The signatures
In recent years, the car industry has assimilated some unwritten rules. For one, automakers must produce blockbuster commercials around major sporting events, lest their financial health be questioned by Monday-morning quarterbacks. Just as ironclad is the rule that their marketers must champion their clients' adherence to "brand DNA".
And at some point, whether by a cabal of industry executives and designers or by the will of the free market, it was decided that all new cars would wear a circular badge on the centre of their trunks - or "boots" in the UK. If a brand did not happen to have a corporate badge handy, tough tarmac; it was high time to go get one.
Branding gurus on New York's Madison Avenue are convinced that companies can conjure a badge as iconic as the Coca-Cola logo, Apple emblem or Ford blue oval. They are wrong, but it does not stop them from trying.
There are, however, rumblings of rebellion against the badge dictate. Non-conformity is afoot particularly in the studios of carmakers like Volvo, Chrysler and Ford. These are brands that have long been on board with the centre-badge practice, but are beginning to release products that chart new, iconoclastic courses.
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