Javillac
Beyond innovation and surprising the public with a new product, behind every car produced there is no other objective than to generate profits for the brand that builds it, but surprisingly There have been many examples of cars that have caused more headaches than money.
Although the vast majority of candidates for this very particular club have been manufactured in the 21st century, at LA ESCUDERÍA we have decided to focus on the last century with some exceptions to see some of the cars that generated losses, in many cases millions, to their respective manufacturers.
CONTINENTAL MARK II
By 1956 Ford Motor Company decided to introduce a new luxury brand called Shelf, which was not to be confused with the iconic Lincoln Continental. The purpose was none other than to demonstrate what the company was capable of building and its goal was to create the most luxurious automobile in the world, made entirely by hand. Its base price was $10.000, equivalent to $100.000 today, making it the most expensive production car in the world, and yet Ford was losing money on each unit. manufactured, so this experiment only lasted until 1957.
SMART FORTWO
The tiny, popular city car built as a joint venture between watch brand Swatch and Mercedes-Benz since 1998 has been one of the least profitable cars of all time. While the concept is brilliant, and it is an ideal vehicle for city trips, the company was losing out more than four thousand euros per car manufactured, which led to accumulated losses of 3.350 billion euros between 1997 and 2006.
HONDA INSIGHT
Presented as a prototype in 1997 and launched in 1999, the Honda Insight was born as a two-seater that made history by being the first hybrid vehicle from the Japanese brand, reaching sales in North America before the Toyota Prius by just a few months. This car had the lowest fuel consumption of all cars sold in the United States, and while this could mean savings for its buyers in the long run, The development of this technology, combined with the aluminum body and the devaluation of the Japanese Yen against other currencies, caused Honda to lose money with each Insight.
AUDI A2
We continue the list with another vehicle with a body and also a chassis made of aluminum; the Audi A2, manufactured between 1999 and 2005. Intended to be the most direct rival to the Mercedes-Benz A-Class, another vehicle that also lost money for its manufacturers, the A2 ended up selling just over 170.000 units, almost half of what the brand had expected, which ended up losing around 7.500 euros on each of these cars.
EDSEL
After the hard economic blow that the Continental Mark II of 1956 and 1957 represented, Ford launched a new brand that would generate historic losses. In 1958, the new Ford Continental was presented. Edsel, as a firm that would be an intermediate range within Ford Motor Company, but the cars were riddled with problems and failed to captivate the public, and by 1960, the year in which this brand disappeared, Losses had amounted to $350 million at the time, up from $3.000 billion today.
VOLKSWAGEN PHAETON
Fast forward to the 2002st century and one of the best Volkswagens ever, at least in terms of luxury, but it is also one of the most misunderstood and the one that lost the most money for the brand. The Volkswagen Phaeton, manufactured between 2016 and 8, was the brand's flagship, and its price and level of equipment could be compared to an Audi A50.000. The company had forecasts of selling XNUMX units per year, but again the product did not seduce the public, and Only 84.253 units were made with losses of around 28.000 euros per car.
BUGATTI VEYRON
Besides being the fastest production car in the world At the time, the Bugatti Veyron was also the most expensive, with an original price of 1,2 million euros. This car was developed when the company was in the hands of the Volkswagen group, and this whole process was extremely expensive, but it would also serve as advertising. The result was that for Each Veyron cost Volkswagen 4,5 million euros in losses.
MINI
It may be surprising that a popular classic with such commercial success as it was the original Mini, manufactured between 1959 and 2000, could generate losses with each unit manufactured. The problem was that Its manufacture was too complex to be the cheapest car in the United Kingdom, which initially meant that the company lost around 30 pounds of the time per unit.But since the car did not evolve much in the forty years it was in production and hardly required advertising to sell, it ended up being cheaper for the company than other cars.
