Automotive design failures in America about 65 years apart because of leaders ego rather than common sense...
In 1957 Ford introduced the 1958 model of the Edsel. It was supposed to fill the gap between the Ford models and the more upscale Mercury cars.
Beside poor quality control and the fact that it was only a few hundred dollars more than a Ford, and the same few hundred dollars less than a Mercury, the design was an absolute failure with the public.
The Edsel was only made for 3 model years, 58, 59 and 60. It was then discontinued. It was a very embarrassing design failure for Ford as most buyers were turned away from the "horse collar grill" that was on the front of the car.
In 2023 Tesla finally released the Cyber truck almost 4 years after showing it to the world. It was supposed to replace the highly popular Ford, Chevy and Ram pickups. Again we had an extremely controversial design that appealed to some, but was ridiculed by most. Although Tesla initially took tens of thousands of orders for their Cyber truck, that was mostly because of ridiculously high mileage claims that Tesla made on the range of the truck, and totally ridiculous low prices that you would be able to purchase it for.
When it was finally released, the mileage was much lower than first advertised unless you bought the more expensive version, and the prices were almost double what people had expected when putting deposits on the trucks.
Over 2 million refundable deposits were made on the vehicle by late 2023, but when it was finally released the estimated purchases was somewhere around 2.5% of deposits. Most of that was due to the price, but a lot of it was due to poor quality of assembly and ridiculously large size when people realized it wouldn't even fit in their garage.
As of May 2025 they are estimated to be over 10,000 Cyber trucks sitting in storage lots waiting to be sold. Even worse, it is rumored that some Tesla sales lots won't even take them in trade.
As a final nail in their coffin, they are not legal for sale or registration on European roads in their current form.
One of the reasons the Edsel failed was that people often compared it to "A Ford sucking a lemon"
And like the Edsel and it's moniker, the Cyber truck is most often referred to as "A stainless steel mobile dumpster "
Not strong selling points.
One last point, If you rearrange the letters in the name Tesla it spells "Etsal". Quite a coincidence.