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Some car company sub-brands are legends in their own right.
BMW’s M Sport, AMG from Mercedes-Benz and SRT from FCA spring to mind.
Some have proved so potent their owners have promoted them to become full brands in their own right. And the latest candidate is about to appear on our roads, in the case of Ford’s Mustang Mach-E, a new all electric crossover that promises as many as 300 miles of range on a single-charge. Purists won’t like it, but how will the new Mustang brand shape up?
In our round-up we take a look at all the most famous automotive sub-brands there’s ever been, in chronological order:
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RS (Ford) 1968 onwards
The year 2018 marked the 50th anniversary of the first RS (Rallye Sport) model, the front-wheel drive Taunus 15M produced by Ford of Germany.
But it would be another two years before the RS brand really resonated with fast Ford fans, with the arrival of the Escort RS1600. Launched in January 1970, the fast Escort was the work of Ford’s newly established Advanced Vehicle Operations (AVO), which came up with a raft of hot Capris, Escorts and Fiestas.
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RS (Ford) 1968 onwards
The RS brand did not appear in the country of Ford’s birth until the launch of the four-wheel-drive Focus RS (pictured) in America in 2016.
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Gordini (Renault) 1968-1978, 2010-2012
Amédée Gordini (1899-1979) started tuning cars in the 1930s, but once World War Two was over he started to produce his own cars in limited numbers.
A switch from Simca to Renault in the 1950s led to Renault-Gordinis being campaigned in the Le Mans 24 Hours throughout the 1960s. It also led to the introduction of the Dauphine Gordini in 1957, then a string of other Gordini-fettled Renaults including the 5, 12, 17 and 8.
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Gordini (Renault) 1968-1978, 2010-2012
Renault revived the brand in 2009, to market sporty versions of its Twingo, Clio, and Wind, but the effort was short-lived as they were no more powerful. Renault executive Carlos Tavares – today the head of rival PSA – seemed to criticise the effort in 2012 when he said they ‘had not been 100% authentic…’
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M (BMW) 1972 onwards
When it comes to cachet, few motoring brands can match BMW’s M division. Its first road car was the M1 then we got the M5, M3, M6 and more. First set up in 1972 as BMW Motorsport GmbH to develop racing cars, attention had turned to road cars by the end of the decade. In 1993 the division was renamed to simply M – very cryptic, and fittingly just like something from a Bond movie.
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M (BMW) 1972 onwards
Interestingly, and rarely for a sub-brand, M has the status of a manufacturer in Germany. Thus proper M cars have their own VIN prefix separate from normal BMWs and the badge on the door sill says "BMW M GmbH" not "BMW AG", and means that technically, BMW M is not even a subsidiary of BMW. And to this day M cars are among the most desirable BMWs.
This particular sub-brand also has a sub-brand of its own, M Sport. This is a trim level offered on various BMWs in many markets (though not the US) that offers a sportier-look and discrete M badging but not the engines that usually go with that branding. They tend to be more desirable and hold their value better than non-M Sport models.
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Quattro/Audi Sport (Audi) 1983 onwards
The UR Quattro reshaped motoring history – and the World Rally Championship – so you can’t blame Audi for cashing in on the brand by milking it as much as possible. While Audi’s four-wheel drive models carry quattro branding, the German company also set up a division called quattro GmbH to develop high-performance RS models as well as the R8.
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Quattro/Audi Sport (Audi) 1983 onwards
In 2016 the division was renamed Audi Sport GmbH, we believe in part because it wanted the freedom to launch performance cars that don’t have four-wheel-drive. One such car was unveiled at the 2017 Frankfurt motor show – the rear-wheel-drive limited edition Audi R8 RWS (pictured).
Like BMW M, this particular sub-brand has given birth to another sub-brand called S line. This is a trim level on many Audi models - though again not in America - whereby they get a sporty appearance in terms of wheels and spoilers but with standard engines.
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Nismo (Nissan) 1988 onwards
Although formed as Nissan’s performance division in 1984, it didn’t produce a car until 1987, in the shape of the Skyline R31. This was followed in 1988 by the Saurus race car, and in 1990 by the Skyline GT-R. A later Z-Tune GT-R, from 2003, saw power of 500bhp and a top speed of over 200mph, and just 19 were made.
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Nismo (Nissan) 1988 onwards
The current GT-R, launched in 2008, didn’t get the Nismo treatment until 2015; that car features a power hike to 591bhp and a 50% price hike over the standard GT-R.
