The 13 Biggest Car Fails of the 21st Century So Far

SSC Tuatara

Building a car that bases its whole marketing premise on it being the “fastest car in the world” is a dicey proposition. Not only is the development of that kind of car expensive and complicated, but that top speed is a moving target. Oh, and don’t forget that some of the world’s largest and most powerful car companies are going to put a target on your back. It’s a fool’s errand, most would agree. Enter the SSC (Shelby Super Cars) Tuatara.

The Tuatara came to fame when it claimed to be the world’s fastest car back in October 2020 with a top speed of just over 331 mph on a closed road in Nevada. A number like that naturally whipped the automotive press into a froth and all of a sudden this little car company from a particularly iffy part of Washington State was being talked about in the same breath as Bugatti. Eventually, this claim was successfully disputed and in subsequent attempts, the car was never able to beat a top speed of 282 mph during SSC’s testing. An owner managed a GPS verified 295 mph in Florida in 2022, but that’s still a long way from 331 mph or even the 304 mph of the Bugatti Chiron Supersport 300+.

New Tesla Roadster

Tesla is famous for a few things, but one of them is definitely announcing a product, giving a production timeline, and then completely blowing that timeline by years. Take, for example, the Cybertruck. Debuted in 2019 with the famous broken window incident and only now in 2024 is it getting into customer’s hands. A prototype of the new Roadster, meanwhile, was shown way back in 2017 as a surprise addition to the Tesla Semi reveal (don’t get us started on this one) and in the years since, Tesla boss Elon Musk made it the ultimate prize for the people in the Tesla referral program, he’s talked about giving it rocket boosters and he’s promised that it’s coming.

Maybe it is coming at some point, but let’s be honest, when it does show up, it won’t be the car that was promised, it’s unlikely that any will be given away and the rest of the electric car industry will have closed the gap between Elon’s promises and reality. Everything Tesla does is, to some degree, a disaster circus and we don’t expect anything different where the Roadster is concerned.

Nikola

By now you may be noticing a theme on this list. If not, I’m going to spoil it for you: starting a new car company is hard and there are a lot of ways it can go wrong. One surefire way for it to go pear-shaped is if you flat-out lie about your product. That (and countless other missteps) is what started Nikola on its downward spiral.

Nikola’s big claim to fame was its plan to bring hydrogen fuel cell tech to heavy trucks in a big way. This started with the Nikola One Class 8 truck (which was originally supposed to be turbine-powered) and such was the hype around this vehicle that Nikola claimed it had over $2 billion in pre-orders. At one point, Nikola “demonstrated” this truck, which actually had no drivetrain and simply rolled down a hill.

It also introduced other models including a “self-driving” version of the One called the Nikola Two (clever). This was followed by the Nikola Tre, which was initially destined for Europe as a hydrogen-powered truck, and was later developed as an electric vehicle. There was also talk of a UTV, a personal watercraft and a passenger pickup truck called the Badger, all of which were canceled. To date, only 11 vehicle deliveries have been made, all of the Tre, and this is from a company that was briefly valued more than Ford.

Bollinger

Back in 2017, an EV startup that nobody had ever heard of showed off a design for a very basic looking, boxy and almost Land Rover series-like electric truck which it called the B1. People saw it and got excited at the possibility of a back-to-basics, affordable and rugged EV in a world where models were getting more complex and more expensive all the time. Shortly after that, the company showed off an SUV version of the B1 called – you guessed it – the B2, and like its predecessor, it looked like it was designed by someone who had never heard of a curved line. The company continued to develop these concepts into prototype vehicles and just when it seemed that the company was going to hit a critical mass of interest, it announced pricing for its vehicles.

Looking at the Bollinger models, you can understand how they wouldn’t be $20,000 or $30,000 vehicles. They look rugged and tough and those kinds of underpinnings aren’t necessarily cheap. Unfortunately for Bollinger, you also can’t really look at the B1 or B2 and imagine that it would cost $125,000, and yet that’s what the company wanted to charge. Needless to say, this took nearly all the wind out of the company’s sails, to the point where in 2022, most of the company was bought by another startup that plans to rebadge Chinese-market cars to sell in the US.

