I love taking pictures of cars, but as time went on, I learned that it’s often difficult to take “the classic 3/4 shot of the full car” when you are visiting crowded events or crammed museums.

This made me fall in love with car details and close ups.

I have already shared a lot on my article “🚗🖌️ Wheel designs. Have you been paying attention?”, and today is the turn of classic car badges.

This article initially was going to be the third part of the Wheels Mariënwaerdt 2026 coverage and photography, but that will be seemingly on another time, as I got mesmerised by the oh so beautiful lettering and badges of older cars.

It makes me feel like they don’t do them like this anymore.

Below you’ll find badges from different decades and countries, by brands like Chevrolet, Citroën, Ferrari, Fiat, Lancia, Porsche, Renault, Triumph and more!

In no particular order:

This is the first badge I show, and it’s number 26, just because it’s one of my favourites.

I know, it doesn’t make sense, but my thought was “if you are just going to check what’s up, I don’t want you to miss this beauty”.

The lettering is so stylish, pleasantly spaced, classy and the ornaments around it sell the full feeling that this is a nice thing to have.

Another nice one lettering-wise. A but a bit more “crammed” than the Beutler, but still stylish.

This Sport Fury one gives me the impression they definitely wanted to convey: it feels fast! It also looks beautiful, but this looks like something you want to drive full throttle.

There was this era of badges where the lettering “looked like this”. I have no idea how it’s called, but I’m sure you know what I mean.

It looks pretty cool, even if sometimes it doesn’t feel 100% clear (if you knew nothing about this, could it be something like “ampficast”, maybe?

Fantastic lettering once again. That '“S'“, specifically, and the flow with the “y” at the end kind of enveloping everything before it. The italics sell the whole piece and it looks amazing.

This one is from Semjon’s Porsche 911 that I will talk about later. Nothing too much to remark here, but I feel the colour and the 911 on the side made this look super cool.

One of my favourites! The underline to hold everything together is a great call, but my favourite here on top of the beautiful lettering, is the flow of the cross on the T, that curves up and then down, while the 2000 is also kind of “shrinking” as it progresses, with the same sort of downward angle.

Fulvia here looks like a pretty signature. As such, it’s very stylish and not that much clear to read. I love it.

This car has more than one entry in the list, and this is not my favourite! It looks absolutely cool anyway, and reminds me a bit of the Amphicar we have seen before.

Short and to the point. Iso in very beautiful lettering, on the side of the car..

The first one in the list that includes the full brand, model name and engine size. I like that the model seems a bit bolder, like it is what makes this different from the rest, but the whole piece feels fantastic.

The Thunderbird from the Thunderbird. No lettering, but what a cool badge! And it is not the only time this will appear, so that says a lot about how much I like it.