I grew up with Dodge Viper posters on my walls, but my first real exposure to a car enthusiast community came with Volkswagen ownership. It was the Mecca of OEM+, where “clean” generally meant relocating useful and necessary things in order to pretend we could afford to pay other people to work on them when they broke. It also nearly universally meant shaving badges.
The echo-chamber said going badgeless was very European. How, exactly, was a bit tougher to pin down, but the general consensus was that it was born from attempts by the continental elite to disguise their high-value automotive purchases as more-pedestrian examples in the model line so as not to let on that they were among the “haves” rather than the “have-nots.” After a few sips of the Kool Aid, that sort o …
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Author: Byron Hurd
