Holden Special Vehicles and Ford Performance Vehicles were worthy rivals to the world’s best performance sub-brands, but where did this type of branding come from?
Performance sub-brands have been around for a long time, but have really taken a key role for manufacturers in recent years to the extent of being separate entities.
Many start as private companies such as Fiat’s performance subsidiary Abarth, which was purchased and absorbed into the Italian manufacturer in 1971.
Started by Carlo Abarth 12 years earlier, the company under the ownership of Fiat has produced performance variants of various models including most famously, the 500.
The famous scorpion logo of Abarth continues to adorn Fiat dealers to this day.
Another famous link up is AMG and Mercedes.
AMG was established by former Mercedes-Benz engineers Hans Werner Aufrecht and Erhard Melcher in 1967.
AMG was formed out of combining the last initials of the founders and the birth town of Aufrecht, Grossaspach.
Working manufacturers such as Mitsubishi and Honda during its history, Mercedes has remained at the core of AMG and in 1993 the two organisations entered into an agreement. This resulted in AMG using the manufacturer’s dealer network and the development of joint models.
This was further advanced when DaimlerChrysler AG acquired 51 percent of AMG and the remainder were sold in 2005 to become a fully owned subsidiary of Mercedes-Benz.
Its arch rival, BMW’s M brand on the other hand was developed purely by the manufacturer to develop and run the racing program during the 1960s. This knowledge soon advanced into the road car division leading the M1, M3 and M5 plus many special versions of the BMW range.
John Cooper is one of the most famous constructors of race cars in history, but the modification of Britain’s Mini has lasted until current day under the stewardship of son Michael.
NISMO, Ralliart, Honda’s R division, MazdaSpeed and Toyota’s GR range highlight the growth in the Japanese in addition to the correlation of racing programs into a road product.
NISMO, an abbreviation of Nissan Motorsport was created in 1984 and is one of the most well known performance divisions in the world, while Ralliart rose through the strength of Mitsubishi’s rallying program of the 1990s, as did Subaru’s STI range.
Honda’s Type R models have spawned the Integra, Civic, NSX, Accord and many concepts.
Mazdaspeed was an in-house skunkworks for Mazda formed in 1967 having taken its Le Mans winning pedigree to road going examples such as the MX-5, RX-7, 3 and 6, but its been more than a decade since the brand has featured in the line-up.
GR is the latest offering by Toyota encapsulating much of range including the Yaris, Corolla, Supra, 86, Hilux and even the Prado. It has been a lauded addition to the Toyota range and a rival to the next performance sub-brand to be mentioned.
Hyundai’s gone through a renaissance in the last 10 years and part of this is through its N Performance brand, which has entered into the fully electric era. It has also aided in Hyundai’s brand awareness through motorsport and risen its desirability through the i30 N range.
HSV and FPV although dearly departed, provided the hottest Australian models on offer until finishing up in the late 2010s.
Performance sub-brands continue to play an integral part in desirability and awareness as best displayed by Hyundai of recent times.
We need for more Rs, RSs and QVs in the world that’s for sure!