We Need Modern Car Equivalents To Those Old ‘Twin Cam’ Badges And Luckily I Have Some

You know what I miss that cars often had up until the ’90s or so, and are almost extinct today? Badges. Not the usual make/model badges, though, we still have plenty of those, I mean the highly-specific feature badges that cars used to proudly display. Actually, not even just features – also technical details.

You know what I mean, right? There was a time when carmakers were so proud of a particular technological innovation that they’d produce whole chrome badges crowing about something like how many camshafts the engine had, or the method by which fuel was delivered to the engine, or how many gears the transmission had.

You could roll up behind a car and be proudly told how many valves per cylinder that engine was sporting, if the fuel was injected, or if that engine was turbocharged, and if it was, if that turbo had a partner or not. It was glorious! You could see what the engineers were most proud of, all without opening the hood!

Modern cars, though, they don’t do this anymore, it seems. And it’s not like there aren’t plenty of technical innovations to crow about. But people seem less interested in the technical minutia, less willing to brag about how having four valves per cylinder than they are about what features and creature comforts and tech whatevers they have. So maybe we need to re-think these detail badges for a new era.

For example, a badge like this seems like it would be pretty damn important to a lot of people:

A Carplay Ready badge! Sure, there’d likely be an Android Auto Ready one, too. The presence of CarPlay capability is a dealbreaker for a lot of people, so you’d think owners would like to make sure everyone behind them knows what they’ve got on that center screen.

Here’s another feature I see on a lot of new cars, but one that’s generally quite hidden unless you’re in the car:

What’s the point of being able to set the ambient footwell lighting of your car to the perfect shade of plum if no one knows you can do that? This badge would solve that. PERMANENTLY.

Here’s a good idea: if you are stuck with a car that uses some kind of miserable subscription service so you can have access to things like heated seats or whatever, may as well let everyone know your pain, right? Put that shit right on the back of the car!

Here’s a good one for EVs:

How many gears your transmission has has long been something to crow about in chrome on your tailgate, and just because most modern EVs only have one gear, that’s no reason not to show it off!

You know what people really want to know about your car? I mean, at least as much as they probably wanted to know how many valves per cylinder you had? This:

USB ports! And yes, I think it’s important to break that down into the number of USB-A and USB-C type ports.

This one is maybe less of a feature and more of a warning:

I feel like I’d want to know this just by looking at the car, so I can judge accordingly.

For some reason, “twin” is always fun on a badge, whether it refers to camshafts or carburetors or turbos. So what’s a nice new thing we can describe as being twinned? How about this:

Twin cabin air filters! That’s living right there.

I’m sure there’s other good ones, so feel free to discuss, debate, debase, and defrock in the comments!