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Badge engineering has been part of the auto industry ever since someone figured out the magical mix of calculus and alchemy that somehow makes money by selling the same car under different names. I've never been entirely sure how this actually works, but it must — because automakers continue to do it. More »
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Well, now we're all curious about The Forgotten Mopar, the Plymouth Cricket (aka Hillman Avenger), so we're digging a little deeper into its story. Turns out it's a long and complicated one, with plenty of weird twists and turns. For example, how about an Avenger with VW emblems slapped on and sold in Brazil as the Volkswagen Dodge 1500? We heart the Cricket now! [Rootes-Chrysler.co.uk] More »
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After watching the '71 Plymouth Cricket ad yesterday, we got to wondering: how was it that the Cricket (which was a rebadged Hillman Avenger built by the Chrysler-owned Rootes Group) disappeared from America's roads without a trace? Has anyone here ever seen one? After all, Chrysler did sell a fair number of them here before the captive-import Colt took over their subcompact duties. Was the car that bad? Take a look at Allpar's Cricket page for their version of the story: [Allpar.com] More »
]]> http://jalopnik.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=282873&view=rss&microfeed=true Chrysler did pretty well selling rebadged Mitsubishi cars in the 70s. However, their effort to sell another captive import, the Plymouth Cricket, was another story altogether. Two words will suffice to explain its failure: Hillman Avenger. Still, this ad is lots of fun, as we get to see the Hillman drive inside a circle made from every single car Chrysler offered in 1971, including some great Sub Lime and Plum Crazy machines. More »
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