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5 biggest car flops

The explosive Ford Pinto tops our list of the 5 biggest car flops.

By Melissa Hincha-OwnbyTue, Apr 12 2011 at 9:12 AM EST
 7

Ford Pinto Photo: Joost J. Bakker Ijmuiden/Flickr
Despite their best efforts, automakers don’t always hit the mark with new vehicle introductions. Some vehicles have missed the mark more wildly than others — and these are the cars that will forever be remembered as the greatest flops.
 
Ford Pinto
The explosive Ford Pinto will go down in history as one of the biggest car flops of all time. Manufactured during the 1970s as the domestic alternative to popular subcompacts like the VW Beetle and the Toyota Corolla, the Pinto was a great car in concept — economical and small but with enough room for storage, thanks to the hatchback. Unfortunately, there was a major flaw in the design of the vehicle. The fuel tank was located behind the rear axle. The poor location made the fuel tank prone to catching fire and even exploding during a rear-end collision. After several lawsuits, Ford initiated a nationwide recall to fix the problem but the damage was already done. Ford stopped production of the Pinto in 1980.
 
General Motors EV1
General Motors’ EV1 was a car that was ahead of its time. GM brought the EV1 to market in 1996 and by 2002 more than 1,000 EV1s had been produced.  It wasn’t the vehicle itself that made the EV1 a flop, it was the actions taken by GM that led to the car’s inclusion on this list. The EV1 was only available for lease, and despite an extremely loyal customer base, GM pulled all of the EV1s off the road in the early part of this century. Customers were willing to pay a premium price to purchase an EV1 outright, but GM refused and instead began the arduous process of destroying the majority of EV1s that it had produced.
 
Ford Excursion
Bigger isn’t always better, and the Ford Excursion helps prove this point. Ford introduced this super-sized SUV in 1999 as a model year 2000 vehicle but stopped production just five years later. The Excursion was plagued by controversy from the start with environmental groups voicing concerns about the 19-foot long, 7,200-pound behemoth. The Sierra Club actually held a nickname contest for the Excursion, and the winning name was the Ford Valdez, a nod to the Exxon Valdez oil tanker. The Excursion faced other problems including that it was too tall to fit into a standard garage and its dismal 12-mpg fuel efficiency.
 
Lincoln Blackwood
What was the leadership at Ford thinking when they decided to produce a pickup truck under the Lincoln luxury label? The truck was produced for 15 months between 2002 and 2003, one of the shortest production runs of a mass-produced vehicle, and fewer than 4,000 were sold. There were many problems with the Blackwood — including its more than $50,000 price tag. If a consumer is going to spend $50,000 on a pickup truck, it better act like a pickup truck. Unfortunately the Blackwood was not equipped with four-wheel drive and the cargo bed had limited space thanks to a poorly designed cover. (One of the biggest reasons to buy a truck instead of an SUV is the storage space in the bed; if an owner can’t utilize this space, the vehicle is essentially worthless. This point was proven by the early demise of the Lincoln Blackwood.)
 
Dodge Durango Hybrid
Chrysler was a day late and a dollar short when it introduced a hybrid. The company’s choice for its first hybrid models was the Dodge Durango SUV and its cousin, the Chrysler Aspen. This hybrid project was doomed to fail, even if it wasn’t entirely Chrysler’s fault. The hybrid SUV, with a $45,000 price tag, was released just when the economy started to crash in late 2008. After a summer with record-high gas prices, a hybrid alternative to a fuel-sucking SUV sounded great. Unfortunately, Chrysler and the American public in general were not in a position to support the launch of these vehicles. Shortly after the two vehicles became available, Chrysler halted production and eventually closed the plant used to manufacture the models.
 

Click for image credits

Ford Pinto: Joost J. Bakker Ijmuiden/Flickr
GM EV1: TimothyJ/Flickr
Ford Excursion: MSVG/Flickr
Lincoln Blackwood: IFCAR
Dodge Durango: resedabear/Flickr
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Related Topics: Electric Vehicles, Fuel Efficiency & Mileage, Hybrid Trucks

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anonymous
Uncle B 10/25/2011 20:30 PM

Quite apparently Honda, Toyota, Hyundai,all have very reliable, sanely designed cars selling on the market today. GM let conservative, honest and really skilled American engineers be overturned subordinated to Sales folk, Finance departments, Hell! Even the CEO's spoiled teenager took a swipe at them and won over them! Ford followed the moronic pattern,Chrysler did too. Folks bought fuel efficient Datsuns, fully calculating the 'ruster' reputation into the total running costs and were still.... More

anonymous
Uncle B 10/25/2011 20:29 PM

Quite apparently Honda, Toyota, Hyundai,all have very reliable, sanely designed cars selling on the market today. GM let conservative, honest and really skilled American engineers be overturned subordinated to Sales folk, Finance departments, Hell! Even the CEO's spoiled teenager took a swipe at them and won over them! Ford followed the moronic pattern,Chrysler did too. Folks bought fuel efficient Datsuns, fully calculating the 'ruster' reputation into the total running costs and were still.... More

anonymous
Ray 04/18/2011 11:42 AM

Um, let's see... car in production for 10 years, sells several hundred thousand units, earns back its tooling and development costs many times over, has an overall safety record that's comparable to its contemporaries despite a few well-publicized high-speed rear collision fires (very few cars of that era would be survivable in a 50-60 mph rear hit), is among the more energy-efficient cars of its era... that's the Pinto.

Flop? Um, okay, if you say so, MNN. The marketplace has a different.... More

anonymous
Ray 04/18/2011 11:38 AM

Fact-checking is a lost art. The Excursion was not part of the Firestone tire debacle -- that was the much smaller Explorer.

The original plan for the Excursion (and its code name in development) was "Crew Wagon" -- it was intended to be a rubber-floor-mat/vinyl-seat wagon for commercial use: construction, oilfields, mines, railroads, and the like to haul crew people around and to jobsites. Then marketing got a hold of it...

mhincha
mhincha 04/21/2011 17:11 PM

Hi Ray,

Thanks for your comment and sharing the history of the original plan for the Excursion.

Although the Explorer was the most- publicized vehicle during that ordeal, the Ford Excursion was also affected. If you search for NHTSA Campaign ID Number 04T003000 on the NHTSA Search for Recalls page at .... More

achase
achase 04/18/2011 17:18 PM

Thanks for the heads up, Ray.
—MNN Staff

anonymous
Doug Korthof 04/12/2011 11:04 AM

GM actually destroyed (crushed) or disabled (tore out the guts) of ALL the EV1; when volunteer engineers from EV-Bones restored a shell that had been "donated" to Western Wash. Univ., GM told them to "Cease and Desist" and to this day that working model of the EV1, perhaps ONLY one of two still in running condition, is FORBIDDEN by FLOPPED GM to run on the street or to run as a pure EV. General Motors, bankrupted and discredited, payed the price for killing the EV1.

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