Biggest car flops of the past 15 years

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 be remembered as the greatest flops of the past 15 years.

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.

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.

See the other vehicles and read more here.

I, for one, have always liked the Ford Excursion and known of a couple of people that owned one (and for good reasons, family hauling AND either horse trailer or large boat towing needs). In addition, the county I live in has a HAZMAT Team that is headquartered in my town and they own a fleet of dark blue Ford Excursions that respond to hazardous materials calls (accidents, etc).

I feel Ford failed with these trucks because they were trying to top the age old and reliable Chevrolet/GMC Suburbuan by basing their version off the Super Duty truck rather than the civilian F-150 series.

Of course they backed down and offered this:

To which I don't see many on the roads (more regular Expeditions than the XL ones).

Biggest car flops of the past 15 years

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 be remembered as the greatest flops of the past 15 years.

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.

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.

See the other vehicles and read more here.

Link is dead try hereYahoo

I, for one, have always liked the Ford Excursion and known of a couple of people that owned one (and for good reasons, family hauling AND either horse trailer or large boat towing needs). In addition, the county I live in has a HAZMAT Team that is headquartered in my town and they own a fleet of dark blue Ford Excursions that respond to hazardous materials calls (accidents, etc).

I feel Ford failed with these trucks because they were trying to top the age old and reliable Chevrolet/GMC Suburbuan by basing their version off the Super Duty truck rather than the civilian F-150 series.

Of course they backed down and offered this:

To which I don't see many on the roads (more regular Expeditions than the XL ones).

GM owns this segment and it is a tough one to break into. Fords struggle shows how well GM has a hold on it.

The other issue is Ford brought this out around the time gas prices were jumping up and down and thar is not a good time for a into of a large SUV no matter how good it is.

SHould have written your own article about it. I wouldn't call the EV-1 a flop. It was only available to lifestyle qualified lessors and GM had to pry the car from the lessors cold dead hands.

EV1 didn't fail. Who wrote that for Yahoo? They clearly don't know what fact-checking is. I swear the internet is like an echo chamber for the factually retarded...

That yahoo article is so bad, I think we should just close this thread and show them how it's done.

I must agree

New thread - Biggest Car Flops of the past 15 years - C&G Edition Nominations