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History's most inappropriate re-hash of a Perfectly Good Brand?


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#1 ThursdayCar

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Posted 20 November 2015 - 20:59

Question to America.

Explain this:

 

7819e86d2779cd06132d4ba373aaaebe.jpg

 

What other crimes against automotive brand integrity can we list, dear forum?

 

Let me kick off with perhaps....

 

A chinese MG anyone?

 

'Chevrolet' on a Daewoo?

 

...over to you...

 

This should be good :clap:

 

 

 

 



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#2 E1pix

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Posted 20 November 2015 - 21:06

I tried hard to get them to call it a Can't-Am.



#3 Glengavel

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Posted 20 November 2015 - 21:45

The 'Jim Clark Trophy' and 'Colin Chapman Trophy' of 1987.



#4 Lee Nicolle

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Posted 20 November 2015 - 21:52

Question to America.

Explain this:

 

7819e86d2779cd06132d4ba373aaaebe.jpg

 

What other crimes against automotive brand integrity can we list, dear forum?

 

Let me kick off with perhaps....

 

A chinese MG anyone?

 

'Chevrolet' on a Daewoo?

 

...over to you...

 

This should be good :clap:

Holden on Daepoo. Though now that name has disapeared but not the cars!



#5 D28

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Posted 20 November 2015 - 21:59

I would say the Can Am series from 1977-87 was a bad choice of title. I always disliked those cars, but mostly because of the misappropriation of the name.  OK.  SCCA owned the copyright , but they would have been better off to promote the new series under a different title.



#6 ThursdayCar

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Posted 20 November 2015 - 22:12

I am with D28 - I think those cars lacked the spirit of the 'real, early Can Am' and they were often plain ugly. I think 66-68 were my favourite years - even though it was some time before I was even born... But the pictures look great! :)



#7 ThursdayCar

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Posted 20 November 2015 - 22:16

One of my biggest issues with the Can't-Ams (thanks Eric) is that whenever I do any Can Am picture search, Google serves up a Yeoman's platter of these monstrosities in different bowl-inverting colours and trims.

Thanks to Can't-Am, finding the Can Am images you are really after is a bit like digging through dog dung to find the wedding ring that pooch swallowed earlier that day...



#8 E1pix

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Posted 20 November 2015 - 22:56

I would say the Can Am series from 1977-87 was a bad choice of title.

Fendered 5000?



#9 ThursdayCar

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Posted 20 November 2015 - 23:00

Young man!! LANGUAGE! ):



#10 ensign14

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Posted 20 November 2015 - 23:08

2013-01-14-eagle-05.jpg

 

Why on earth was Paul Canary allowed to call this an Eagle?  How come Dan Gurney didn't force him to change it?



#11 E1pix

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Posted 20 November 2015 - 23:12

Young man!! LANGUAGE! ):

Faux 5000?



#12 Rob Miller

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Posted 20 November 2015 - 23:17

Vanwall

BRM

ERA



#13 BRG

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Posted 20 November 2015 - 23:25

Bugatti Veyron.....about as far from the maestro's design ethic as you could get.



#14 D28

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Posted 20 November 2015 - 23:36

Fendered 5000?

Why not? as that's what they were. Promoters and SCCA  thought race fans were gullible enough not to realize there was no connection with the original Gr 7 cars, and that always irritated. There is also no connection in value or interest in the F5000 closed bodywork cars, and genuine Can Am machines today.



#15 E1pix

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Posted 20 November 2015 - 23:39

Where, Oh Where is that Gag Me moticon?

 

Maybe the worst thing imaginable is this:

 

Except, of course, this:

 

Wow, they're everywhere!:



#16 Simpson RX1

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Posted 20 November 2015 - 23:44

Which brand are we talking about, Can-Am the race series, or Can-Am the motorcycle?



#17 E1pix

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Posted 20 November 2015 - 23:45

Why not? as that's what they were. Promoters and SCCA  thought race fans were gullible enough not to realize there was no connection with the original Gr 7 cars, and that always irritated. There is also no connection in value or interest in the F5000 closed bodywork cars, and genuine Can Am machines today.

I never got over it either, D.

 

First SCCA lets Big Bad Orange get away, then takes what's still strong, and wonderful, and…   :mad:  :rolleyes:  :cry:   :wave:



#18 Disgrace

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Posted 21 November 2015 - 00:56

Not that their own cars have been much to shout about in recent years, Chryslers are now being sold in Europe under the Lancia badge.



#19 JacnGille

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Posted 21 November 2015 - 02:02

I would say the Can Am series from 1977-87 was a bad choice of title. I always disliked those cars, but mostly because of the misappropriation of the name.  OK.  SCCA owned the copyright , but they would have been better off to promote the new series under a different title.

