Top ten blink-&-you-miss-them cars

Designing and producing a new car model is a very expensive business, so you would think manufacturers these days would do all they can to make sure they get it right. They try very hard, but far more often one might think, they get it very wrong. The recent history of the automotive industry is littered with failed models, launched on a wave of optimism, journalists flown to exotic places to test drive them, only for the car to make no impression on buyers and be abandoned, sometimes in as little as two years. Sometimes the car in question has a major flaw, sometimes it’s just bad all over, and just occasionally it’s a great idea at the wrong time. We’ve chosen ten of the most memorable automotive failures – there are quite a few more… Next page: The “uninspiring and poorly built” Chrysler Chrysler Sebring. The Chrysler Sebring was a fixture on the US market for a whole nine years, in coupé, saloon and convertible versions. But the one that tried to make a name for itself in the UK was the saloon unveiled at the 2006 London Motor Show (that show something else that was not to last very long). The Sebring looked very American, which didn’t really impress potential UK buyers. Journalists attending the launch in Ireland a few months later were not impressed either, dubbing it an uninspiring drive while the build quality was not good – this writer remembers popping the bonnet to see wires crudely held together with cable ties. Stories even circulated of dealers hiding the cars at the back of their showrooms, and as back in America Chrysler went through the pain of bankruptcy and eventual sale to Fiat, just four years after its launch the Sebring was quietly dropped. It will not be the only entry from Chrysler Group in this top ten… Read more Chrysler news, reviews and features at The Car Expert Next page: Renault gets creative Renault Avantime. The Renault Avantime was a prime example of a manufacturer letting a designer express his creativity to the full. Sometimes it works, at other times, such as in this case, it proves an expensive mistake. The Avantime was styled by Patrick Le Quement and was meant to be an estate-sized car with the attractions of a coupe. It was full of odd details, like the pillarless doors – the design manager was quoted as saying the aim was to continually astonish viewers as they walked around the car. They were, but probably not in the way Renault intended. Those doors – they were huge, really heavy to open because they measured some 3.5 feet long, accessing both the front and a back that was far more cramped than it should have been in a car this size. One needed the equivalent of two parking spaces to leave enough room to get out of the Avantime… Sales hopes were not helped by Renault launching another large car at the same time, the Vel Satis. This was pretty quirky but much better than the Avantime – for a start it had four doors. Avantime sales lasted just two years, the Vel Satis not much longer, though it survived in left-hand-drive form until 2009. Read more Renault news, reviews and features at The Car Expert Next page: Ford’s lame cat Ford Cougar. No not the Kuga – that’s the current SUV. The Ford Cougar was a coupé, and an attempt to rediscover the appeal that made the Capri such a success. Actually, it was the second attempt – the first had been the Probe, built for nine years between 1989 and 1997, and a sister to the Mazda MX-6 coupé, which itself used the mechanical bits of the Mazda 626 saloon. The Cougar was effectively the third-generation Probe, and based on the Mondeo saloon – but then again the iconic Capri was based on a Cortina… Like its predecessor, the Cougar was built in America and was front-wheel-drive, which did not endear it to enthusiastic drivers. They didn’t like the sharp new styling treatment either, dubbed New Edge and soon to spread across the Ford line-up. The Cougar lasted just two years on UK sale with reputedly only 12,000 finding owners. Read more Ford news, reviews and features at The Car Expert Next page: Not that smart Smart Forfour. Eh? Surely the Smart Forfour is on sale today? Yes it is, and doing quite reasonably we understand. But this is the first Smart Forfour, launched in 2004 and an attempt to maximise the success of the pioneering Smart Fortwo, but in a more practical four-seat package (hence the name), and principally to target the then phenomenally popular Mini. The problem was, the forfour was not what it seemed. Rather than upscale all the quirkiness that made the rear-engined fortwo so popular, smart simply signed a deal with Mitsubishi, and the resultant forfour was merely a Mitsubishi Colt supermini with a Smart lookalike body – it even had the engine in the front! This writer remembers very clearly Smart’s UK boss telling journalists at the launch of the car that; “The Mini’s time is past – the future is the forfour.” Two years later the Mini was still selling loads, the boss had gone and the Forfour was dead. Read more Smart