The Biggest, Baddest Automotive Flops of Recent Years
FROM HIDEOUS DESIGN CATASTROPHES TO FIERY FOUR-WHEELED DEATH TRAPS, WE GIVE YOU SOME OF THE GREATEST AUTOMOTIVE FACE PLANTS OF RECENT YEARS.
Four-wheeled flops don’t have to be miserable to drive or nauseating to look at (although it certainly helps speed things along), and they don't necessarily have to be sales disasters. They simply must leave an indelible mark of unforgettable wrongness, be so bland and uninteresting that the public forgets they even exist, or be designed as a metal death trap with a propensity to explode and burn. With that in mind, we give you the greatest vehicular face plants of the past 30 years.
The Yugo should have been a footnote in automotive history, but it was so incredibly bad that it will never truly disappear. Malcolm Bricklin — the man who introduced Subaru to America and launched a failed sports car, the Bricklin SV-1 in the ’70s — brought the ancient Fiat 124-based Yugo to the U.S. in 1985. Billed as the successor to the Model T and Volkswagen Beetle for $3,990, Yugo launched a massive PR campaign to promote what was essentially a 15 year old car built in a factory in communist Yugoslavia. Reviewers were shocked once they got their hands on one.
Despite having a model called the “Great Value,” build quality was atrocious, it was horribly unreliable, and was dangerously underpowered for American roads. By the time the company folded in 1992, the car had already become a joke. Astonishingly, the Yugo (known in Europe as the Zastava Koral) remained in production until 2008.
JAGUAR X-TYPE (2001–2008)
At a time when Jaguar reliability was finally approaching respectable, the all-wheel-drive X-type was the lone, laughable holdout. It was obnoxiously underbuilt, remarkably overpriced, and about as charming as a hernia. The X-type was Coventry's business-case company saver, an entry-level sports sedan for the wooden-drawing-room set built on the bones of Jaguar parent Ford's Mondeo/Contour. (There was also an impossibly unpopular wagon version.) It was intended to resurrect Coventry's financial fortunes, providing the dignified marque with a way to snag young, affluent buyers—except that the bean counters failed to recognize that young, affluent buyers are generally not idiots.
PONTIAC AZTEK (2001–2005)
Pontiac had the right idea with the Aztek. Really. Sport-utility vehicles were taking off in popularity, but most offerings were still truck based and emphasized their off-road abilities—which often were to the detriment of on-road abilities. The notion of the more street-friendly crossover, today's car-based wagons with a high seating position and all-wheel drive, was just starting to take hold. The Aztek, then, was poised to capture a rising wave. That it didn't was due to—well, just look at it.
The vehicle was unveiled simultaneously in concept and production form at the Detroit auto show with a cheering throng of youthful paid actors whose enthusiasm did not match the stunned silence of the assembled media. Basing the vehicle on GM's minivan architecture made for tall, dorky proportions, which were little disguised by the plastic cladding and schizophrenic detailing. Incredibly, the lead designer was later given the task of penning the next Corvette. Mercifully, it looked nothing like the Aztek.
VOLKSWAGEN PHAETON, IN THE U.S. (2003–2006)
The Volkswagen Phaeton owes its existence to the hubris of one man: Ferdinand Piëch, the former chairman of the Volkswagen Group. Against all logic, he decreed that Volkswagen would have a model to compete against the Mercedes-Benz S-class and the BMW 7-series, despite the fact that the Audi A8 already did so. The Phaeton shared almost nothing with its Audi sibling, most notably not the A8's aluminum architecture—part of the reason the VW was more than 500 pounds heavier. It was assembled in a purpose-built glass-walled factory, which never operated at capacity. Top models used VW's hideously complex W-12 engine and weren't bad to drive, but with prices approaching six figures, they were a tough sell with a VW badge on the grille. The model was dropped in the U.S. after three years in which just 3354 sold. As one VW insider said, "We couldn't give them away."
FORD PINTO (1971-1980)
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, and to help shave off weight and bulk, the Pinto lacked the traditional bumper that would be used to cushion collisions. While that may have been alright if additional precautions were taken to compensate, just the opposite was true: the gas tank had virtually no reinforcements protecting it.
Taken together, these design choices meant that if a Pinto was ever rear-ended, it was extremely easy for its fuel tank to be punctured and cause a massive fire. If a fire did occur, occupants were unlikely to escape: the doors had a tendency to jam shut after an impact, often trapping victims inside as the wreck burned. Before long, the Pinto’s defective design began causing serious injuries — and fatalities. An official total of 27 deaths were tied to the vehicle, though some estimates are far higher, with up to 180 possible deaths becasue of the fault. Of course, even at the conservative end of the spectrum, 27 preventable fatalities caused by a car with a tendancy to explode and burn is still 27 too many. 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.