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SVO/SVT (Ford) 1981 onwards
Ford formed its performance-focused Special Vehicle Operations in 1981, and aside from supervising Ford’s race car interests it produced its own car in 1984, the Ford Mustang SVO. A sister division in Australia beefed up models such as the Ford Falcon. SVO was renamed Special Vehicles Team (SVT) in 1993.
Its most famous recent model was 2010’s SVT Raptor (pictured), a F-150-based supertruck whose 6.2-litre V8 delivered 411bhp. This helped this 2767kg beast to 60mph in 6.7 seconds.
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SVO/SVT (Ford) 1981 onwards
The SVT name has been dropped from its successor F-150, the Raptor of 2017, and this fact combined with the introduction of the RS brand to America has led some to conclude that the SVT name will be retired to make way for it.
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HSV (Holden) 1988 onwards
Holden Special Vehicles is the performance arm of GM’s Australian division, and was started by the Scottish race car driver and businessman Tom Walkinshaw (1946-2010). Its first car was 1988’s Holden VL Commodore SS Group A SV, a homologation special and sister vehicle to the Vauxhall Senator.
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HSV (Holden) 1988 onwards
Perhaps its most famous vehicle today is the A$79,990 (US$62,900) HSV Maloo R8 LSA, a gloriously insane Holden Commodore saloon-based pickup truck, whose retuned Camaro ZL1 6.2-litre V8 will get the car to 60mph in 4.5 seconds. Sadly, with the ending of GM car production in Australia in 2017 the Commodore died, and took the Maloo with it.
HSV carries on, but as a badge attached to imported models.
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Cupra (Seat) 1996 onwards
The Cupra story begins in 1990 when Volkswagen finalised the purchase of its final stake in Spain’s primary carmaker, Seat. Volkswagen managers immediately sought ways for the company to extend its identity, and looked closedly at the Seat Sport division - established in 1985 - which led the company’s rallying acitivities.
Out of this came the Cupra performance sub-brand. It was first used on the Seat Ibiza GTI Cupra Sport in 1996. In 2000, things stepped up a bit with the Leon Cupra 4, which was notable for being the first and last Cupra to feature a six-cylinder engine.
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Cupra (Seat) 1996 onwards
As with several other sub-brands mentioned here, Cupra was deemed so successful that it became a fully-fledge brand all of its own, in its case in 2018. The Cupra range now encompasses the Ateca SUV, and the Leon hatchback and estate. It will receive its first ever standalone model, to be named Formentor, in 2020.
The SUV coupé – which we spotted out testing recently (pictured) - looks to be heavily influenced by the 20V20 concept car seen in 2015.
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AMG (Mercedes-Benz) 1999 onwards
AMG started out as an independent company, set up in 1967 by Hans Werner Aufrecht and Erhard Melcher to make Mercedes-Benz cars go faster ‘A’ and ‘M’ come from their surnames, while ‘G’ represents Großaspach, Aufrecht’s birthplace. Initially the focus was on motorsport, and then came the souped-up road cars.
AMG gained a reputation for brilliant work so Mercedes started sniffing round and took a controlling interest in 1999.
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AMG (Mercedes-Benz) 1999 onwards
By 2005 AMG had become wholly-owned by Mercedes and now the sub-brand has its own relationships with engines and certain technology with Pagani and Aston Martin, and also makes AMG-only models like the AMG GT (pictured). As with BMW’s M Sport and Audi’s S line, Mercedes also offers the sporty AMG appearance with standard engines, as a trim level called AMG Line
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Maybach (Mercedes-Benz) 2002-2012, 2014 onwards
Wilhelm Maybach (1846-1929) set up a company to make very expensive and luxurious cars in 1909, but stopped doing so when the Second World War began, making engines for tanks - including the infamous Tiger - instead.
Daimler-Benz bought the company in 1960. In 1997 Mercedes revealed that it was reviving the marque and soon after we got the 57 and 62, which sold like bacon rolls at a vegan convention; it turned out that the few people for whom the Maybach name still had resonance were either extremely old or not members of the super-rich club that could afford one.
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Maybach (Mercedes-Benz) 2002-2012, 2014 onwards
The result was the Maybach brand being mothballed in 2012, only for it to be revived again as the range-topping Mercedes-Maybach S-Class in 2014. A large Maybach-badged SUV based on the new Mercedes GLS-Class (pictured) was revealed in late 2019, and you can also buy a Maybach badged S-Class Cabriolet in certain markets including the USA, where it costs a cool $300,000 or so.
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SRT (Chrysler, Dodge, and Jeep) 2003 onwards
SRT stands for Street & Racing Technology and is a performance group within Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. Its first car was inauspiciously based on the otherwise lacklustre Dodge Neon of 2003; the 4-cylinder turbocharged Neon SRT was very fast however and one was clocked by Maine police doing 146mph in 2016.
