February 29, 2008

1. Ford Racing Puma

The Racing Puma was a bridge too far for the small, sporty ford. In it's standard format it looked good and it's economical 1.7 engine offered a sub nine second 0-60.

The Racing Puma seemed like the natural evolution but offering just an extra 30 BHP, and less than a second off the 0-60 time for an eight grand premium, the Racing Puma was ignored. There were plenty of other makes and models that offered more car for less money so nobody bought one. This failure no doubt hastened the existence of the range itself.

2. Jaguar XJ220

Born out of the exuberance of the late 80's, the XJ220 was essentially a race car that yuppies would be able to show off in for six months. They would then leave in the garage for another six months, and then sell for a handsome profit. It had a price tag of £400,000 but a combination of unfortunate timing and over ambitious specs meant that the big cat never really made it out of the cage.

The initial spec, that prompted lots of bonus happy bankers to put down a deposit, was for a four wheel drive V12. At the cars launch this was changed to a rear wheel drive V6 (the engine borrowed from the Metro 6R4). This alteration was just the excuse the suddenly thrifty yuppies needed to claim their deposit back and leave the cars unsold.

3. VW Porsche 914/6

The two German car manufacturers were looking for something similar, a lower spec Porsche and higher spec VW and the ‘VolksPorsche’ (a name hated by Porsche’s press chief), 914/6 was born.

VW needed a successor to the Karmann Ghia and Porsche were looking to fill a hole at the bottom of their range, where the 356 had been. The pricing options weren’t considered properly and with the 916/4 only £300 cheaper than a 911 drivers stuck with the Porsche and the 914/6 stayed on the forecourt.

4. Rover 416 & 45

Starting a steady run of overpriced cars from the deluded British manufacturer, we have the Rovers 416 and 45. At their launch they were a reasonable car and their pricing was fair. Based on the Honda Civic they had good pedigree, but still selling the same car a full twelve years later under the banner and price of a premium brand was too much.

In 2005, if the pricing had been reflective of the outdated model, the car may have sold. For the same money people could buy a BMW 1-Series or Audi and not suffer with skydiving depreciation, or an ancient car. That’s exactly what they did.

5. Maybach 57/62

The Maybach 57/62 is a car that in truth has no real purpose. Designed and built by Mercedes it is significantly more expensive than the parent companies offerings but inferior in almost all respects of driving.

With depreciation figures after a year between £100,000 and £152,000, buying one in error was a costly change of heart. The most comfortable seats are at the rear, no doubt because that’s where the owner will sit, while being chauffeured around.

6. Rover City Rover

The Rover City Rover was another case of the decision makers showing a staggering lack of judgement, and arrogance. They seemed to think that by importing a car from Tata Motors, costing £2,500, and sticking a Rover badge on it they could sell it for twice the price. Thereby making a killing. Their dealer network was crying out for a small car to help boost their revenues and the management thought that they’d found the golden goose.

The trouble with the Tata Indica was that it was rubbish. Built to lower standards than are expected from European manufacturers, car buyers ignored it for the competition. The final indignity was that with 1,200 of the unwanted cars left stranded at Bristol docks the cars that had been sold had to be recalled to fix a problem with the wheels.

7. Vauxhall Omega 3.2i V6

The Vauxhall Executive car wasn’t too badly priced compared to it’s rivals but didn’t feature enough quality inside the car to warrant the executive badge. Depreciation was akin to dropping a boulder onto a spider’s web. 300% over 3 years, or from £24,995 in 2003 to the value of £4,880 three years later.

That combined with an unsatisfactory drive has made it a regular at car auctions.

8. MG X-Power SV

Another car, another tale of MGR trying to make resale of inappropriate cars yield them profits. They had a pressing need to update their 25/45 range which was looking expensive and outdated (see no 4 above). Rather than either form a partnership that would facilitate this, or heaven forbid, actually develop a car themselves, the company decided that they would fare better buying an Italian sports car company called Qvale and rebadge it's Mangusta model.

They re-launched this car with a 4.6 litre V8 Ford engine and called it the MG X-Power. An Italian car with Italian looks armed with an American muscle-car engine doesn’t really fill the need for a small family car. So deluded of their brand were MG that they set the price higher than that of the Porsche 911 so they remained unsold. The failure of MG becomes less and less surprising.

9. Rolls-Royce Camargue

Now lets start this next entry by stating that nobody buys a Rolls Royce based on it being cheap. Which makes it’s entry into this list all the more admirable. The Camargue was their flagship model for a short while, right up to the point that Rolls realised that nobody was buying one.

It was bristling with new innovations, including spilt level air conditioning – which meant that you could keep the lower half of the car warmer than the top half. This proved to be little of a selling point and the sheer cost of the car was too much for punters to bear. It was axed in 1986.

10. Daewoo Nubria

The Daewoo Nubria was the classic case of a car that was badly priced. As with many overpriced cars, that we’ve seen in the list, the market will find them out. They are either rejected straight away or their resale values collapse and in this case it was both.

The Nubria was competition for the Hyundai Elantras and Suzuki Lianas, but was priced against the Ford Focus and Seat Toledo. The car's weak performance and handling, coupled with cheap looking interior meant that the few that sold had little resale value, after three years, they had plummeted from £11,012 to £1043 a 90% drop.

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