February 2010
As a follow-up to the ' Wet Bugatti ' thread, Practical Classics mag reports that a Mercedes 540K Special Roadster has been found on a farm in Russia.
This is believed to be Hermann Goering's official car ( Aren't they all ? ). A battery and some fresh petrol ??? Interesting to see what transpires.
The last one, of 26 made, sold for about £4 Million.
IIRC, a similar car, possibly an SSK, found bricked up at the back of a shop somewhere in the Midlands in the 80s made over £7 Million at auction.
Ted Read more
Prompted by the recent thread about badge snobbery, I was wondering which car design has been subject to the most extensive badge-engineering.
By badge-engineering I mean selling cars of identical or near-identical designs under different brands.
My contender for the most extensively badge-engineered car of all time is that BMC ADO16 - the old 1100/1300.
It was sold as an Austin, Morris, MG, Riley, Vanden Plas and Wolseley. It was also built under licence in Italy by Innocenti.
Interestingly, according to Wikipedia article, the ADO16 was known in Denmark as the Morris Marina, pre-dating the use of that name for the rear-drive Morris Marina announced in the early 1970s.
I guess that the most badge-engineered current production car is the Toyota Aygo / Peugeot 107 / Citroen C1. Platform sharing seems to be more the fashion these days, as with VW / Seat / Skoda.
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Isuzu Trooper
This is it – the most badge-engineered car we can find! The Isuzu Trooper has been sold under 12 other names across its two generations – with different markets receiving different monikers