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If/when I go to get a new 5.0 Mustang, I want the 5.0 emblems left off. So far I've heard from 2 people, one being a Ford salesman, that Ford will not do it.
Sorry but Ford does not offer COPO on it's cars like GM used to do.
I think de-badging is vain. It is just about as bad as people who do the "gold trim" thing. Some people do it so they can hide the fact they bought the cheapest model (E320 vs E430). But if you pluck your eyebrows too go for it.
I don't find the branding on most vehicles offensive. I think it is most prominent on pickups today.
No badging is as irritating to me as fake fender vents or fake hood scoops.
I do not like dealer badging though and thankfully that seems less common than before. I would not allow a dealer to stick something to my car.
I can only make any sense of it from the practice of European and Japanese marques affixing engine size badging to their vehicles and some who (only) had the smaller engine would take it off making one guess that they might have the larger, higher performing engine and therefore the more prestigious vehicle and therefore became the more powerful man (sheesh!). Like a Mercedes S280 masquerading as a S560 (I know that these models are outdated)
But now that European badging rarely has anything to do with engine size I guess its just a minimalistic aesthetic thing.
i have taken the badges off cars in the past, and i will do so again in the future if i feel like it. however be thankful that debadging a car these days is much easier than prior to 1980 because for the most part badges are held in place with adhesive these days, where as in the old days they actually drilled holes in the sheet metal, and either bolted the badges on, or used barrel clips to hold them in place, which means you now have holes to fill.
by the way, cars that i have taken the badges off of, i did because the badges were damaged, or were quite ugly.
I don't let any of the dealership people put their name on the car. But I will leave the make/model on there.
I don't understand why anyone would want to advertise for a particular dealership with badges or license plate frames.
I agree - and strongly. I knew a co-worker in the early 80's while stationed at Elmendorf AFB who mentioned his father always demanded the dealer de-badge any dealership logo UNLESS they were willing to shave a grand or two off the sale for him to willingly become a "rolling billboard."
Honestly, at the time I thought that was the most petty thing I'd ever heard.
However, as I grew older and purchased my second (and last) new car in 1995 (still driving it today), the first thing I did was remove dealer badge. More recently, soon after purchasing our pre-owned Lucerne, I performed another de-badging.
The way I see it: The dealership made all the money off me they're going to make. Let their TV/radio/newpaper ads bring them new customers.
I've taken a few badges off of my cars for but only because I thought it looked cleaner. I never done it so I could try to avoid helping the manufacturer sell another car. Also paying someone else to do it is about as lame as getting mad when a dealer or manufacturer won't do it. All you need is some patience, some fishing line and a hot day or heat gun. After that some elbow grease and some body solvent to get rid of the glue. Good luck with filling in grilles, finding blank wheel hub covers and the occasional embossed bumper or hood ornament. I mean if you're going to do it, do it.
Personally I don't get why car manufacturers have to put their logos and crap all over their cars and being a man who's totally sick of advertisements everywhere I look, I don't understand why I should spend 20-50K on a new car and be a rolling billboard for the car manufacturers. I know what kind of car I'm driving and the cops can look up my license plate if they want to know so they can write me up ... so the only other reason to badge a car in the first place is for free advertising, is it not?
So would you (or have you) de-badged your car? Is it purely aesthetics to do it, "sticking it to the Man" by being anti-consumerist or maybe even some kind of reverse-snobbery? Whatdaya think?
I wanted to debadge my Jetta, but because of the design of the trunk, I would have had to take it in and have them fiberglass over and repaint areas of the trunk and hood that were designed specifically to have the VW logo and had a large indentation.
I debadged my S2000, because S2k's look really good debaged Nice and smooth.
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(COPO)
... so the only other reason to badge a car in the first place is for free advertising, is it not? 
Nice and smooth.
