Honda built its reputation by engineering cars in-house, obsessing over reliability, and staying in its lane. But over the years, Honda made a few quiet detours. A few times, it partnered with other automakers to fill gaps or buy time. These partnerships never lasted long, but they tell a good story.

In the mid-1990s, SUVs were hot, and Honda didn’t have one. So it made a deal with Isuzu and rebadged the Rodeo as the Passport. The change involved little more than swapping badges and tweaking the grille. Workers built both models in Indiana using the same engine and frame. The Passport gave Honda an instant foothold in the SUV craze until it could launch its own designs like the CR-V (1997) and Pilot (2003).

At the same time, Honda played the other side of the badge game

Isuzu, struggling to stay relevant in the minivan market, rebadged Honda’s first-gen Odyssey as the Isuzu Oasis. Honda didn’t sell this version itself, but it approved the swap, which ran from 1996 to 1999. That short-lived badge shuffle showed how closely the two companies worked during that era.

By 1997, Honda tried something different with the EV Plus. This oddball electric hatchback didn’t borrow another automaker’s body, but it did lean heavily on Panasonic for its nickel-metal hydride battery tech. The company only leased a few hundred units in California. Most drivers never saw one. After the leases ended, Honda pulled every EV Plus off the road and scrapped them. Still, it gave Honda a head start in electric R&D.

More recently, Honda joined forces with General Motors…but the collab fizzled

In 2022, the two companies announced plans to co-develop affordable EVs. The Prologue and Acura ZDX, set for 2027, would ride on GM’s Ultium electric platform. Honda was to design the styling and interiors, while GM supplied the battery tech and skateboard chassis. It wasn’t a rebadge in the old-school sense, but it was a deep collaboration.

That deeper partnership didn’t last. By late 2023, they quietly pulled the plug while maintaining the partnership for the 2024 Prologue, which is still built at the GM plant in Mexico. Both companies admitted they couldn’t hit their goals for price and range. Honda’s CEO said the math just didn’t work. GM confirmed the decision. The automaker now plans to launch its own EV platform on all-new models starting in 2026, and it just scaled back Prologue production at GM’s Ultium plant, despite positive sales numbers.

So how many rebadged models hit U.S. streets? 

Two. The Honda Passport and the Prologue, if you count platform-sharing as a modern twist on badge engineering. The rest were experiments, one-offs, or deals that fizzled.