Hennessey Venom F5

John Hennessey is a big personality that built a name for himself by adding gobs of power to already powerful domestic vehicles. Want a Ford Raptor with six wheels and a bunch of extra power? John’s your guy. In addition to tuning domestic vehicles, he’s also had an obsession with making his own supercar, which brought us the Venom (which was based on a Lotus). Then we got the Venom F5 which featured a 7.6-liter turbocharged V8 and it was with this that Hennessey was going to challenge the likes of Koenigsegg and Bugatti for the title of world’s fastest car.

Is it the world’s fastest car? Nope. That hasn’t stopped the company from continuing to develop the platform, but if you paid nearly $2 million for something that was supposed to be the fastest, and it wasn’t, you’d probably be pretty salty. Maybe you should have opted for the 1,000 horsepower Dodge Challenger Hellcat instead.

BMW’s M3/M4 Grille

There was a time when BMW used to make attractive, understated cars that focused on core competencies like driver engagement. Now BMW makes mobile hostile architecture that wants to kick you in the crotch and steal your wallet like it was in one of those Montana Meth Project videos. Take the current M3 and M4, for example. Sure, it’s clear that BMW is in some way paying homage to the classic and much-loved E9-chassis 3.0 CSL models of the 1970s but something went very wrong somewhere in the process.

BMW is now fully committed to its heinous styling language and people are still buying the cars, so its looking like we’re going to be stuck with the automotive equivalent of the naked mole rat for a while still, but at least they’re pretty good to drive.

Dieselgate

More than any other automotive scandal in the last 30 or 40 years, VW’s diesel cheating fiasco not only upset the German car industry’s apple cart, it flipped it like it was in a ’90s action movie. In case you don’t remember, back in 2015 authorities found out that VW and its partner Bosch had designed their diesel engine computers for passenger cars to recognize when they were being emissions tested. This let them run a second, much cleaner yet lower power calibration.

This happened at a time when most manufacturers were moving to urea injection systems to help clean up their diesel emissions while Volkswagen touted its cars as not needing the tech. The result of this cheating – in addition to increased greenhouse gas emissions from fleets of diesel passenger cars all over the globe – was widespread legal action taken against the VW Group, resulting in billions of dollars in fines as well as a severely tarnished reputation. It also resulted in VW’s huge push toward electrification and, as part of its punishment, the establishment of the Electrify America EV charging network.

Fisker Karma

Henrik Fisker is a legend in the world of automotive design. He penned some of the best looking cars of the last 40 years like the Aston Martin DB9 and V8 Vantage, the BMW Z8 and even the first-generation BMW X5 which, unlike most of its contemporaries, looks as good today as it did in 1999 when it was introduced. Unfortunately, his track record since leaving his design jobs at major manufacturers has been spottier. Take, for example, his moonshot: the Fisker Karma. Introduced in 2011 and in production for two years, the Karma is a classic case of design first, and functionality second. First, as we’ve discussed previously, starting a car company is hard and doing one with goals as ambitious as the Karma’s is harder still.

For a refresher, the Karma was a plug-in hybrid based on the same platform as GM’s excellent Chevy Volt. This means that this six-figure luxury car used an EcoTec 4-cylinder engine and netted around 32 miles in pure EV mode. It didn’t exactly blow people’s minds from a performance standpoint and while it’s inarguably a pretty car, its dramatic lines and odd proportions mean that it didn’t offer a ton of room for passengers.

Fisker folded and the Karma was bought by a company that called itself Karma which then renamed the car the Revero. Confusing, I know, but the important thing is that the car is still in production, albeit with a three-cylinder BMW engine. Fisker is back with a new company called Fisker and an EV SUV called the Ocean.

Ineos Grenadier

Sometimes being a huge failure doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not a car is good at its intended purpose. Sometimes it’s just hard to make people care. This seems to be the case for the Ineos Grenadier. If you’re not familiar with the Grenadier, it’s the brainchild of British petrochemical billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe and seems like the result of a night at the bar and much lamentation of the demise of the original Land Rover Defender.