But this was preferable to the third version...Shelby Can Am. :cool:



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#20 D28

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Posted 21 November 2015 - 02:38

But this was preferable to the third version...Shelby Can Am. :cool:

I'm thinking of the Karl Marx quote: History repeats itself, first as tragedy second as farce.



#21 E1pix

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Posted 21 November 2015 - 02:43

But this was preferable to the third version...Shelby Can Am. :cool:

It's a Double!

Two great and powerful brands taken down by one ugly race car.

#22 Rob G

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Posted 21 November 2015 - 04:17

Where, Oh Where is that Gag Me moticon?

 

Maybe the worst thing imaginable is this:

 

Except, of course, this:

 

Wow, they're everywhere!:

All of those are magnificent machines and worthy namesakes when compared to the Chevy Monza.



#23 brucemoxon

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Posted 21 November 2015 - 05:22

"Chev Monza" Ew.

$_72.JPG

 

How can I unsee that? The original mid-70s Monza was a really attractive car.

 

 

 

Bruce Moxon



#24 elansprint72

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Posted 21 November 2015 - 08:21

Lotus...... by Proton.



#25 KBY191

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Posted 21 November 2015 - 09:08

Any post war MG Magnette for hideous badge engineering. :down: :down:

 

MG_Magnette_Farina_MkIII.jpg



#26 Michael Ferner

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Posted 21 November 2015 - 09:37

1022.6666666666666x767__origin__0x0_Ferr

Formula One.

#27 Allen Brown

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Posted 21 November 2015 - 10:25

I would say the Can Am series from 1977-87 was a bad choice of title. I always disliked those cars, but mostly because of the misappropriation of the name.  OK.  SCCA owned the copyright , but they would have been better off to promote the new series under a different title.

 

Oh dear, here we go again.

 

The first Can-Am was very successful for six or more years but most categories of racing have a natural shelf life unless they are very carefully managed and after the Porsche steamroller of 1973, the promoters saw the public's interest declining rapidly and started to move races to F5000.  Yes, it was the promoters that did this; in particular the promoters of the two important fall races at Laguna Seca and Riverside that had been part of the bedrock of professional road racing in the US for over a decade.  The SCCA had the (rare) good sense to drop Can-Am after the 1974 season before the brand became even more tarnished.

 

The promoters then lobbied the SCCA to give them a better package to promote.  Fans had loved F5000 because of the close grids and competitive racing but in 1975 and 1976, it was all Lola T332s with Chevrolet engines and with no variety in either the front or the back of the car, the clamour was for a return to the Can-Am name, but to keep the close racing and larger grids that came with F5000.  Any brand new formula would take time to build up so they needed to keep the current F5000s eligible so the answer was a sports car version of F5000 using the Can-Am name.  

 

So that's what Can-Am II was, and I need to remind you that after a couple of seasons struggling to establish itself, it boomed between 1979 and 1981 and was one of the best forms of racing on the planet.  Ickx, Tambay, Jones, Rahal, Rosberg, Holbert, Follmer, Unser, Sullivan - nobody can fault the list of drivers.  As well as the Schkee, the Prophet and the Spyders, we also had the brutalism of the Lola T530, then the beautifully engineered VDS and Frissbee.  Oh yes, all of those were based on Lola's excellent T332, but blame Lola for making one of the best racing cars of the 1970s and 1980s.  We also had March 817s, the Shadow DN10, Al Holbert's CAC, Vern Schuppan's Elfin, and a host of others.  

 

After 1982, CART started to take away the best Can-Am talent and we saw a brain drain of drivers, teams, engineers and races from Can-Am to CART.  I've already written about this elsewhere so I'll save myself some time:

 

 

This was the season Can-Am fell from grace, crushed by the expansion and success of CART. Firstly, the race promoters decamped, most damagingly the high-profile Laguna Seca and Riverside "Fall Series" meetings, a mainstay not just of the Single-Seat Can-Am but before that through F5000 and the first Can-Am back to USRRC in the early 1960s. Both moved to CART.  Mid-Ohio, another regular date going back to USRRC days, cancelled their Can-Am round too and the SCCA's inability to deliver ten races led to the loss of title sponsor Budweiser. The top teams were also on their way, with Galles Racing, VDS and Paul Newman all moving across to CART, the latter joining forces with Carl Haas. Jim Trueman of TrueSports had left a year earlier, taking Bobby Rahal and VDS chief crew Steve Horne with him, and they had proved immediately successful. Most drivers went in the same direction; the exception being Al Holbert who moved to IMSA.

