I almost missed the assembly line oops while appraising this 1968 Buick LeSabre 400 this summer. The second owner noticed it not long after he bought the car from the original owner in rural Saskatchewan.
Only 14,922 LeSabre 400 two door hardtops left the factory during the 68 model year. Whoever was putting the trim and badging on the body of this car must have been distracted. Perhaps by a co-worker nearby? Or maybe deep in thought about the upcoming weekend? I’m surprised this slipped through the person doing quality control. Assuming somebody was assigned that task at the end of the assembly line. Obviously the small town Saskatchewan Pontiac-Buick dealer never noticed either.
This faux pas reminds me of the Acadian I saw parked on a dealer lot in the early eighties in Prince George, BC. Stepping around to the right side of the car the name plate said Chevette. So I walked back to the left side and sure enough, the word Acadian was on the left fender.
And what assembly line glitch do you remember seeing on four wheels?
Most trim glitches I see are from panelbeaters replacing trim and badges wrong after repairs, often the detailing kid has never seen that model before and just makes a guess, tricky here too when we have JDM cars often slathered in obscure badging.
Right you are Bryce. The most likely culprit is some dufus body shop that has no idea where the badging bits go.
I saw Jeed on a Cherokee before.
+1 on the panel beater theory.
I had to explain one shop that the whole adhesive had to come off before they applied the paint.
You don’t have the UAW. We still live in a country where new Jeep Wranglers show up on dealers’ lots before anyone has noticed that one front fender is black plastic and the other one is body-color painted fiberglass or metal.
The best one I ever saw was on a Citroen Ax.
It was delivered new from Citroen with the driver seat with one type of fabric and the passenger seat in a totally different fabric and colour. It was obvious even through the plastic seat covers !
How it was missed at the factory I will never know unless the quality control people were all blind.
The only thing I can think of is that there was another car in the same color right ahead or behind that one in line, and they had a guy on one side putting in driver’s side interior bits, and another doing passenger side, and they confused one car for another. Still doesn’t explain how it passed QA, though.
The QA-manager got the Ax ?
Ha!
For a Citroen two different front seats is standard equipment…no?
This. It’s Citroen, the QA people probably thought it was some ironic new style from the designers.
None come to mind involving trim, but after a weekend of setting the alarm off when opening the back door on my 94 Club Wagon, I took it back to the dealer where they discovered that Ford failed to install a power lock actuator in that door. The dealership had owned it for the first year, so it is also possible that someone had swiped it to repair another car, but who knows.
I have seen a handful of extra trim screws inside of a door on a Ford Escort once.
I had a Dodge Diplomat that had a beige interior, yet two pieces of the trim around the headliner were avocado green. The original owner claimed it was like that from new but he couldn’t be bothered to change it.
I also remember our brand new Chevette had mismatched trim on the back doors. My Dad fumed over that for the week it took them to obtain and install the correct one.
The one that I’ll never forget was back in very early September, 1973. I used to ride my bicycle to the local dealers, searching for the next years models. The local Chevy dealer had two 74 Impalas and one 74 Chevelle in the back row of the new car storage area, amid all the remaining 73’s. The Chevelle was a two door coupe (which would have been a Malibu Classic), but something wasn’t right. There on the front fenders, on both sides were El Camino nameplates! A look inside revealed Malibu Classic on the Dash and steering wheel. The grille had the correct Malibu Clasic nameplate so, my guess is the fenders were originally destined for an El Camino in the same color. The Correct Malibu Classic nameplates would have sat slightly lower on the front fenders than the El Caminos of the same vintage do. It was apparent the holes for the nameplates were drilled for the El Camino nameplates. I’ve always wondered what happened to that particular car..
If I bought it I would have left that way. Oh, haven’t you heard, this is the new El Camino Extended Cab with factory bed tonneau.
Our 1977 Chevy van came with a white painted side view mirror on the left, and a stainless one on the right, which was about what you expected on a vehicle built at Lordstown.
