Cuckoo eggs in the nest in Cadillac, Renault or VW: These 7 cars do the trick

There is an irony of fate: Today Opel and Citroën belong to the Stellantis Group and share model platforms. But by the 1920s they were rivals, and Opel still produced a Citroën: the Opel 4 PS of 1924 (standard green color, hence the “tree frog” nickname) was a 1:1 copy of the Citroën Type C of 1922 (yellow, “Lemon” ). The grille and color were different; The court rejected Citroën’s case. The phrase “green is the same thing” has been around ever since.

By the early 1970s VW was on the verge of extinction: blinded by still good sales, Wolfsburg held on to the outdated rear-engined Beetle for too long, until new products such as the “Coati” 411/412 failed badly. Pure crisis! The first Golf (1974) alone would not have been enough. Therefore, the subsidiary Audi purchased from Mercedes had to make two sacrifices: the first Passat (1973) was an Audi 80 with a station wagon in the rear, and the Audi 50 was successful from 1975 as the Polo with the VW logo. .

After rust king Alfasud ruined the reputation of traditional Italian brand Alfa Romeo, Arna reached his lowest point and was finally ready to take over. Nissan wanted to produce the Cherry in Italy to avoid import quotas and thus allow Alfa to use the former Alfasud factory. This is how we came up with the fatal idea to combine Japanese design with Italian quality – it could also have been the other way around. After only 53,000 units in three years, Fiat reached out to Alfa and stopped the failure.

Renault continues to receive praise to this day with this successful model, in which the brand ignited the van excitement. But the Espace wasn’t a Renault at all: supplier Matra had developed it for Talbot (formerly Simca) as a successor to the ill-fated SUV pioneer Rancho. Meanwhile, despite the renaming, Talbot was dying and was now part of Stellantis’ predecessor, PSA. Matra offered the now finished Espace to Peugeot, but Peugeot did not see any market opportunity for the Espace and said no. Only then did Renault take action and strike a blow.

Although Peugeot had given the Espace (see above) to rival Renault, Peugeot liked another car from the Talbot brand (ex-Simca), which was taken over by the PSA Group: the jointly developed Arizona was supposed to save Talbot itself. By the time he finished Talbot was almost dead and so he succeeded, becoming the compact Peugeot 309 which Peugeot urgently needed due to the gap in the program over the new 205.

In the 2000s, General Motors (GM) wanted to reposition Cadillac in Europe. But a small “Caddy” was missing, and GM subsidiary Saab was suffering from very few sales. Thus, the Subaru Impreza became the American Saab 9-2X, and the Saab 9-3 became the Cadillac BLS. It’s a good car, but no European would buy an American that’s 1:1 Swedish inside and out. Even the most cautious sales hopes were not met, and in 2009 BLS died in its third year.

When Toyota decided to make driving fun again, the GT86 had to show it off – but it definitely wasn’t a Toyota. Toyota called out Subaru early on. But it was only after the BRZ was actually done there that I got on board. Perhaps out of ill will towards identical twins, Toyota is making the new Supra more consistent: the platform, engine and multiple cockpits of the BMW Z4 Roadster. But Toyota was there from the beginning; The roof is solid and the body is as different as the driving feel. Also with the GT’s successor, the GR86, for which Toyota is also in collaboration with Subaru.