 

 

What the SCCA should have done was to close down Can-Am again quickly after the 1983 season but instead they did a dreadful deal with Don Walker to continue it for 1984.  Then it really should have been killed but again it was allowed to continue, now as little more than club racing with the Can-Am "brand" now being systematically trashed.  It seems unbelievable now that it was allowed yet another season before the SCCA finally saw sense.  An attempt to use the power of Carroll Shelby's name to reinvent Can-Am as a spec series was not a success either and since then it's all been nostalgia.  Unfortunately, what tends to be remembered about Can-Am II was the fendered grid fillers of converted F5000s and the sheet steel monstrosities of its declining year; and what tends to be forgotten about Can-Am I was the predictable McLaren 1-2s,  

 

Those of you who grew up on the original Can-Am won't be convinced, but any objective look at the second Can-Am shows it was a worthy successor.  



#28 Charlieman

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Posted 21 November 2015 - 10:29

Any post war MG Magnette for hideous badge engineering. :down: :down:

 

MG_Magnette_Farina_MkIII.jpg

Ditto for abuse of the Princess, Wolseley and Riley brands by Nuffield/BMC/BL etc. The Talbot brand was briefly applied to former Rootes/Chrysler saloons in Europe.



#29 Stephen W

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Posted 21 November 2015 - 10:38

I think we should leave this to the Americans to discuss as they alone know why a corpulent saloon car is called a Grand Prix or even a Monza plus the original post was aimed at our friends across the pond.



#30 2F-001

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Posted 21 November 2015 - 11:30

I now look back on the "Can Am Mk2" more favourably than I did at the time.

It did at first seem to be a pale substitute, but what baffled me more at the time was that it replaced an apparently very well-supported and hard-fought F5000 series - which we no longer had here in the UK.

 

Yes, the cars looked a touch strange at the time - compared to T70s and M6s, at least - and many of those features appeared on other closed-wheel categories years later: separate nose-fins and fenders, central seats, pronounced 'low-points' between front and rear wheelarches, centre-post wings. Compared to many recent endurance racers, they look like, well... racing cars.

 

They also brought some closely-fought racing, which the original Can Am didn't have an over-abundance of.

Some of the film I've seen shows that they could be spectacular.

 

And they were pretty quick - within a couple of years the front runners were eclipsing the times set by the McLaren M20's and Turbo-Porsches (even Donohue's 917-30).

 

There have been many series come and gone since that weren't a patch on "Can Am Mk2".

 

Don't get me wrong, I adored the old Can Am - and still do - but, bearing in mind that I never saw a Can Am race  live, 'in the flesh', I accept that that adoration is/was for the very idea of it as much as for what it routinely served up in the way of racing.  

 

- - - - -

I smiled heartily at Michael's suggestion; but to be fair, Formula 1 wasn't really a brand (to be re-hashed) - it was a set of technical specifications for a car. The term there and hijacked; and misappropriated!


Edited by 2F-001, 21 November 2015 - 11:35.


#31 Bloggsworth

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Posted 21 November 2015 - 12:47

FWD Lotus Elan by Proton - On the opposite side of the debate, the Lotus Elan made by Mazda, the early MX5s. Though they are now getting a bit bloated, but still far better value for performance/handling/money than any other contemporary sports car.



#32 ian senior

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Posted 21 November 2015 - 14:37

That "Farina" Magnette  was a nasty piece of work, no doubt about it.  But don't disparage its predecessor, the Gerald Palmer designed ZA and ZB Magnette.  Fine cars  to both  drive and to look at.


Edited by ian senior, 21 November 2015 - 14:38.


#33 Ray Bell

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Posted 21 November 2015 - 15:05

If a little under-powered... but acceptable in their time...

'Can-Am' was also, strangely enough, used for mufflers in Australia.

#34 BRG

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Posted 21 November 2015 - 19:55

Not that their own cars have been much to shout about in recent years, Chryslers are now being sold in Europe under the Lancia badge.

Although, perversely, in the UK, Lancias are sold under the Chrysler badge  This is because nobody in Britain has ever forgotten the Lancia Beta rust scandal so even the Chrysler name is less toxic.



#35 ensign14

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Posted 21 November 2015 - 21:22

Bruno Lalli glomming on his uncle's surname to sneak a career. 



#36 GMACKIE

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Posted 21 November 2015 - 21:31

Mini Cooper. :eek:



#37 Rob Miller

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Posted 21 November 2015 - 21:56

Volkswagen Beetle

Fiat 500



#38 Bloggsworth

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Posted 21 November 2015 - 22:06

An acquaintance had a Lancia Beta and one day, as he was driving through Highgate, the engine dropped out. Rather inconvenient as he had no driving licence or insurance; the MOT wasn't a problem, the car wasn't old enough to need one...



