Ford's Biggest Car Flops Of All Time

Ever since Henry Ford revolutionized car manufacturing with the debut of the Model T in 1908, his eponymous car company has remained one of the world's most influential automotive brands. Ford has produced some of the most revered nameplates in American automaking history, with the Mustang retaining its crown as the world's best-selling sports car nearly six decades after it first launched. The brand also has plenty of iconic cars that have been consigned to the archives, with enthusiasts itching for them to make a modern comeback. However, for every Thunderbird, Gran Torino, or RS200, there are an equal number of Ford models that deserve to remain in the past.

Some were defective, some were sales disasters, and some were simply terrible to drive. There are even a few flops that Ford would really prefer no one remembered, especially in cases where the company was proven to be lying to customers with sometimes deadly consequences. Whatever the reason they failed, these nine cars all represent the low points of Ford Motor Company's extensive automaking history.

The Pinto gained a reputation as one of Ford's worst models not only because of its disastrous design flaw, but also because of the callous way the company treated the customers who bought it. Its nickname as "the barbecue that seats four" was coined in response to reports that in an accident, the Pinto's rear-mounted gas tank could rupture and explode. It was found that even relatively minor accidents could trigger an explosion, but as it turned out, Ford already knew about all of this.

The company had picked up the fact that the car was a potential death trap during testing, but had calculated that the estimated cost of paying out for wrongful death lawsuits was lower than the cost of fixing the problem. So, it sold customers the Pinto knowing that some of them would burn to death, but not enough of them to warrant doing anything about it. As it turned out, the problem was worse than Ford initially thought, and an estimated 9,000 people died because of the defect.

With the disasters that were the Pinto and the Bronco II, you might think Ford would have learned from its mistakes. It went on to launch the Ford Explorer with another deadly defect despite engineers reporting concerns about the problem before production. It turned out that the Explorer was, like the Bronco II, also unusually prone to rollovers, but that issue was initially unknown to the public when reports began to emerge of the truck's Firestone tires failing at an alarming rate. A recall was issued, and Ford initially tried to pin the blame on Firestone, reports Time. Firestone responded with its own accusations against Ford, suggesting a design flaw with the Explorer was to blame since its tires were used on other Ford models with no issues.

After further back and forth between the two parties, Firestone eventually ended up taking most of the blame, but not before 174 deaths and over 700 serious injuries had been caused by the defect. These figures might have been slightly understated, too, as a report by the NHTSA found that several hundred thousand tires were still in circulation five years after the initial recall.

While it wasn't an all-out disaster like some of the other cars here, the Ford Five Hundred is symbolic of the company's reluctance to take any risk throughout the mid-Noughties, and the stagnation of its sedan lineup as a result. It's about as unexciting as it's possible to make a family hauler, with a bland design, a sluggish transmission that one reviewer described as just "oozing forward," and an ancient V6 plucked straight from the previous-generation Taurus. The interior space was generous, the economy was reasonable, and it was okay (if never enjoyable) to drive. But, there was little reason to remember the car ever existed, never mind buying one.

Keep in mind, too, that the Five Hundred was released at a time when SUVs were beginning to gain market share at a rapid pace, at the expense of the likes of Ford's own Taurus. Ford needed something exciting to draw attention back to its range of sedans, but this is all it could manage. Around the same time, Chrysler unveiled the 300C, which has been successful enough that it has remained in production for 17 years, finally getting the ax after the 2023 model year. The 300C and Five Hundred were direct competitors, but thanks to its unrelenting blandness, it was axed after just three years.

Every generation of the Mustang has its selling points and drawbacks, but it's largely agreed that the Mustang II is the worst of them all. Built on the underpinnings of the Ford Pinto, executives decided to ax the previous generation car's V8 in favor of a four-cylinder and a V6 for the Mustang II. A V8 variant was eventually unveiled in 1975, but with restrictive emissions regulations, it could only produce 140 horsepower.

That made it one of the slowest Mustangs ever made, yet it's easy to forget that, at the time of its release, it was actually quite popular. Ford's president at the time, Lee Iacocca, acknowledged that the first-gen Mustang had been getting more bloated every year since it originally launched, leading customers to demand a smaller, lighter car (via MotorTrend). The Mustang II was exactly that, and even if it was flawed from a performance perspective, the oil crisis that gripped the country at the time ensured that a much more powerful car would never have met regulations anyway. Over time, the Mustang II has become the poster child for the shortcomings of the "malaise era," and while it's undoubtedly a flop in both pure sports car terms and as a Mustang, it's mostly just a product of its time rather than a full-on failure on Ford's part.

While Ford has had more than its fair share of flops over the years, it's only fair to point out that it's far from the only automaker that's put out some serious duds. Even enthusiasts' favorites like BMW aren't immune from the occasional misstep, with the likes of the BMW 507 and M1 supercar losing the company vast amounts of money due to low sales. Both models might be collectors' items today, but they flopped hard when they first launched, with the 507 selling less than 250 units before facing the chop.

Even some of BMW's more recent cars have been plagued with issues, with the i8's performance failing to live up to its supercar looks and the E60 M5's appeal being tainted by its unreliable V10 engine. Anyone looking to learn more about the biggest failures to emerge from Bavaria should check out our roundup of the biggest BMW flops of all time, which includes one controversial choice that not every enthusiast will agree with.