The Electric Obamamobile Has Now Replaced The Edsel As The Biggest Failure In The History of Automobiles

18 Jul, 2012 by John Hawkins

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There’s a little good news out there for Ford Motors today: Barack Obama’s favorite souped-up golf cart, the Chevy Volt, is: such a hopeless failure that it makes the Edsel look like a Mustang.

The Press has for the most part failed to mention how pathetic this “second-best sales month” actually is. And even when one Dinosaur does, the unwarranted enthusiasm is palpable.

GM sells 1760 Volts in June, double from 2011

Wow. Huge number.

The Press also fails to put this pathetic tally in perspective.

The Chevy Cruze is basically a Volt without the dead-weight, flammable 400-lb. electric battery. Which makes it $17,000, rather than the Volt’s $41,000.

Chevy in June sold 18,983 Cruzes — more than ten times the number of Volts. And that’s down 1/3 from last June’s 24,648.

But that feeble Volt tally has the Press all revved up.

And speaking of the Volt’s ridiculous $41,000 sticker price:

According to multiple GM executives there is little or no profit being made on each Volt built at a present cost of around $40,000. Furthermore, the $700 million of development that went into the car has to be recouped.

Get that? GM makes “little or no profit” on the Volt.

So it makes perfect sense that GM would spend millions of dollars advertising it, does it not? No ideological or campaign intent there, eh President Obama?.

Incidentally, the Edsel, which has become synonymous with “failure” when you think about the automotive history? It sold 63,110 units in the U.S. in its first year and another 44,891 the next year. If the Volt ever did that well, it would practically be considered a miracle.