I worked for an obscure part of the government for a few years back in the late 1980’s and we had a turbo LeBaron that insisted it was a New Yorker if you looked at the logo on the dashboard. This LeBaron was a very good car; quick, quiet, comfortable, and good handling. Oh, and it was a quality piece of equipment too,except for that dashboard logo glitch. The legend was that a run of these cars had been made for the FBI, but the FBI cancelled the order when the Buick Grand National came out as the GN was faster. Thus these cars had been released into the GSA contracting pool. I was very impressed with that car.
Edit: a quick search turned up an FBI Grand National, so there just might be something to the story…. No FBI LeBarons yet though
http://www.grandnationalbroker.com/cars/72/1986-buick-regal-t-type-fbi-package-1-of-17.htm
The family of one of my childhood friends had a 1975 Oldsmobile Cutlass Cruiser. We got a huge laugh out of it, because on the driver’s side, it carried the correct Cutlass Cruiser badges, both outside on the front fender as well as on the interior door trim panels. But it was a schizophrenic machine, since the passenger’s side announced that it was a Vista Cruiser, both outside and inside. As a bunch of young boys we loved to crack up over that one. We’d sit in the front seat of that car and look left: Cutlass Cruiser. Look Right: Vista Cruiser.
Don’t dealerships notice this when brand new cars arrive from the factory / importer ? Or as a Ford dealer told me, about 20 years ago: “when an English Ford was unloaded back in the old days, you just knew you had to walk around it with a toolbox”.
I can’t imagine the upside down Buick badges getting past both a factory and dealer inspection. I’ll bet someone turned them over as a joke.
It’s the Anti-Buick!
Upside down the shields look like church windows. Perhaps it was the Buick Cathedral Edition?
It’s an Australian model.
Ouch.
I had a 1977 Chevy Concours (fancy NOva) with a/c. It had a dashboard lifted from a Buick Skylark with the Buick’s a/c vents blocked out with metal plates, but it did have the Chevy vents!!!
The first TV station I worked for in the early 80s had a Suburban for a live van. The grille and everything on the left side of the car (hubcaps, steering wheel) had a GMC logo, everything on the right (the barn doors, hubcaps and glovebox) a Chevy logo.
When I sold new cars we received a new base GMC work truck with a Chevrolet grille, we replaced it and were credited from GM for the the grille we had to install from the parts dept, we also got a Grand Am that had a mix of 2 Achieva and 2 Grand Am plastic wheelcovers in the trunk, this was probably the most common mix up I ever saw, “the throw in the trunk” stuff that didn’t match.
Minor enough, but on my Honda Odyssey they apparently forgot to extend the pin striping onto the rearmost panel on the driver side. It just stops at the end of the sliding door. It’s done correctly on the other side and extends to the taillight. Given it’s tan pinstriping on a tan vehicle I didn’t even notice until long after I bought it.
The pinstriping on my ’84 Suzuki Swift has three different-toned stripes on one side, and a single stripe on the other. But that would have been dealer-applied.
Yeah, I wasn’t sure how that worked, if it was dealership or factory. It wasn’t mentioned anywhere on the Mulroney sticker either way.
The pin striping on my Suzuki Samurai was not cut where it crossed the part line for the rear door. The first time I opened it (bought the truck new), it stretched the vinyl out a couple inches before I realized what was going on. I carefully cut them myself, but had to trim back from the edges a little.
I wonder if that was the result of some panel damage that was repaired after delivery to the dealer?
It looks to me like someone turned the car upside down. 🙂
http://imganuncios.mitula.net/2009_ford_flex_se_redfire_metallic_maroon_in_austin_texas_3810008440360499272.jpg
I saw new 2009 Ford Flex at Maguire Ford that had paint drips on the passenger side quarter panel that quality control at the factory failed to spot. The salesperson was annoyed.
My parent’s 95 Voyager was supposed to have a dual note horn from the Windsor, Ontario factory, but it only blared out one note.
