- Badges that once promised something specific now promise nothing.
- BMW now stacks six separate levels inside its single M framework.
- The Eclipse returned as an electric crossover sharing only its name.
Names used to be simple. If a car had the word “Turbo” in it, you could bet your bottom dollar there was a snail somewhere on the engine. Today, Porsche uses the name to mark a trim level on vehicles like the Taycan and Macan EV that don’t even have a gas engine, never mind something forcing air into one.
Some nameplates follow the same arc. The new Mitsubishi Eclipse Sportback EV is a great example. What used to be a genuinely fantastic value in the sport compact market is now little more than a rebadged electric crossover with zero connection to the original beyond the name. Which has us wondering: which automotive moniker has lost the plot the most?
Read: The Eclipse You Really Want But Mitsubishi Won’t Touch
To push the Eclipse angle further, just think about what the first two generations of that car offered. Buyers could get a turbocharged engine, all-wheel drive, a manual transmission, and styling that stood out from the sea of forgettable economy cars crowding dealer lots in the 1990s.
It wasn’t just transportation. It was an attainable enthusiast car that helped define Mitsubishi’s image in America. Fast-forward to today, and the Eclipse name has been stretched across a crossover and now an EV that shares virtually none of those traits. It’s hardly alone, either.
Chevy has done the same to the Blazer. For decades the name meant a body-on-frame SUV, the kind of truck you could point at a fire road without thinking twice. The current Blazer is a unibody crossover, and there’s now a Blazer EV riding on Ultium batteries. Same nameplate, none of the hardware that earned it.
Dodge could get some flak for the Hornet name. It was once a performance-focused AMC and clearly isn’t that anymore. The model’s swift demise feels appropriate in that light. On the trim side of monikers, BMW might be the most egregious violator here. M used to mean one was getting a unique engine and specific performance tuning.
Now, the brand is content to slap it on just about anything while putting the word Sport or Performance behind it to somehow justify that. On the flip side, actual M cars aren’t even the pinnacle anymore. Above those, you’ll find M Competition, M CS, and M CSL. That’s right – just within the M framework, we have six different levels.
In the 1980s and 1990s, M said one thing: the car was developed by BMW Motorsport. That’s a badge of honor right there. Today, the M badge seems to say a lot less and instead gives way to the question: “What kind of M do you mean? Because M Sport or M Performance and M CSL aren’t the same.”
Then there’s GTI, which is where this gets complicated. The letters stand for Grand Touring Injection, after the fuel injection that made the original Golf GTI quick in 1976, and for 50 years the badge has meant a cheap front-driver punching above its spec sheet. Now VW and Peugeot have stuck it on the electric ID. Polo GTI and e-208 GTi respectively. To be fair, neither is a cynical cash-grab, given their performance credentials. It’s just that there’s nothing left to inject.
What’s your pick for the most watered-down, meaningless automotive moniker on sale today? Let us know below.
