What a badge can say.
In line with the theme of the month I will post this eloquent symbol of excessive cost-cutting. The badge symbolises the company. If the firm can´t spend enough so its symbol endures, you have to wonder about their commitment to the rest of the car. Of course, the likelihood is that this is just an unforeseen consequence of a minor change in paint formula. However, many people will feel that this says as much about this brand as needs to be said. For brand managers, this sort of thing is the worst PR, worse even than the message sent out by curling window rubbers and blisters of rust on the rear wheel arch lip. I can only remember seeing one other badge so badly weathered in so short a time, and that was the badge on Alfa Romeo´s 156.
Driven To Write 
In a variant of self-empowering psychobabble – if you don’t care for your own badge, Ford, how do you expect other people to?
I doubt they are going to let that happen again.
Looking at the badges on a number of MGFs, these have also degraded in a similar way to Ford’s: how very apt given the marque’s demise, and sad (actually). I had an F before my kids came along and revelled in the way it drove, looked (more than a hint of EX-E about it, let down by the cartoonish frontal aspect), and the sheer inventiveness of the way the engineers reworked existing components, engines, chassis, etc. to create the thing in the first place.