The first thing like this I remember is the ’89 Caravan my parents had. Most everything said Caravan except for a few bits on the inside that were labelled Voyager. Well, at least Dodge and Plymouth had the same Pentastar logo, I guess.
Mine is like Wingroad:
My sister had a red Mercury Lynx station wagon with all vinyl bucket front seats but the rear bench seat was vinyl with fabric seating surfaces. The colors were all “correct”, but the fronts looked like cheap Escort seats, while the rear seat looked suitable for the (barely) up-market Lynx.
My father-in-law had a full-size 4-wheel drive GMC pickup, purchased new in the early 1990’s, and he occasionally commented that it “drove funny”. One day he let me drive it, and the handling was awful — regardless of speed or conditions, it just seemed like the truck was all over the road.
He took it back to the local dealer, who confirmed that the factory had installed the wrong springs on one side of both axles.
This one made the wire service in its day; maybe the new dual headlights for ’58 distracted the assembler?
….
At least it’s not a F O O D.
Hey! Nothing wrong with that! Then it would be a Food truck. 😉
This was a semi-popular prank to pull on Ford owners in my father’s time (mid-’70s). Along with hanging things from the horns of the Ram…
I worked construction years ago and the guys would rearrange the letters on the hood of all the trucks to spell DORF
As a Lord of the Rings fan, I was seriously considering buying an extra O and rearranging the letters on my Ford Cortina to read FRODO. Given the popularity of LOTR nowadays, someone’s probably done it.
Back in the day, my uncle ( a farmer) had a ’79 Ford (full size) that instead of Ford on the trunk, said FOOD.
Aside from the lower cost, this is likely another reason why, today, make and model names are rarely spelled out in individual letters.
I can’t seem to find it, but somewhere online I saw a scan of a magazine review of a then-new Oldsmobile (either a ’59 or a ’61) on which two of the letters set into the front grille were transposed; they were normally arranged to spell out O-L-D-S-M-O-B-I-L-E.
’59 , 58 had the same lower “grilless” hood as the 57
I once saw a 1977 Buick Skyhawk with Monza logo on one front fender. It was at a Danish GM dealer.
Similarly, as his first new car, a friend had an ordered late seventies’ Monza Spyder come through with a Sunbird emblem on one fender. It quickly went downhill from there, and within a year, he’d traded for a new Toyota Celica and never bought another domestic vehicle.
My 95 Riviera came with Pontiac floor mats in the trunk.
Ouch! And Pontiac didn’t even have a Riviera version. What were they thinking?
Same plant I believe, Lake Orion.
I don’t know what happened. I, with the Buick sales manager, ordered the Riviera as a sold order so it would get done sooner. But the first car built to order was taken for “evaluation”. The factory expedited a second go around for the order, not that it should have made a difference. I assumed that either a set of Pontiac mats got mixed up with the Riviera mats or someone was being cute. Possibly Riviera mats were in short supply.
My aunt and uncle purchased a new 2009 Chevy Impala. I remember the driver’s side C-pillar had the correct Impala logo, but on the passenger side C-pillar there was no logo. I pointed it out to them, but they never did anything about it.
I had a ’95 C1500 with a Cheyenne badge on the passenger side B pillar and no badge on the drivers side B pillar.
My mother’s early-82 production Olds Cutlass Supreme sedan had “Supreme” emblems all over it, with the exception of the interior door panels…all 4 had Cutlass LS emblems…LS was the name they used in 1981. The weird thing is, the interior and exterior color were new for 82, so I have to imagine whatever vendor built the door panels had leftover LS emblems and just kept using what they had on hand for 1982. I sure hope some poor soul didn’t get a couple of LS and a couple of Supreme door panels, but given GM’s quality control, it’s not impossible.
When I was a little kid, my brother in law had a 1957 Plymouth with PLYMOUHT spelled out on the hood.
A friends father bought a new 1966 Plymouth Fury III four door hardtop here in Canada. Three door trim panels were marked Fury III and the passenger front was scripted Polara 880. Canadian Plymouths and Dodges had identical interiors and all had Plymouth dashboards.
