GM Dropping Corporate Badging

A few years back, General Motors’ top brass decided that the best way to rekindle the public’s faith in their products was to tack a minuscule GM badge on every car they made. It was, after all, far cheaper than simply building better cars.

It was a dumb idea that was universally blasted by critics around the world. Corvette owners didn’t like sharing so much as a postage-stamp-sized badge with the lowly Cobalt, and Cobalt owners could clearly see that the addition of the same badge didn’t suddenly transform their car into a Corvette. Of course, the real logic behind the badging was to remind customers that the newer companies to the GM umbrella like Saturn and Hummer were still in the stable as Pontiac and Chevrolet. But, having sold or killed four of the eight brands once associated with GM, there’s no need for the little reminders that adorn every General Motor’s product’s flanks, and subsequently, GM has axed them.

At least that’s what GM has said. Critics are unsurprisingly critical of that story, and most prefer to believe the decision discontinue the badge is to distance the remaining GM brands from the GM name due to stigma now associated with America’s best-known bankruptcy filing. In any case, although some 2010 models still wear the badge, it’s expected that use thereof will halt as soon as the existing inventory is used up.