This Boxer-Engined Chevy SUV Was A Badge Engineering Fail

Badge-engineering is nothing new, and especially nowadays, you shouldn’t be too confident that you know what’s going on under the skin of your car. It’s common knowledge that GM cars like the GMC Sierra and Yukon are just rebadged and restyled versions of the Chevrolet Silverado and Tahoe/Suburban. Others are not so obvious, and sometimes, overseas designs not sold in the US are sneaked in under a brand and sold here, with buyers often unaware of its origins; just think about the Cadillac Catera - rebadged Opel Omega from Europe.

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  Chevrolet

  Founded in 1903, Chevrolet is one of America's oldest remaining legacy automakers. Acquired by General Motors in 1918, Chevrolet is the core GM brand responsible for the bulk of GM's US sales. As a mass-market manufacturer, Chevrolet competes in multiple key segments, primarily the SUV and truck segments, but also sports cars and mainstream sedans and hatchbacks (until recently). Core models for the brand include the Silverado, Colorado, Suburban, Camaro, and Corvette.

  Founded  November 3, 1911

  Founder  Louis Chevrolet, Arthur Chevrolet, William C. Durant

  Headquarters  Detroit, Michigan, United States of America

  Owned By  General Motors

  Current CEO  Mary Barra

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  Subaru

  Subaru is the car making division of the Japanese transport company, Subaru Corporation, and it's one of the largest in the world. It was founded in 1953, preceded by the Nakajima Aircraft Company, and today manufactures vehicles known for their boxer engines, symmetrical all-wheel drive systems, and pedigreed history. 

  Founded  15 July 1953

  Founder  Chikuhei Nakajima

  Headquarters  Ebisu, Shibuya, Japan

  Owned By  Subaru Corporation

  Current CEO  Atsushi Osaki

GM has been badge-engineering cars for decades now, for better or worse, and with varying degrees of success. It rebadged many Opels, since Opel was under the GM umbrella from 1931 for nearly 90 years until 2017. There were some very obscure cars too, like the Cadillac BLS - a Caddy that was never sold in America and was essentially a restyled Saab 9-5 (Saab was itself a GM brand at the time). There was another strange car as well, which was sold as a Chevrolet in India only, and had a boxer engine. It was a simple rebadge of another brand, with exactly the same model name and no styling changes except for Chevy badges - as brazen as GM ever got with its badge-engineer-everything approach.

The Chevrolet Forester (Yes, That Forester)

Subaru To The Rescue Of GM India

2003-2007 Chevrolet Forester India Market Red Front Angled View

If “Forester” sounds familiar, it’s because that’s what Subaru has been calling its compact crossover since its inception in 1997. The second-generation Forester - the SG - appeared in 2002, and this is what GM zeroed in on to sell in India as a Chevy. But it went to no trouble at all to do it, plastering Chevy bowties on the car and calling it a day. Not a restyle and not even a rename - it remained the Forester! - but it was simply turned into a Chevrolet.

With the Indian market not focused on performance, only a single engine option was offered on the Chevrolet Forester - the naturally aspirated 2.0-liter horizontally opposed four-pot from the base Forester, and in a lower tune than in most other markets. It was part of Subaru’s long-running EJ engine family. In the Indian Forester, its output didn’t change much over six model years (see table above). A five-speed manual transmission was standard, along with Subaru’s famous symmetrical all-wheel drive, but no other powertrain combinations were offered. Gray lower-body panels were fitted and there were only four paint colors on offer:

• Obsidian Black
• Premium Silver Metallic
• Core Red Metallic
• Regal Blue.

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Standard features were very basic and included:

• ABS brakes
• Manual air-conditioning
• A manually adjustable tilting/telescoping steering wheel
• Cloth upholstery
• A split/folding rear seat
• Central locking
• An engine immobilizer

The Backstory

Why Subaru?

2004 Subaru Forester 2.5 XS Woodland Green Front Angled View

In 1968, Nissan acquired a 20.7% stake in Fuji Heavy Industries (FHI) - Subaru’s parent company at the time - under order from the Japanese government in order to consolidate and strengthen Japan’s auto industry. In 1999, General Motors bought a 20.1% stake in FHI from Nissan, effectively taking control of Nissan’s share. This gave GM one-fifth ownership of FHI, and access to Subaru products to use within the GM Empire. At that point, the General Motors brand had only been represented in India by Opel - which it also owned at the time - and it now saw a gap to introduce the Chevrolet brand to India in the form of a compact crossover borrowed from Subaru.

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The GM-FHI marriage did not last long. In 2005, Toyota bought 8.7% of FHI shares from GM and GM divested its remaining 11.4% a short while later on the open market, marking the disposal of all GM holdings in FHI. By 2007, it was all over, and that was also the last year the Forester was sold in India as a Chevy. The Chevrolet Forester was considered a sales flop in the Indian market, and GM didn’t do much better with its Chinese-built Shanghai-GM Sail SUV in India from 2012. Today, FHI is known as the Subaru Corporation, following an official name change in 2017. Over the years, Toyota has increased its stake in Subaru Corporation to 20%.

Why Badge-Engineering?

It’s A Matter Of Cost

2003-2007 Chevrolet Forester India Market Red Front Angled View

Badge-engineering is expected within automotive groups, as an automaker typically develops common platforms and powertrains to use in all the vehicles that it makes under different brands. Sometimes, it’s just a light restyle with redesigned front and rear ends and a shared glasshouse, like many of the vehicles made by Chevrolet and GMC.

Other times, automakers go to great lengths to disguise a cheaper car like a Volkswagen or a Honda as a more expensive brand like Audi or Acura, but completely redesigning everything a customer can see, and using higher-quality cabin materials, but using the same under-the-skin parts of the more common sibling. In some cases, premium sub-brands are allowed access to exclusive powertrains as a further selling point, like the turbocharged five-cylinder engine in the Audi RS3, which isn’t used in any other VW Group car.

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Regardless of the extent of the badge-engineering exercise or exactly how much is shared, the bottom line is always cost. Developing cars is expensive, and automakers can design better engines and platforms if they can spread the costs over different brands. Powertrain and chassis tuning usually ensure that the cars feel sufficiently different to each other. An automaker may also resort to badge-engineering to gain access to a market where it has little or no presence, like GM did with the Forester.

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This can be done by using products of a company you own a stake in, or via a joint venture with a rival, such as the Ford Ranger, whose previous generation was also sold as a Mazda BT-50, and whose current generation is also the basis of the VW Amarok - both mid-size trucks unavailable in the States. And then, some badge-engineered cars are simply compliance cars, such as the Dodge Hornet, which is a rebadged Alfa Romeo Tonale that serves to reduce Dodge’s average fleet emissions.

Buyers Aren’t Always Impressed

Knowledge Is Power

1997-1999 Cadillac Catera White Front Angle

The internet makes it easy for people to be informed about which cars are sold in which markets, so we’d imagine Indian buyers weren’t overly impressed with GM’s cynical rebadging exercise. And perhaps the knowledge that GM simply upspecced an Opel to sell as a Cadillac in the US put off Cadillac fans. VW tried to sell its cheaper SEAT brand in South Africa at higher prices than the equivalent VWs, but South Africans were having none of it, and didn’t buy the cars.

A red-faced VW South Africa had to withdraw SEAT from that market after only a few years. Done right, badge-engineering can be a smart way to contain costs, but automakers have discovered more than once how it can backfire if they underestimate the intelligence of their market. And the Chevrolet Forester will likely go down in history as yet another example.