Maine State Police used to buy Ford Crown Victorias with Grand Marquis rear badging and tail lights. I’ve seen them unmarked with an afghan in the back window. As the speeder blows past “Grandma”, the blues light up. Oops!
At Sewell Cadillac of Dallas sales centre, I remembered seeing US version of Cadillac Seville (1992-1997) fitted with export taillamps. The taillamps were wired like least-common-denominator American red taillamps so both amber and red lenses illuminated and blinked together.
I pointed it out to a salesman who had no idea how the wrong taillamps ended up on US model. They phoned Cadillac headquarter and were told to replace the taillamps and ship them back this pronto.
My father’s 1968 GMC pickup was a base trim model with 292 inline 6 engine CS1500. The front fender enblems stated “Custom 1500 V-8”. Furthermore, the equipment list stated the 4-speed manual transmission as “SM420” rather than SM465 as stated in the owner’s manual and brochure. From what I’ve researched, the SM420 was used on 1967 and prior year models. I suspected the truck was an early production 1968 and the assembly line had some leftover SM420 transmissions.
Not quite as egregious, but my 1999 new bodystyle GMC Sierra came with an owners manual for the previous bodystyle, which was produced alongside it (badged as Sierra Classic) for ’99. It was built in September 1998, so may have been an early production issue. I usually search for 2000 model year parts for it as many vendors specify the old bodystyle for ’99 also.
I’ve has the opposite happen, owner’s manual for the new model in an old model. It was a real nuisance, as the entire dash changed, and I had to figure out the (non-intuitive) minor controls for myself.
Even 2000 might not work. I have a 2000 non-Silverado Chevy 2500 (Sierra Classic in GMC lingo), old GMT400 style, as it was a government fleet order. Finding the correct parts can be difficult.
When I was selling Saturn S-Series cars, we had one base SL come in with an interior rear door panel from an up level SL2…at least it was the same colour! A friend of mine bought a brand new “CHRYLSER” Neon in 2000, the first year of the re-style (they were Chrysler Neons in Canada after 2000)… I didn’t have the heart to point it out to him…
My parents remembered an episode of Phil Silvers’ show in the 1950s, sponsored by Pontiac. This was when ads were done live, and the particular specimen that Pontiac supplied that day apparently had a couple letters reversed, so the trunk lid read “Potniac.” According to my parents, Silvers would not let go of that for the rest of the show.
At Vince Whibbs Pontiac-GMC-Mazda in 1977 was a new GMC pickup with a Chevy grille. Local sheriff’s office had a 1979 Catalina with “Bonneville” on the dash.
Often seen in the 1970s on Chrysler products, when the Dodge and Plymouth versions were essentially clones: different nameplates on the front fenders, left and right. Aspen/Volare, Fury/Monaco…you get it!
Some 1976-77 Plymouth Volarés were built with Dodge Aspen side trim. But in many cases that was intentional; the Aspen trim was at mid-side, the Volaré far down on the body. The Aspen trim better protected the bodyside against door dings, so many cars ordered for rental fleets came with the Aspen trim, whether they were actually Volarés or Aspens.
My grand parents neighbors had a new Volare/Aspen back in the day. It was a Volare on one side and an Aspen on the other, right down to the badges.
Back in ’81 a Pontiac dealer in northern Ontario I visited had a then-new Laurentian with Laurentian side nameplates, Bonneville on the dash and Catalina on the trunk lid.
That’s strange, given the Bonneville wasn’t sold or made in Canada.
By 1981 GM Canada was making US versions of B-bodies in Oshawa, my 80 Caprice is US market, but made in Canada, same for some Pontiacs.
On a Mercedes AMG A45, 3 red seatbelts and one black!
I remember seeing a ’68 Mustang with the steering wheel center panel from a Cougar (owner swore it was untouched from the factory). Also, i have seen early Mustangs with mis-stamped and double-stamped serial numbers on the inner fender.
I’ve never seen a Buick with its logo upside down before. This looked unusual.
