It's time for car companies to dump large badges

Cars have certainly been ornate in the past. One need look no further than the sumptuous hand-built luxury coaches of the early 20th century or the exuberant 1950s fantasias that came from Detroit for confirmation of that.

At the moment, however, we're in a bit of a cookie-cutter episode. Not quite as same-old-same-old as the mid-to-late 1990s, when everything seemed to aspire to the condition of Lexus, or the mid-2000s when Audis were widely visually emulated.

For the most part, however, a compact sedan looks like a compact sedan, a big SUV looks like a big SUV, and all the mid-size crossovers look the same.

This has led to our current moment, with car designers added swoops and cut-ins and vents to jazz up what is effectively a rectangle with wheels at the four corners. Beyond that, there's the badging.

Badges used to be fairly modest affairs. Even flamboyant brands, such as Cadillac, kept their ornate badges small.

That changed about a decade ago. I'm not sure who the first "big badge" offender was, so I'll go with the easiest obvious target: Mercedes-Benz. Mercedes used to be OK with a hood ornament, the three-pointed "star badge," that was about as big as a silver dollar. But then the badge became more prominent on the grille — and became as big as a Frisbee.

Other automakers followed, and a trend was born. 

It is a trend that needs to go away.