Porsche has a standardised way of arranging its badges on the wheels of its cars. This raised the question of whether other brands under the Volkswagen Group do the same?
Not too long ago I stumbled this article on Jalopnik of a journalist’s discovery as to how Porsche orients its badge as part of their brand identity. Basically, Porsche – part of the Volkswagen Group – has a specific way of aligning the crest on the wheels of its cars, from a display model at corporate events, down to the press cars around the world. Would this mean that other brands under the group share the same badge alignment on the wheels of its cars?
The way the badge is aligned is that the bottom of the crest points towards the air inflation nozzle, as shown in the image above and below.
Notice that the badge position is the same on the Porsche Panamera Turbo Executive…
…the Porsche 718 Boxter…
…even on the Porsche Macan Turbo.
With that in mind, a quick google search and looking through the image archive had shown that it’s not just Porsche that does this, but other brands under the Volkswagen Group does this as well.
Volkswagen
Of course, it comes to no surprise that Volkswagen cars arrange their badge in the same orientation as Porsche’s. Likewise, the bottom of the ‘W’ is pointing at the air inflation nozzle. I reckoned it’s a subtle way of telling where the air inflation nozzle is at the next time the owner pulls up at the petrol station air pumps.
Audi
Audi does the same as well, kind of. Judging on these pictures, the logo seems to align in such a way that four rings are horizontal above the air inflation nozzle. But it also seemed that there are exceptions made depending on the wheel design or model like on the Audi A8.
Skoda
Skoda follows the rule, just that top end of the logo is aligned to the top wheel nut, like being in the middle of the ‘star’, sometimes without factoring in the position of the air inflation nozzle.
However, brands such as Bugatti, Lamborghini and SEAT don’t seem to arrange their logos consistently in many of the official photos. Even if it’s so, it seems to be a coincidence. If you’re an owner of such cars of the more atas brands, I think you could request having the badges to be aligned uniformly.
From now on, this is something that I’ll need to pay attention to when taking out cars under the Volkswagen Group for a review in the future. I also found it interesting to see how some brands take the extra mile to make it as part of its identity and an official way to do it.