The 63 Grand Prix my mother owned came new form the dealer with the “D” form GRAND PRIX on the right front fender mounted upside down. Dad was foing to have it corrected, but mom say no, she liked it, said it looked like a little kid had written it. (Mom liked odd things like that, probably why she put up with me and my siblings)
Hay you guys, besides the upsidedown logo,
isn’t the directional signal lens to the right of the of the center,
an odd place for it?
Some one please confirm, thanks
The real signal lights are correct as I photographed them.
I wish I had pictures of it, but years ago, we were all on a family holiday, and to kill some time, my Dad and I went for a walk to a Ford dealer near the hotel we were staying at. There, we saw a brand new 1980 Ford Fairmont coupe with a “Futura” badge on one B pillar, and a “Z7” badge (from a Mercury Zephyr) on the other B pillar. I guess you can’t see both sides at the same time, so what’s the harm, right? Haha!!
I’ve seen a car badged as a Tempo on one side and a Topaz on the other. I guess you could call that a Fordury.
I worked for a business in 86 that ordered a new F350 HD 6×4 cab and chassis with a 7.5 ltr.(460) gas engine. The truck arrived as such with big diesel emblems on bolth front fenders. The owner left it that way. He use to muse “That’s a quiet diesel ain’t it?”
I remember seeing a Volkswagen Quantum on the lot of the local VW dealership with a Santana badge on the dashboard…..the name used in Germany, but not in the US
Needs obvious vanity plate ABRAXAS.
My father-in-law used to work on the Ford assembly line in Oakville Ontario.
Back in the 1950a or so, he worked “quality control” at the end of the line. One time a car came down the line. He looked at it, and there was something wrong with it. So he walked in closer to look at it. The trim was straight. The colours matched. The interior was ok. It all looked right. Everything. Trim, badges, the whole car. But it still bugged him. He stepped back.
Then he saw it.
On one side, it was a four-door sedan. On the other, it was a two-door sedan.
That car was taken out back and shown a good time^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^^H scrapped.
If it was a 4 door on the pass side they could have taken advantage and gotten a 50 year jump on the Hyundai Veloster.
Or the elusive Volvo 243.
Once saw a plymouth grand caravan
They could have used this LeSabre in the filming of Fargo Season 2, which was done in southern Alberta. I heartily endorse the show, not only for the cornucopia of CCs, but the fact that it was a superb series.
This is my 1968 Coronet. If you look closely, you can see that the R/T emblem on the fender is tilted about 20 degrees; its supposed to be straight.
Like the feature car, Im the second owner after buying it from the original owner in 1998 and I know that all of the body panels are the originals and have never been removed so the misaligned mounting holes are a factory error and not done by a body shop during a repair. I painted the car in 2007 and the painter asked me if I wanted to remount the emblem the ‘correct’ way and I said nope, its lasted this long so why change it now!
Still a great looking car, even with the slightly off R/T emblem.
One thing I did when I rebuilt my Hillman was make all the trim fit properly as it marks the change in the paint colours I wanted it right nobody at the factory seemed to feel that way however and along with the appalling fit of the rear quarter panels it looked they rushed to get ready for lunch or something, I had another car the same here that I wrecked for parts and it was trim perfect so mine must have been a Monday or Friday effort.
thanks rudiger!
Kiwi, yes the initial build quality on classic cars was miserable. Misaligned panels, unevenly applied factory paint with orange peel, etc. Todays cars are largely built by computer-controlled robots which removes much of the human error element but I like that stuff on the old cars, it adds to their character. I get a laugh out of restorers that still insist that factory NOS parts are better than todays aftermarket replacement parts when in truth, the factory parts didn’t fit the “right” way when they were new either!
Are you thinking of MGB GT tailgates? Which were forced into position with a jack, at the factory! I think the new Heritage shells arrive with a properly fitted tailgate, although there may still be some hydraulics behind the scenes.