#39 Charlieman

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Posted 22 November 2015 - 00:48

Mini Cooper. :eek:

Clarification, please. Mini or MINI? Austin/Rover Mini Cooper or BMW MINI Cooper?

 

The Austin Maxi weighed just less than a ton, and a Mini was 12 to 14 hundred weight (0.6 to 0.7 tons or tonnes). According to reliable internet stuff (OK, Wikipedia): "The MINI Cooper weighs a claimed 1065 kg at the kerb." 

 

Perhaps an Austin Maxi from the 1970s with seating capacity for three kids in the back seat was the model for a MINI. Or have we gone backwards?



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#40 JacnGille

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Posted 22 November 2015 - 00:51

"Chev Monza" Ew.

$_72.JPG

 

How can I unsee that? The original mid-70s Monza was a really attractive car.

 

 

 

Bruce Moxon

This Monza ain't too bad.

 

http://roa.h-cdn.co/...t-pruett-lg.jpg


Edited by JacnGille, 22 November 2015 - 00:52.


#41 GMACKIE

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Posted 22 November 2015 - 01:10

Beg pardon, Charlie... Mini Cooper=Perfectly Good Brand; MINI Cooper=most inappropriate re-hash.


Edited by GMACKIE, 22 November 2015 - 01:11.


#42 Charlieman

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Posted 22 November 2015 - 01:28

Beg pardon, Charlie... Mini Cooper=Perfectly Good Brand; MINI Cooper=most inappropriate re-hash.

Sounds about right.

 

And we are old enough to spot a Maxi.



#43 Rob G

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Posted 22 November 2015 - 01:38

Beg pardon, Charlie... Mini Cooper=Perfectly Good Brand; MINI Cooper=most inappropriate re-hash.

I was strolling the paddock at a Ferrari race meet at VIR one day in 2001, and somebody pulled up in a brand new, just-introduced MINI Cooper. Everybody, and I mean everybody except me, abandoned those Ferraris and flocked to the MINI. I was shocked.



#44 GMACKIE

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Posted 22 November 2015 - 04:18

 

And we are old enough to spot a Maxi.

And, hopefully, still quick enough to look the other way...before any harm is done.  ;)



#45 Bloggsworth

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Posted 22 November 2015 - 13:24

"And are we old enough to spot a Maxi?"

 

 

I changed a front-wheel bearing on my brother-in-law's, fortunately, with my head buried in the wheel arch, I couldn't see the rest of it...



#46 Charlieman

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Posted 22 November 2015 - 16:21

And, hopefully, still quick enough to look the other way...before any harm is done.  ;)

I think that is a bit naughty. The Maxi's cousin, the Landcrab, has an unusual but interesting sporting history. As a family car, the Maxi was a better design than a Cortina, but build quality let it down. I guess we can assume that Maxis that are still around have had the teething problems sorted.



#47 Charlieman

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Posted 22 November 2015 - 16:51

Bugatti Veyron.....about as far from the maestro's design ethic as you could get.

I think you put the apostrophe in "maestro's" in the wrong place ;-) All of the Bugatti family would have been appalled by the fast lorries which bear their name. If I was a VAG shareholder, I'd be very angry that Bugatti sell a million pound car that costs twice as much to build. 



#48 ensign14

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Posted 22 November 2015 - 16:55

Why would they object to the Veyron when they did the Royale?



#49 David Beard

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Posted 22 November 2015 - 17:25

FWD Lotus Elan by Proton - On the opposite side of the debate, the Lotus Elan made by Mazda, the early MX5s. Though they are now getting a bit bloated, but still far better value for performance/handling/money than any other contemporary sports car.

GM owned Lotus when the M100 Elan was produced, not Proton, I think. I agree that the MX5 is brilliant, then and now, but would you like to elaborate on your your stab at the M100?    


Edited by David Beard, 22 November 2015 - 18:41.


#50 Charlieman

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Posted 22 November 2015 - 17:52

Why would they object to the Veyron when they did the Royale?

Fair comment. Bugatti designed a luxury car for royalty and millionaires, just before the market was swept away by the great depression. Bugatti expected to sell the Royale at a profit. The company probably made a profit from the Royale engines adapted for trains.

 

So having a near miss accident with the Royale -- one which would have wiped out most car companies -- the family would be aware that modern Bugatti is a rubbish business.

 

Chat with bank manager: "This is my business plan. I'm going to build 100 cars, which cost the firm £200 million, and sell them for £1 million. I'm £100,000,000 down at that point. So I'm going to sell the rights for toy cars and posters to make up the difference."