To cope with that loss, Sir Jim created an old school hardcore off-roader in the vein of the original Defender, the Mercedes G-Class and the Jeep Wrangler. It’s got a spartan, hard-wearing interior, solid axles front and rear, big tires and makes few concessions to on-road driving ability or comfort. It’s pretty awesome, except it retails for over $80,000 in the US and the pool of hardcore off-roaders with a pile of money to spend on an unproven car model from an unknown brand is pretty small.

Will we see the Grenadier soldiering on for years to come? Not likely. Is that a shame? Kind of.

Tesla Model S Plaid Yoke

The problem with having an iconoclastic cult of personality type of person leading your company is that they often expect people to cater to their whims, even if those whims are stupid. Tesla, for example, is a modern car company that operates like this, so when bossman Elon Musk decides that the new ultimate performance version of Models S and X should bail on the concept of a steering wheel and instead use a yoke, who’s going to tell him no?

Let’s get right to it: the Tesla yoke is idiotic. It’s less convenient than a wheel because it’s not round and unlike, say, the Lexus RZ EV which has steer-by-wire with a highly variable ratio, the Tesla Plaid models have steering racks, so there are times when you need to crank the yoke more than a full rotation and doing this is unpleasant. It’s a bad idea that Tesla fans embraced until they realized how much it sucked and then they bought round wheels from Tesla at a hefty premium. This massive turd in Tesla’s punchbowl could have been avoided if someone was able to tell Elon that he was being an idiot, but that’s not likely to happen anytime soon.

Mercedes-AMG SL43

Don’t get us wrong, the current generation of Mercedes SL is fantastic. After an extended period of being boring to look at and not that awesome to drive, the reborn SL felt like a real shot of adrenaline, especially in SL63 trim. The SL55 is a little less intense but with its awesome sounding V8 engine, it still feels like a special car.

Unfortunately, Mercedes decided to offer an entry-level SL, the idea of which seems anathema to the entire reason for a flagship roadster’s existence. Even worse, the company decided to ditch the V8 in favor of a noisy, coarse turbocharged four-cylinder engine that you can also get in the decidedly downmarket CLA 45 AMG. The result is a car that looks expensive but sounds and drives like a car costing significantly less than its nearly $110,000 price tag would suggest. Mercedes doesn’t miss often, but this time it missed big.

Dyson’s EV

You know James Dyson? Right, the guy behind all the expensive but pretty rad vacuum cleaners, bladeless fans, hair dryers, and now headphones. Well a few years ago, he was all in on designing and building an electric car. So much so that he and his company invested nearly a billion Great British pounds in the venture only to suddenly pull the ripcord and pivot to something else.

Why is this significant? Because it’s easy to forget that making cars is hard and despite the relative success of companies like Tesla, Rivian and Lucid, almost nobody to tries to undertake it manages to succeed. After bailing on the EV idea, Dyson pivoted to making ventilators for the British government to ease the shortage during the initial COVID-19 outbreak, but they weren’t needed. Sorry Jim, they can’t all be vacuum cleaners.

Alfa Romeo’s Return to the U.S.

Back in the mid-nineties, Italian car brand Alfa Romeo decided to pull up stakes and stop selling cars in the US market. In the grand scheme of things this wasn’t a big deal to most Americans, aside from a subset of weirdos who loved the great-to-drive but profoundly unreliable (we’re those weirdos, btw). After a couple of decades of grumbling from enthusiasts and a few strategic mergers, it was announced that Alfa would be coming back to the land of the free.

The brand decided to do its relaunch first with the very limited and very pretty 8C, but in earnest with the 4C, a lightweight, stripped-back two-seater coupe. On the surface that sounds like a pretty good recipe for enthusiast catnip, but what we got was an ugly little catfish of a car without power steering, with a bad gearbox and with an annoying-sounding turbocharged four-cylinder engine. Needless to say, it was a disappointment and one that would presage Alfa’s continued presence here with the mostly meh Giulia and Stelvio to the new Tonale.