A neighbor of mine had a 68 Coronet 440, darker green than Lt’s. On one quarter panel, Coronet was misspelled Coornet. Ironically, he totaled the car one night driving drunk.
I spent many miles riding shotgun in my friends 1968 Dodge Coronet 440. It was a real sleeper, under the radar of the insurance companies. It was listed on the title as having a V8, manual transmission 2 dr. In actuality it was a 2 dr HT, bench front seat, HP 383 V8, 4 spd, PS & PB. It was the sleeper equivalent of a ’68 Roadrunner or Super Bee. We had a lot of fun beating out the competition. I drove it some of my other friend’s cars a ’67 Vette with a 427 450 HP, ’62 Galaxy 406, a couple of Mach 1 428 CJ’s and a ’64 GTO clone that I helped build in 1969. My car, a tricked out 53 Rambler Classic V8 4 dr sedan which I used to get a lot of compliments on from people who could clean my clock in a stoplight drag race. My Rambler was set up for handling, on a curvy road or downtown cruising turns nobody could touch me back in the day.
I think when the first Japanese cars arrived in the US they were more carefully assembled with consistent and narrower shut lines than American cars, before there were many robots doing assembly. It’s a matter of attention to detail, facilitated by Japanese culture and the management structures of their factories which were eventually replicated in the US.
Except that now, the Japanese makes aren’t so seamlessly assembled. They can’t seem to get the door sills to line up, and More recent Camrys and Prius models have extremely sloppy front fender to rocker panel fit. But of course, nobody would dare point out that Japanese quality isn’t what it once was, now would they?
I think it was on the Bullitt Mustang discussion board that someone had gotten a first series car without the GT hood scoop. He was actually torn between having it fixed or leaving it as-is due to the rare nature of the flub.
But my favorite assembly line ‘glitch’ isn’t really an unintentional glitch at all. When the Chevy Vega came out, there was a lot of ill will between GM and the union, not least of which was how GM kept speeding up the assembly line. When the cars came off the line, they were quality inspected and if there were any cars that needed to be fixed prior to shipment, they were set aside and repaired at some point.
Well, evidently, the guys on the line decided they would intentionally screw up a specific Vega as much as they possibly could. Somehow, they were able to designate this one car so that the guys at every station would do their best to screw up their particular assembly process, then send it on. As you might imagine, when it got to the end of the line, it was so badly built, that all the quality inspectors could do was set it aside since it was, literally, non-repairable without having to completely take it apart and reassemble, piece by piece. The story goes that it sat somewhere at the Lordstown plant for a long, long time. IIRC, that story might have been from Delorean’s book, On a Clear Day, You Can See General Motors.
Regardless, if that Vega ever actually got sold, it would be one of the coolest Vegas to find.
Too bad that car mistakes unlike postage stamp mistakes don’t increase the value into the stratosphere.
I can’t confirm that this is original, but we bought our 1987 Chevrolet R10 Custom Deluxe in 1996 as a 1-owner truck. The badges on the outside are correct, as is the one on the dashboard. But, my steering wheel really wanted to be a GMC
My parents got a new LeBaron in April of ’78. Nothing noteworthy in terms of defects, just plenty of loose bolts, a missing LeBaron script on one side, a sun visor too long to fit in the notch, and a 14 inch rim space saver spare when the car had 15s. The Lean Burn computer setup stranded the car numerous times in the first 3 or 4 months due to failed sensors and broken ground wires and such. Typical Mopar for the time. In the fall of ’79, a failed bearing caused a front wheel to part company with the rest of the car.
My grandmother owned a 1955 Chevy BelAir Sport Coupe (turquoise&white).
On each side of the car, just aft of the doors was a gold-colored Chevy badge (see below).
On the passenger side of the car, the badge was installed from the factory upside down.
My ’87 Caprice wagon is a non A/C car. Two of the three vent pulls under the steering column are installed correctly, the third is upside down. It wouldn’t be so annoying if they weren’t trapezoid, so it is obvious and difficult to pull out.
This had to be a factory error as I can see no obvious way to correct it, and I doubt the original elderly owner had anything to do with it.
