These 7 cars did the trick

There is an irony of fate: Today Opel and Citroën belong to the Stellantis Group and share model platforms. They were competitors in the 1920s – and yet Opel produced a Citroën: the Opel 4 PS from 1924 (the standard color is green, hence the nickname “tree frog”) was a 1:1 copy of the Citroën Type C (yellow, “) from 1922. lemon »). The grille and the color are different, a court dismissed Citroën’s case, and since then there has been the phrase “the same thing in green”.

By the early 1970s VW was on the verge of collapse: Blinded by still-good sales, Wolfsburg held the obsolete rear-engine Beetle for far too long, until innovations like the “coati” 411/412 failed horribly. Pure crisis! The First Golf (1974) alone would not have been enough. Therefore, the subsidiary Audi, acquired by Mercedes, had to make two sacrifices: the first Passat (1973) was an Audi 80 with a station wagon at the rear, and the Audi 50 with the VW logo as the Polo was successful from 1975 onwards.

After rust king Alfasud tarnished the brand’s reputation, Arna hit rock bottom and was finally ready to be taken over. Nissan wanted to build its Sunny in Italy to avoid import quotas, and Alfa would make full use of the old Alfasud factory. That’s how the fatal idea of ​​combining Japanese design with Italian quality came about – it could have been the other way around. After only 53,000 units in three years, Fiat reached out to Alfa and stopped the fiasco.

To this day, Renault has been receiving praise for this successful model that triggered the excitement of the minibus. But the Espace wasn’t a Renault: supplier Matra had developed it for Talbot (formerly Simca), as the successor to the hapless SUV pioneer Rancho. Meanwhile, Talbot was dying despite being renamed, and Stellantis’ predecessor was a new part of PSA. Matra has now offered the finished Espace to Peugeot, but Peugeot saw no market opportunities for the Espace and said no. Only then Renault caught him and took a hit.

Even though Peugeot had given the Espace (see above) to rival Renault, Peugeot fell in favor of another car from the Talbot brand (formerly Simca) taken over by the PSA group: the jointly developed Arizona was supposed to save. talbot But when he was done, Talbot was virtually dead, so the compact Peugeot 309, which Peugeot urgently needed due to a gap above the new 205 in the program, became a success.

In the 2000s, General Motors (GM) wanted to reposition the Cadillac in Europe. But a small “Caddy” was missing, and GM’s subsidiary Saab suffered little sales. So the Subaru Impreza became the Ami-Saab 9-2X and the Saab 9-3 became the Cadillac BLS. It’s a good car, but no European would buy an American with a Swedish inside out. Even the most cautious sales hopes were dashed, and in 2009, the BLS died in its third year.

When Toyota decides to make driving fun again, the GT86 should show it off – but it certainly wasn’t a Toyota. Even though Toyota made noise early on at Subaru. But he went aboard only when the BRZ was almost finished there. Perhaps due to its ill-will towards identical twins, Toyota makes it more consistent with the new Supra: platform, engine, lots of cockpit from the BMW Z4 Roadster. But here Toyota has been there from the start, the roof is fixed and the body is as different as the driving feel. Also with its successor, the GR86, with which Toyota has returned to cooperation with Subaru.