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Success is hard won in the automotive industry.
Many factors have to align for a car to become a sales hit. Even when all of those elements do come together, there’s no guarantee that looks, innovation or being first to recognise a trend will translate to glory.
History is papered with cars that flopped for many different reasons, so here’s our top of the flops listed in chronological order:
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Tucker - 1948
Among automotive what-might-have-beens the Tucker 48 is one of the most intriguing. Designed by renegade innovator Preston Tucker (1903-1956) without any support from the big three car makers in the USA, the 48 came with numerous safety features and technical developments. It had a swivelling central spot lamp to give directional lighting, safety windscreen, disc brakes and a rear-mounted flat six engine.
Plenty were attracted to the notion of the Tucker, but it stumbled for a number of reasons. A poorly planned public launch generated bad reviews in the press, and then there was an investigation into an alleged fraud surrounding funding of the company. Tucker was acquitted of this, but nobody wanted the 48 by this stage and only 51 cars were built, with 47 cars still remaining today, all very valuable despite – or perhaps because of – the car’s lack of success when new.
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Ford Edsel - 1958
Shifting market trends led Ford to the creation of the Edsel brand as an upper-medium contender for the likes of Buick and Oldsmobile. Company president Henry Ford II was persuaded to name it after his father, Henry Ford’s only son. The Edsel was aimed at offering a bit of luxury and glamour at a more affordable price than Ford’s own Lincoln brand. This included establishing a dedicated Edsel sales network.
However, customers stayed away in their droves, put off by the Edsel’s fussy looks and despite a huge marketing push by Ford in the year preceding its launch. Billed as a car of the future, the Edsel featured innovative ideas such as warning lights for low oil level and engine temperature, as well as the Teletouch push button gear selector. Initial sales were acceptable, if a bit below expectations, but they dropped significantly in following years and the Edsel was dropped in late 1960 after Ford is reckoned to have lost $350 million (£268 million), or $2.4 billion (£1.85 billion) in today’s money.
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Citroen Bijou - 1960
Citroen built 2CVs in the UK at Slough from 1953 to 1960, but it wasn’t a sales hit and they were left with unused chassis. This is where the Bijou, French for ‘jewel’, was envisaged as a way of using spare parts and boosting the appeal of the 2CV platform with a compact coupe model.
The thinking was sound, but the execution wasn’t. British car buyers had several sporty, affordable coupes to choose from and the Bijou couldn’t offer anything like their performance as its glassfibre body was heavier than a standard 2CV’s, so it was slower. The interior was cramped and the styling an acquired taste, which all explains why only 207 Bijous ever found buyers.
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Bricklin SV-1 - 1974
Safety sells, but not when you’re trying to market a low-slung gullwing-doored coupe such as the Bricklin SV-1. Its name stood for Safety Vehicle One and it was developed with a strong roll-over structure and impact-absorbing bumpers that were new ideas at the time of its launch. It was also made of glassfibre, so it wouldn’t rot.
However, the rot did set into the Bricklin business as problems with quality control and workers not turning up began to hurt production. Bricklin also doubled the price of the car from its launch in 1974 till it fizzled out in 1976 when funding from the Canadian province of New Brunswick pulled the plug on its investment.
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DeLorean DMC-2 – 1981
One of the great missed opportunities of the automotive world, the DeLorean DMC-2 had everything going for it before its launch. A chassis designed by Lotus, styling by Giugiaro, and an enigmatic maverick boss, former GM executive John Z DeLorean. It all unravelled so quickly in a mess of financial debts, drug scandal and wasted UK public money, leaving the car with a tarnished reputation.
There were other problems with the DMC-2 as well, such as concerns over the gullwing doors’ safety in a crash, dowdy performance from the underpowered Douvrin V6 and stainless steel bodywork that showed up every mark. The final nail was poor handling caused by the rear-mounted engine, leading to only 8583 DeLoreans being sold.
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Alfa Romeo Arna - 1984
Mixing the best bits of Italian and Japanese car design makes great sense, but the Alfa Romeo Arna managed neither of these feats. Instead, Alfa stuffed its flat-four motor into the Nissan Cherry, giving the Italian company a small hatch model to replace the Alfasud and Nissan gained a foothold in the European market with a version of the car badged Cherry.