A friend of mine and I both have Focus hatchbacks. We both bought ours brand new, and they’re both practically identical SE models.
I noticed one time when following them home that one of their taillights has light strips as shown here, while the other one does not. A cursory glance around the internet seems to suggest that these lights were only installed on the Focus Electric and the European Titanium model (we’re in the US).
I remember being on a test drive with my grandfather in an Oldsmobile 98 that had a Buick badge on the inside rear door panel. Many years later, a local taxi company was using similar B and C body FWD cars as cabs, and they had a LeSabre with a Park Avenue front clip, but that was probably a collision repair. I remember seeing some pics of mismatched finish on Jeep Wrangler fender flares a couple of years ago.
Our beloved 1990 Plymouth Acclaim, while the best car we owned up to that time, wasn’t without its quirks. When we took delivery, the next day we noticed the model name on the right side of the dash – SPIRIT!
They had to replace the whole padded dash panel to accommodate ACCLAIM!
Back then, Chrysler would bend over backwards to make their customers happy – at least our Chrysler-Plymouth dealer did.
That car had a few other glitches which were happily taken care of as well, and we proudly drove that car for 10+1/2 years.
My Dad and I restored a 1959 Impala 4-door hardtop “Sport Sedan” that was a factory single-color car (Snowcrest White), but had the extra stainless steel trim on the rear doors to allow for a two-tone paint job. The holes in the doors for the trim looked like factory stamping, but the trim tag indicated a solid white car. Maybe someone picked up the wrong doors and painted the thing before realizing their mistake? Or maybe they were trying to clear the parts bin? Did Chevy expect more two-tones in ’59 and overproduce the extra trim, and then decide later in the model year to start slapping the extra trim onto monotone cars too? I guess I’ll never know.
AMC dealers receiving cars with M-A-R-B-L-E-R spelled out across the front.
You have suspect body shops for some of these minor but visible glitches.
Best I’ve heard are of a Rover 2000 (SD1) with no reverse gear and a Morris Marina with a disc brake on one side and drum brake on the other, and a Renault Fuego with no bulbs in the front indicators
I’ve always thought the upside down badges were more of a silent protest/mild sabotage from the blessed UAW than actual mistakes.
I remember Car and Driver getting a new Mexico-built Golf around 1993(?) that was built with two different colored front seats!
5 stand out very well.
1) 1984 Ford LTD with a Mercury steering wheel logo. And this was fresh off the truck
2) 2008 Chrysler Sebring- one of the first to reach any nearby dealer. One side had a bodyside molding and the other nothing!
3) 2015 Hyundai Sonata SE- the driver’s side had a lower chrome molding. The other side didn’t. No SE trim level cars are supposed to have the lower chrome trim only the Sport and Limited models
4) 2005 Toyota Camry XLE- 4 new cars were just unloaded off the truck in top XLE trim. One white car lacked the XLE badge but the other 3 had it.
5) 2002 Toyota Corolla- brand new with plastic still on the floors- front and rear plastic bumpers were so far off the tint compared to the steel parts of the car. This was a silver car. The other colors weren’t nearly so far off.
Lots of bumper covers don’t even remotely match the color on the rest of the car…then the owner wrecks the car and bitches a blue streak when the new cover doesn’t match any better than the factory one that got damaged. I actually took an irate Lexus owner to the new car lot once, walked the line pointing out that NONE of them match, especially light metallic colors like that Bamboo Pearl (light green) that they put on so many RX300s.
My grandma’s 78 Pontiac Lemans had several different shades of red plastic inside, some of which faded to a nauseated pink color after the years rolled by.
That’s factory….
Well, there were these, but VW did it on purpose…
Grandmother’s last Buick Electra was a ’73 regular 225, but had ‘Limited’ badge on the dash. Wasn’t worth fixing.
C/D had a [’91?] Mercury Tracer long term test car with one seat having mismatched trim.
Can’t blame UAW, since car was built in Mexico.