news, reviews and features at The Car Expert Next page: Too smart for its own good? Audi A2. The Audi A2 first went on sale in 1999 at a time when the brand was in the early stages of its since mushrooming growth, and known for much bigger cars. And it’s not really fair to dub this car a failure – unlike most of the entrants in this feature, this was a technically clever design much admired by road testers. The A2 used a sandwich chassis construction technique similar to the first Mercedes-Benz A-Class, combining an upper and lower floor with components such as the fuel tank placed between them. It was built primarily of aluminium alloys, which made it very light compared to rivals and thus highly fuel efficient, petrol versions cresting 50mpg which at the time was remarkable. By far Audi’s smallest model, the A2 received high praise for its looks and its performance, but there were problems. It might have been small, but it was an expensive car to make due mainly to all that complex lightweight metal, while virtually all the components were bespoke to the car and not sourced from the general Audi parts catalogue. And not everyone liked styling that would be considered normal today. After just six years the A2 was dropped, but it had served a crucial role, pioneering the lightweight shell technology that is normal in today’s Audis and many other cars. Read more Audi news, reviews and features at The Car Expert Next page: Not of the required calibre Dodge Caliber. Remember the Dodge Caliber? No, we didn’t think you would. Remember Dodge? Following what would prove to be a mistaken merger with Daimler in 1998, Chrysler Group decided in 2006 to launch into Europe what was regarded as its very American muscle-car brand – when most UK petrolheads think Dodge, they immediately think Viper. In truth, we could have chosen any of the Dodge UK’s model range for this feature – the Avenger saloon, the Journey sort-of-crossover, or the stunningly-badly-named Nitro, that sounded like a muscle car but was an SUV. But the Caliber – dubbed the ‘Dodge Alcohol-free’ by some journalists, is indicative of the range. This car was basically platform-shared with Mitsubishi, and an early attempt at a crossover before crossovers were cool. It drove like a truck, while putting the Dodge name on such a car resonated with no-one this side of the Atlantic. One of Fiat’s first moves after it took over the bankrupt Chrysler Group was to drop not only the Caliber but Dodge’s entire presence in Europe, the badges disappearing from dealer showrooms in 2010. Read more Chrysler news, reviews and features at The Car Expert Next page: The Peugeot that ate your kids’ fingers Peugeot 1007. In the mid-2000s, before the rise of the crossover, people-carriers were all the rage and small people carriers, mini MPVs, a growing force – all the space mum (or dad) needed for the school run in a compact package. And so in 2005 Peugeot launched the 1007 (“It’s one thousand and seven” we journos were told repeatedly, to stop us making James Bond references…). In truth, the 1007 was not a bad car. It was based on the same platform as the Peugeot 206 and Citroën C3, and with the same respectable build quality. It had a major flaw, however, the usual side doors replaced by a pair of big, electric sliding jobs with the idea of making extricating kids from within really easy for harassed parents. Peugeot insisted that the electric mechanism was totally safe, and would be stopped by the slightest obstruction. So journos on the launch tried it out – and found it didn’t stop. Several pinched fingers later, they launched into Peugeot’s press team, and slammed the car in their copy. Parents conjured up images of their offspring being mutilated by a car door and that ensured the 1007 would never trouble the sales charts. It lasted just four years on sale. Read more Peugeot news, reviews and features at The Car Expert Next page: An ill wind blows for Renault Renault Wind. Your correspondent had the task of interviewing Renault UK’s very French boss, on his last day in the job, while we shared a car on the Renault Wind launch. He couldn’t understand why all the UK journalists sniggered each time the car’s name was mentioned. The Wind was not Renault’s first attempt to do a fun coupe-roadster, and not its most successful either. The concept was revealed in 2004, but not until 2010 did it enter production. The first examples hit UK roads in July of that year, described as “stylish yet practical” with a quick-folding roof, and hoping to cash in on UK drivers’ love of convertibles. It might well have done so, had not Renault itself been in trouble at the time. Little over a year later drastic surgery was deemed the answer with a savage pruning of the model range. With mainstream cars such as the Laguna biting the dust, the Wind’s fate was very much sealed. Thankfully, with the new Alpine coming this year, Renault has since proven it can do a small sports car...

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