After the deft driving pleasure of the Alfasud, the company’s owners were put off by the dull handling of the Arna. It didn’t have the build quality of its Nissan counterpart and the looks missed the flair associated with Alfa. Only 61,750 were made during three years’ production and both Alfa and Nissan were happy to sweep this one under the carpet.
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Sterling - 1987
Attaching the mechanical parts of Honda’s Legend large saloon to the clubby interior of a Rover should have been a recipe for sales stardom in the USA. Choosing the Sterling name for the car, US buyers were initially very happy with the marriage of Japanese tech and British luxury fittings. However, problems soon reared their heads and first year sales of 14,171 plunged to 8901 in 1988, and they only kept getting worse.
Faults with build quality and rust pushed the Sterling to the bottom of reliability rankings while the Honda Legend performed very well. Rover even designed a nice-looking coupe version, but by the time it was ready it had left that car’s primary target-market. In 1991, Rover pulled the Sterling from the USA and never returned, though the name sort of lives on in the US in the form of Land Rover.
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Jaguar XJ220 - 1992
The Jaguar XJ220 ran into even more problems than most supercars do on their journey from drawing board to showroom. First off, the specification changed drastically from a V12-powered, all-wheel drive machine to a V6 turbo with rear-drive. Some buyers cancelled their orders on the strength of this, while others pulled out because of a financial recession.
In the end, the 213mph XJ220 managed a production run of 274 cars and that was only after Jaguar had cut the price to shift the remaining cars. It was a costly exercise for all concerned, even if the XJ220 is now regarded as one of the better supercars of its era.
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GM EV1 - 1996
Like many cars that stumbled in the race for sales, GM’s EV1 was ahead of its time. Not just in being an all-electric car but also because it was leased rather than sold outright to its drivers. This was because GM looked on the car as an extended research project, even though reaction was very positive and demand was strong.
At first, EV1s were only supplied in California and Arizona, which held back numbers. The problem for the EV1 arose from GM deciding that electric cars were too small a niche to turn a profit, so the idea was canned and most of the original 1117 built were then crushed. For the EV1, it was a case of too little, too early.
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Cadillac Catera - 1996
European eyes will recognise the Cadillac Catera as the Opel/Vauxhall Omega that enjoyed decent sales. However, in the USA, the Catera notched up only 95,000 cars during a five-year run despite an advertising campaign that featured supermodel Cindy Crawford. Much of the problem stemmed from the Catera being pitched as a luxury car when it wasn’t big enough inside or out, and it was expensive, as all cars had to be shipped over from Germany where it was built alongside the Omega.
Caddy’s woes were compounded by the Catera’s poor reliability record and the company’s initially indifferent reaction to snapped timing belts and wrecked engines. In the end, it issued a costly recall but the damage was already done to the car’s reputation and it slunk out of the sales charts in 2001.
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Plymouth Prowler - 1997
The Plymouth Prowler is a great example of a company boss pushing a pet project. In this case, it was hot rod fan Thomas C Gale who made sure the Prowler made it to life and it was an interesting idea by predating the retro design theme of the MINI and Volkswagen Beetle. The Prowler should also have appealed to those who couldn’t afford a Dodge Viper from the same overall Chrysler stable.
The looks were great and the Prowler’s details were spot on too. There was just one teensy, tiny flaw: the engine. The 3.5-litre V6 engine came with 214bhp and a four-speed auto ’box as standard, which blunted performance and lacked the expected V8 soundtrack. Never mind the handling was decent thanks to 50:50 weight distribution, the Prowler didn’t appeal to sports car fans and just 11,702 left the factory across five years. It was something of a last hurrah for Plymouth – when the Prowler died, the brand died with it.
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Pontiac Aztek - 2000
On paper, the Pontiac Aztec was a winner: a mid-sized SUV with plenty of space and reasonable running costs. It should have been a pioneering car for Pontiac as the world cottoned on to smaller 4x4s and crossovers. Yet, there was one major problem in the form of the car’s styling, which has regularly topped polls of the ugliest cars ever made.
More worrying for Pontiac and its GM masters was the need to sell at least 30,000 Aztecs per annum to break even. In its best year in 2002, just 27,793 found buyers and that tailed off dramatically in the final three years of the Aztec’s life before it was axed in 2007. Ironically, this was the point when crossovers became big news, so the Aztec could have been a trendsetter if it hadn’t been lumbered with such an angular appearance. The Aztec today has something verging on so-bad-it’s-good cult status, boosted by being the drive of the main character in the hit TV show Breaking Bad.
