional 4,880 units in January compared to the same month last year - a 54.5-percent increase for a grand total of 13,831 units. But the Rogue had help, with the Frontier pickup adding an extra 2,307 units (an 87.9-percent increase), the Juke an extra 1,081 units (a 45.8-percent increase), the Altima an extra 1,051 units (a 4.9-percent increase) and the Maxima an additional 983 units (a 32.9-percent increase). Honda, meanwhile, was hurt by falling sales of the Accord (down 13.9 percent) and Pilot (down 7.6 percent), and stagnant sales of the Civic.
Honda, however, should take pride in the fact that it's luxury division, Acura, outsold Infiniti, Nissan's luxury division, last month - 10,823 units sold to 8,998. That margin of victory was large enough to keep the parent company of American Honda ahead of Nissan North America for the month of January.