I’m sure that there’s factual answers to this, but I imagine that opinion is going to weigh heavily in the problems, so I’m sticking it here.
I’m not talking about cars like the Aztek where people people look at it and say, “What the hell were they thinking?” but cars like the 1973 Ford Pinto, with it’s exploding gas tank, or the Edsel, which got a bad rap shortly after it was introduced and died a quick death. So what other automotive disasters can you think of?
Chevy Vega. Free gallon on Bondo with every new car.
4 words:A M C Pacer.
Yes, it was a disaster for GM. Oddly enough, the basic idea was a good one. The car was designed for robotic assembly…and it worked. the Lordstown assembly plant worked quite well…only the high line speed mad the assembly line workers careless. As to why they rusted out-GM saw fit to skimp on undercoating. Second: the engine was a new design. It was a silicon-aluminum block, with iron-plated pistons, which rode on the silicon surface. Unfortunately, they mated the block to a cast-iron head (to save money!!), and that was their undoing. The radiators would clog from aluminum corrosion products, the engine would overheat, head would warp, bores would score, and the engine would self-destruct (usually at around 15-20,000 miles. I had one of the good ones! I drove ot to 90,000 miles, and then one day, the engine lunched itself while entering the Mass Turnpike. I coasted to the side, belching syeam and smoke. $800.00 later, I had the engine rebuilt, and the car lasted another 3 years.
A few decades ago (70’s?), General Motors offered a diesel engine in some of its big cars. It was a hastily done conversion from one of their gasoline engines. So, instead of being hugely overbuilt, like most truck diesels, it was puny, internally. It wasn’t offered very long, because of a high rate of failures. It even spawned a nationwide organization, DOGMAD (Disgruntled Owners of GM Automotive Diesels.)
That engine is history, and has no connection to any diesel offered in any GM vehicle today.
The GM diesel disaster on the late 70’s/early 80’s (although a guy I used to work for had a diesel Cutlass Supreme sedan that actually ran quite well).
The GM X-body cars (Citation, Phoenix, etc).
Ford EXP/Mercury LN7 - the “frightened frog” look didn’t go over too well.
Toyota’s Van Wagon (which I thought was cool looking because the over-the-front-wheel driving position reminded me of the old VW Microbus).
Nah, the Pacer doesn’t count, it just looked weird, mechanically they were good cars.
I think the disaster part comes from the shoulda-had-a-rotary-engine debacle.
Some guy back in the late forties tried to sell this rear-engined “car of the future”. He was accused of stock fraud or something and it never got off the ground. Can’t think of the name . . .
Funny! 'Cept it was really a disaster since the cars worked quite well, even if only a handful of them got made.
Err, make that “wasn’t really a disaster”.
Damn margarine fingers.
No direspect meant. I love 'em too. What do you think of the Northstar-powered replicas?
Looks like my fingers are a bit greasy as well. But then it was a disaster that the company failed.
I’ve not seen one in the flesh, but I know that the molds for them were taken directly from a Tucker, and the body parts will interchange with no problems. Wish I could afford one. “Chick” DeLorenzo, who owns the last Tucker ever built (he put it together himself) has one and loves it, apparently (certainly cheaper to drive on the street than his original because of insurance costs).
Any air-cooled Volkswagen that wasn’t based on the Beetle (Karmann Ghia & the Thing).
The Fastback & the Squareback were notorious for overheating.
My Dad had one of those. It was a turquoise frightened frog. We had a hell of a time trying to sell it after he died. We finally gave it to his neighbor.
Triumph TR7. British Leyland (or it might have been ‘BL’ by that time) channeled money away from its incredibly popular MGB line to produce ‘The Shape of Things to Come’ TR7 – which had less power than the car it replaced (the TR6). British automakers were always struggling. When they were consolidated into British Leyland, British Leyland played favourites with Triumph even though MG always outsold them. IMO the TR7 was a disaster because it brought down Triumph and MG (later badge-engineered MGs notwithstanding).
There was a small Australian car of the 1960s, the name of which escapes me, which may well qualify as a disaster. It was made by a washing machine company - a dact which should set off warning bells to start with. It had no reverse gear! To reverse it, you needed to kill the engine, flick a switch which would allow the engine to turn in the opposite direction, and then restart it. This would have been a nightmare when trying to reverse into a tight parking space with a queue of traffic waiting for you to hurry up and get on with it. On the plus side though, you could do highway speeds in reverse. 
Didn’t find much, except for this:
That’s not the one, Johnny, but as a New South Wales railfan, I thank you for that interesting link nonetheless. Anyway, I remembered the name of the car: it was the Lightburn Zeta, boasting a whopping 324cc 2-stroke engine, and a butt-ugly fibreglass body.