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SRT (Chrysler, Dodge, and Jeep) 2003 onwards
SRT is probably best known today for making rather larger cars with big engines. Its fastest car today is the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon (pictured), whose 6.2-litre supercharged Demon HEMI V8 can belt out 828bhp using high-octane fuel and gets the car to 60mph in just 2.3 seconds.
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VXR (Vauxhall) 2004 onwards
Britain’s Vauxhall was owned by GM until 2017. It has long been seen on a level with Ford in terms of brand equity, but without the latter’s reputation for brilliant dynamics. To counter this, GM came up with the VXR brand in 2004, spun off from its VX Racing division. Things looked promising at first as the first cars to wear VXR badges were the Monaro (an Aussie muscle car) and the VXR220, a lightweight turbocharged sports car engineered and built by Lotus.
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VXR (Vauxhall) 2004 onwards
The Corsa and Vectra weren’t bad either, but the Zafira and Meriva VXR (pictured) hot minivans were a bit silly. Sister European brand Opel has OPC, which makes essentially identical models to the VXR. As of now, there are no Vauxhall VXRs currently in production; we reported in 2019 however that the badge will be brought back to denote high-performance versions of the company’s electric cars, starting with the Corsa-e. Though various rebadged Opels have made it to America - most recently as Buicks - sadly no OPC versions have done so.
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V-Series (Cadillac) 2004 onwards
Cadillac turned 100 in 2003, but the brand needed help. Though boosted by the successful launch of the Escalade SUV in 1998, GM felt that the brand needed added vim to help it compete better with energetic rival cars from Germany. An idea inevitably championed by then-GM vice chairman and resident car guy Bob Lutz, the V-Series was born. The first car to get V- badging was the CTS-V.
Developed by GM’s new special vehicle performance team, the saloon featured a 5.7-litre V8 (acquired from the Corvette Z06) good for 395bhp, and extensive testing at the Nürburgring delivered; when we first drove it we declared it had a “chassis of genuine poise and ability.”
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V-Series (Cadillac) 2004 onwards
V- badging ended up on substantial parts of the Cadillac range, and all delivered high performance in a relatively affordable package compared to BMW M, Audi RS and Mercedes AMG equivalents, and they all helped to tweak if not exactly transform Caddy’s image. In 2019 there was a slight change in direction, as the V- badge was installed on the CT4 and CT5 saloons but with engines rather more modest in power – 315bhp in the CT4-V and 355bhp in the CT5-V.
What’s going on? Well it seems that Cadillac is making room for new high performance variants - ‘Blackwing’ - to be installed at the top of its performance range at some stage later in 2020.
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Abarth (Fiat) 2007 onwards
Carlo Abarth (1908-1979) worked wonders in the 1950s and 1960s, most famously souping up Fiat 500s although he worked on plenty of other models too. By 1971 he had sold his business to Fiat which turned it into a go-faster sub-brand like Ford’s RS.
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Abarth (Fiat) 2007 onwards
Long used as a performance trim level on Fiats, in 2007 Fiat set up Abarth as a separate brand within its group in some places, with a view to selling hot 500s and Grande Puntos. It also launched the Mazda MX-5-derived Abarth Spider, though it didn’t last long on sale in many markets like the UK; we drove the Rally version in 2017 and got quite carried away (see above).
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i (BMW) 2013 onwards
When BMW decided to embrace electrification it didn’t do it half-heartedly. It set up a new factory to build carbon-fibre bodyshells and it founded a new brand to market them. Called simply i, the first models were the i3 and then the i8.
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i (BMW) 2013 onwards
BMW’s follow-up was an iPerformance designation for plug-in hybrids such as the 330e and 740e. The iVision Dynamics concept car in 2017 previewed a new BMW 3 Series-sized electric vehicle with a 373-mile range that will go on sale in 2021, probably to be known as the i4. We reckon it will offer 523bhp from a 80kWh electric motor; we spotted it out testing in late 2019 (pictured).
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SVO (Jaguar) 2014 onwards
Launched in 2014, Jaguar Land Rover’s Special Vehicle Operations aims to offer three different types of ultimate product: ultra-fast road-going models (SVR), ultra-luxurious off-roaders (SVX) and pinnacle machines badged SV-Autobiography, sitting at the top of the market.