We had a new Crown Vic as part of our work fleet that came with Mercury badging on the trunk. Apparently nobody noticed during the PDI, nobody at work noticed until I pointed it out. The Ford dealer replaced the badging when it was brought to their attention.
In Spain in the seventies it was very common to find Seats and Renaults with different parts from different generations. Usually they tried to get rid of the older generation parts and some cars are called “between series” because they share components from two generations.
So, what’s up with the Saskatchewan plate in the front and the Alberta plate in the back?
EDIT: I get it – ’68 plate up front. Is it the original plate for that car?
My grandparents had a ’94 DeVille Concours. In the brochure you could see the plain DeVilles had the wreath and crest emblem on the D pillars while the Concours had none. Yet theirs had one on the driver’s side and none on the passenger side. Always bugged me for some reason.
It reminds me of something a silly young person would do to be different or rebellious- to take the emblem off and mount it again upside-down. Or an elaborate practical joke, to humiliate the owner of the vehicle.
In 1981 my grandparents and parents both bought Buick Centuries, my mom’s in powder blue with dark blue vinyl top and my grandpa’s in silver and silver top. On my grandpa’s, the right rear fender had a Century badge while the left rear had a Regal badge. He never had it fixed.
That being said, they ended up being pretty good cars. I was sad when they traded in the blue ’81 in ’89 for a LeSabre because I was hoping to inherit it. As it was, I didn’t own a car until almost 10 years later when I got out of college.
Minor example- an early 2000’s Corolla with baby blue paint would be awesome but I don’t think Toyota ever made it this way. Note that whoever repainted it didn’t redo the COROLLA lettering on the trunk lid.
It’s probably off by no more than 1/8th to 1/4th of an inch, but these days it shouldn’t happen at all….
Sloppy dealer stickers irritate me as well…
A buddy during my last year of undergrad (circa 2003) received a then-new Toyota Vibe from his parents to replace his aging Dakota pickup.
I say Toyota Vibe because the car was properly meant to be a Pontiac Vibe, but they installed a Toyota steering wheel.
Keep an eye on the 09 and up Rams with the letters on the doors- our salesman had one and it looked like a drunkard eyeballed it and called it a day…all the letters were crooked and the Hemi badge was off as well.
my late father [not a great driver] once had a 1954 dodge sedan. He smucked the front end just before trading it in on the next whatever[ I can’t remember what!] One of my dad’s childhood buddies had a body shop and he grafted on a 1954 Plymouth front clip…needless to say, it fit perfectly! It was only after dad had got a very generous allowance for the trade-in that someone actually noticed that something was amiss…
In my albeit limited experience, adhesive emblems with separate letters are shipped such that the letters CAN’T be applied funny, as long as the letters are kept in the foam or paper template, or even have clear tape on the back of the letters, like the image attached…peel off the yellow backer, apply the letters as a group, then peel the clear tape off the shiny/exposed side and you are all set. You can get the whole thing crooked, but the characters should be in proper relation to each other, unless someone cheaped-out and re-used the old emblem(s).
Not a fan of two-tone paint with the fat, multi-color stripes separating the colors…lots of Ford trucks with those stripes nowhere close to straight.
My boss bought ordered a new IROC-Z back in 85 … No damage or repair , only 4,000 miles in 1992 , one day i was washing it for him ( garage and detail shop ) and i noticed the “I” on passenger door was upside-down . ( graduated vertically thin to thick) He never noticed before , i assume the decals would have been on a single transfer sheet … Worker must have wrinkled and cut one off another …
And i just bought an ’87 suzuki savage motorcycle , the left tank decal is upside down , factory paint and factory clear over deacals . 100% sure it was QA missed .
The overpaid and overrated UAW workers of that era used to like to install one model nameplate on one side of the car and then another on the other side of the car. There would be Dodge Volares and Plymouth Aspens, Ford Comets and Mercury Mavericks. Seen them in real life on new lots.
The only thing that has really changed is that there are fewer UAW workers and fewer badges to engineer.