The 20 Biggest Car Fails Of All Time
© 2009 John C. Dvorak Cage Match

Ford Edsel   

From Manolith

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Small wonder GM and Chrysler got into trouble, and AMC and others just died.

Automotive makers have been on the brink of bankruptcy several times in their history, and quite often their struggles result from the release of absolutely homely or catastrophically malfunctioning cars.

Be it the rolling powder keg that was the Ford Pinto or the smoldering waste of money that soon became the Triumph Stag, automotive makers have often made decisions to sell vehicles that make us all wonder what in the world they were thinking.

Here is a list of the 20 most disastrous cars, in chronological order, and what about them made them terrible investments.

On the list and stocked to the teeth with 90 screaming horses, the Iron Duke Camero was outperformed by farm equipment.  Be sure to click the link to see the others.  Quite funny.

My mom is still right. The front end of the Edsel does look like a gaping vagina. I wonder why it didn't sell better.

It looks like Homer Simpson designed a lot of those vehicles. All these years later and you're right, the first thought that comes to mind is what the hell were they thinking?

I enjoyed this article KD. But as a Ford fan, and former parts dept. trainee, a pox on all of you who diss the Edsel. I liked it then and still do.

 The later models were better of course, but what the public likes and dislikes is sometimes very fickely prejudiced by a name or misconception. In reality, an Edsel was just another Mercury, or Monarch in more futuristic clothing.

 What did hurt the Edsel was the push button transmission selector in the steering wheel hub. That was a mistake that cost much warranty woes. Subsequent models moved to a dashboard selector shifter similar to the dodge, Plymouth, and Desoto's.

Lemon sucker, indeed! PPPTTTHHHHHHHHHUT !

Still a Ford owner but not crazy about Edsel; neutral opinion. Had a canary yellow Pinto while in Jr College (community 2yr school) and loved it. Job was pumping gas and the mechanic there helped me put 4 single carbs on the 2300cc motor. It also got fat rear tires and rear spring traction bars. It made it's last street speed violation on a decreasing radius highway on ramp; no ticket for speeding and rolling the car twice. That car's only safety feature was it could roll without flattening roof, within reason that is.
The most fun I ever had with push button transmission was in Belvedere Wagon. The bent driver side door did get me the paint metal roof chore that day in July.

Bigger pic http://nozama.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/07/29/64_belvedere_front.jpg

http://www.carlustblog.com/images/2008/07/29/pushbutton_tranny_5.jpg

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Actually, the Edsel was a case study in my marketing class of one of the biggest marketing blunders of all time.

* They built a very fast car right after signing an agreement with the other manufacturers to stop advertising power and performance.
* They picked a name that marketing research showed people associated with either pretzel or "hard sell" simply because Ford wanted it named for his son. Why spend the money on the research? I have no idea. But, they did ... and they named it that anyway.
* They expected much higher sales than they got, for which they ramped up production to too high a pace. The car came out with many problems as a result and quickly got a reputation as a lemon.
* The front end looks more female than male (as my mother noted), which tends not to sell well with men who want cars to be extensions of their penises. (I don't recall how they worded this in my marketing class, but a bit less vulgarly, I'm sure.)

I was not around at the time. But, from a marketing standpoint, this car was definitely all wrong, making it the largest marketing blunder in U.S. history when converted to current dollars. Even New Coke didn't beat it. (New Coke turned out to be a great marketing ploy to get people back to Coke Classic, but was a blunder nonetheless in that it was not the intent.)

This is all from memory from a marketing class about 25 years ago. I was not alive at the time of the Edsel to either love it or hate it then.

Pacer was cool, they even made a 6cyl version that was a HOT ROD...

Funny about the Edsel. To me it looked like the open nose design was the intake for a jet engine. If it had the imitaion jet exhaust tail lights of other Ford products to go along with that intake it might have sold better, especially if it had a name like Saber to go with that concept. Even Fast Eddy would have been better!