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SVO (Jaguar) 2014 onwards
So far the brand has remained fairly low-key, though we’re huge fans of the 542bhp five-star Range Rover Sport SVR (pictured). We expect to see much more from SVO in the coming years
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Vignale (Ford) 2014 onwards
Italian coachbuilder Alfredo Vignale (1913-1969) set up his coachbuilding firm in 1948 in Turin; by 2014 it had become a Ford sub-brand that it was hoped would become a stand-alone marque, such would be its success. The moniker was introduced to push Ford upmarket; its mainstream models would be loaded with kit and Vignale badges would be stuck on to create a premium halo brand in Europe.
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Vignale (Ford) 2014 onwards
But posher cabin materials and more buttons to press don’t take away the fact that this is still a Ford – which despite its often very good cars isn’t seen as an aspirational badge by many buyers, and loaded they may be, but Vignales are by no means cheap.
Vignale versions are now offered in many markets (though not the USA) on the Fiesta (pictured), S-Max, Kuga, Mondeo, and Focus. Interestingly, Vignale models receive no model name badging – i.e. the words Fiesta or Mondeo etc. are not to be found on the vehicles – just Vignale.
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e-tron (Audi) 2014 onwards
Reserved for its electrified cars, Audi introduced the e-tron brand in 2009 on a concept car but it would be another five years before there was a production e-tron in showrooms – a plug-in hybrid A3 Sportback. We’re likely to see a lot more production cars badged e-tron in the future.
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e-tron (Audi) 2014 onwards
The first standalone e-tron model was the e-tron SUV (pictured), launched in 2019. It offers a cosseting introduction to the EV SUV experience, with a real world range of just under 200 miles.
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Gazoo Racing (Toyota) 2016 onwards
Toyota has been in a seemingly multi-decade effort to soup up its somewhat staid image, and the renaming of its motorsport division to Gazoo Racing (GR) is part of that process. We asked its boss – Koei Saga - what ‘Gazoo’ actually meant, and he laughed, and said that the name lost a bit in translation from the Japanese ‘gazo’, but in English it means ‘picture’ or ‘image’.
Still, something must have worked since Toyota won the World Rally Championship in 2018 in a high-performance Yaris.
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Gazoo Racing (Toyota) 2016 onwards
Seemingly emboldened, Toyota has started to add the initials GR to the formal model names of its fast cars, such as the new Toyota GR Supra. Even more excitingly, in January 2020 Toyota revealed its four-wheel drive GR Yaris, which features a 257bhp engine. Developed by Gazoo Racing it’s a homologation special that will help development of the next WRC car. The car is just 3995mm long. Press reports suggest we’ll have other GR models along before too long, including ones based on the Corolla and C-HR.
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EQ (Mercedes) 2018 onwards
Electrification has led a lot of car makers to think carefully about their marketing strategies and for Mercedes this has led to the setting up of a new division called EQ.
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EQ (Mercedes) 2018 onwards
The first production EQ model called the EQC is a 200-mile real world range SUV which went on sale in Europe in 2019. This is the concept EQA - we should see a production version of this Tesla Model 3 rival in 2020.
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Polestar (Volvo) 2018 onwards
Founded in 1996 as Flash Engineering, the company was renamed Polestar in 2005. Four years later Polestar started working with Volvo to offer officially sanctioned performance upgrades for its production cars. Volvo then acquired Polestar in 2015 with a view to turning it into its performance arm.
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Polestar (Volvo) 2018 onwards
Recently it has announced that the division will focus on producing high-performance electrified cars as a stand-alone brand. The first model was the Polestar 1 (pictured), a high performance petrol-hybrid. Its next model will be the Polestar 2, an all-electric rival to the Tesla Model 3.
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Mustang (Ford) arrives 2020
Ford has wrestled for decades with how to extract higher prices for its cars, and one attempt was to just buy premium-badge car firms like Jaguar and Land Rover instead. After it retreated from that effort, it came up with the Vignale super-premium trim level instead, as mentioned. But for its new all-electric crossover, Ford turned to its famous Mustang badge. Purists look away now.
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Mustang (Ford) arrives 2020
The new Mustang Mach-E sports the famous pony badging front and centre. Indeed, since there is not a single blue oval in sight on the car, arguably Mustang has jumped straight into full car brand status.
With a single-charge range of 300 miles, Ford is hoping to take the fight to Tesla’s upcoming Model Y. We haven’t driven it yet, but Ford chairman Bill Ford promised us in 2019 that “it’s going to go like hell.” And while Ford isn’t shouting about it as yet, we believe this will be only the first in a series of Mustang-branded vehicles to launch.
Time will tell if this is a new car brand that’s here to stay, but whatever happens it’s an interesting turn of fortune for the Mustang, which became the world’s fastest selling car and an instant icon upon its launch back in 1964.
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