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Renault Avantime - 2001
Patrick Le Quément’s design for the Renault Avantime was bold and tempted a lot of potential buyers. Sadly, few of them made the final step into ownership and the Avantime went out of production in 2003 with only 8500 cars made. There were multiple reasons for this and Renault’s positioning of the car must shoulder some of the blame for pitching it as a coupé rival to the likes of BMW and Mercedes.
There was insufficient rear seat space in the Avantime for it to work as a four-seater and access to the back necessitated very long, double-hinged doors that were troublesome make and use. Basing a sleek coupe on the Espace MPV chassis didn’t do the handling much good, either, and the final blow came when Matra pulled out of car production so its factory was no longer available to build the Avantime.
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Chrysler Crossfire - 2003
It may have looked like an American model shipped over to Europe, but the Chrysler Crossfire was conceived, designed and built in Germany. Created during the DaimlerChrysler period, it used a first-generation Mercedes SLK chassis and the V6 engine from that model, including the SLK32 AMG’s 330bhp supercharged motor as an option.
The problems started with the badge as buyers wanted a Mercedes instead of a Chrysler. Then Merc launched its new R171 SLK with far superior handling to make the Crossfire feel even more dated with its recirculating ball steering set-up. Interior quality didn’t match the SLK’s, or BMW Z4 or Porsche Boxster, and the Coupe model had a hunched appearance. Some were sold in the USA, but even its spiritual home market shunned it and the Crossfire limped out of production in 2008, shortly after its parents divorced.
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Tata Nano - 2008
The ambition of the Tata Nano was impressive and it aimed to take millions of Indian customers off their scooters and motorcycles and into a car. It cost 100,000 Rupees (£1900/$2500) yet had space for four and low running costs. Another factor in its favour was the Nano was locally built, so it provided jobs in India.
Its failure started with the build quality and was compounded when production moved factories. Also, to make the car so cheaply, Tata had stripped out almost any vestige of luxury or equipment at a time when buyers were beginning to demand more kit and value. Add in instances of early Nanos catching fire and Tata’s attempt an Indian people’s car came to an end in 2015 having produced not much more than 250,000 in its lifetime when it was hoped to sell that many per year.
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Acura ZDX - 2009
Honda’s Acura brand in the USA set out to polarise opinion with the ZDX and it succeeded, only just not in the way it hoped. Bold looks in a crossover aimed at older drivers can work, but the Acura was too daring for its demographic and they left well alone.
It didn’t help the styling made the ZDX difficult to park and reverse without trusting the driver’s aids, while the 300bhp 3.7-litre V6 returned poor economy. Even after slashing the list price in its final year of 2013, Honda couldn’t shift the ZDX in reasonable numbers and ended up selling only 7191 over four years.
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Saab 9-5 - 2010
The seeds of the third generation Saab 9-5’s downfall were sown long before it was ever launched. A global recession in 2008 forced struggling General Motors to assess where it could make savings and the quirky Swedish brand was quickly identified. Efforts were made to save the company and it was sold to Spyker in 2010, just as the new 9-5 was launched to generally warm reviews.
Yet Spyker couldn’t maintain funding for a mass market car maker when it had been used to exclusive supercars. The money ran out and Saab, along with the 9-5, disappeared. The firm re-emerged as NEVS (National Electric Vehicle Sweden) with a battery-powered 9-3, but the Saab name has gone, though lives on on the planes built by Saab AB, the defence firm that owned Saab Cars before selling it to GM in 2000.
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Nissan Murano CrossCabriolet - 2011
The idea of the Nissan Murano CrossCabriolet was an interesting one, but that’s where it should have been left. Instead, the company pressed ahead, lopped the roof off the Murano SUV and turned it into a two-door so that it was rigid enough. However, there were plenty of other drop-tops around that offered the same with better looks and dynamics.
Nissan further hurt sales by only offering a single, fully equipped model at launch that was expensive next to the likes of a BMW 3 Series Convertible or Mercedes CLK soft-top. In the end, buyer apathy meant very slow sales and the Murano CrossCabriolet was culled from the sales charts in 2014.
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