Anyone within the secret society of petrolheads will know that putting the wrong badge on your car is a touchy subject. Aside from those that do a badge-delete or re-badge on purpose, Cadillac has inadvertently joined the club. The story goes that roughly 1,000 of its CT4 sedans have received the wrong badges.
Just last week, Cadillac Society had reported that the CT4 with the turbocharged 2.7-liter I4 engine will be accompanied by the 450T badge. However, according to the automaker’s nomenclature, these models would actually wear the 500T badge. Sure, it’s not a massive mix-up and only 1,155 vehicles were affected but we’d wager this one will still leave a mark.
We’d be remiss not to attempt an explanation of Cadillac’s fresh naming scheme, so here goes. The automaker uses torque figures – in Newton-meters – as a reference for the badge number, bookmarked by a T for turbocharging or D for diesel. Regardless of whoever made a hash of the calculations, the CT4’s 310-horsepower (231.1-kilowatts) turbocharged 2.7-liter I4 engine produces 350 pound-feet of torque which translates to 474.5 Newton-meters of torque – which is then generously rounded up to the nearest 50.
While this accidental re-badge could be seen as quite embarrassing, we’d like to think otherwise. It reminds us of the 1997 Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies where they used a BMW 740i rebadged as a 750IL which Q famously referred to as the “seven hundred and fifty”.
On the contrary, the Caddy doesn’t really have any gadgets and hasn’t received the same 15-minutes of fame as the Bimmer. It would be quite difficult for the Bond series to depart from its Aston Martin lineage, but we can still dream of a CT4 filled to the brim with spy goodies.