Sometimes car companies just get it wrong.
Despite all the market research, focus groups, design studies and marketing programs, some cars just don't sell. Sometimes it's a case of being the right car at the wrong time, arriving ahead of the curve or after the boom.
We looked at that recently with the Holden Volt, a plug-in hybrid that arrived too soon (and for too much money) to be successful, even if the concept was right.
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But then there are some cars that are just a complete miss, arriving as an undesirable product. They are, to be blunt, the wrong car at the wrong time.
Here are some examples of what happens when carmakers get it wrong.
Holden Commodore ZB
The decision to end local manufacturing for Holden cannot have been an easy one for General Motors management, but it was probably an inevitable one. The decision they did not have to make was to destroy the brand equity, not to mention the national pride and love, in the Commodore badge.
While most of the cars on this list are obviously bad choices with the benefit of hindsight, the ZB Commodore was an obviously bad choice at the time. It was meant to soften the blow of the departure of the brilliant and beloved VF Commodore, but it only served to rub salt into the wounds.
To the nice folks at Opel, GM's German division, who developed the car (which was known as the Insignia in Europe) this was like having your glass of beer taken away and replaced with water from a muddy puddle with 'beer' written on the glass.
It wasn't a 'Commodore' in any way, shape or form, despite what Holden PR tried to spin at the time. Holden and GM should have followed the example Ford set with the Falcon and retired the name with dignity rather than slapping it on a sub-par import.
Ford Territory Turbo
Sometimes in life you're faced with a 50-50 decision to make and the difference it makes in the long run can be enormous, or even catastrophic. That's the case with Ford Australia and the Territory Turbo.
The Territory was an inspired decision, a great example of delivering the right car at the right time. Ford managed to get in on the SUV craze just as it started to rise in the early 2000s, offering buyers who were starting to look for something taller than a Falcon an in-house alternative.
The problem was, in 2006 they decided to expand the line-up and made the wrong call on that 50-50 decision. Legend has it that Ford Australia only had the funds to develop a Territory Turbo OR a Territory diesel, but not both at the same time.
In the words of the Knight at the end of that Indiana Jones movie: "They chose poorly."
Thankfully they didn't shrivel up and die in an instant, like the Indiana Jones' nemesis, but it was a decision that didn't help the future of Ford's local models.
By the time the Territory diesel did arrive in 2011, along with a facelift, Ford had lost too much ground to imported rivals and by the end of 2016, the Territory was done.
While Ford's decision to add the turbocharged 'Barra' engine to the Territory seemed logical, given the high demand for that engine in the Falcon XR6 Turbo, it highlighted the difference between the Falcon and Territory buyer.
In the same way a diesel Falcon would have been a terrible idea in 2006, so too did the Territory Turbo prove a costly mistake.
Range Rover Evoque Convertible
The Evoque was a brilliant addition to Range Rovers' line-up, another demonstration of reading the market to perfection and adding a smaller model when that's what luxury SUV customers were looking for.
Unfortunately, the Evoque Convertible was as bad an idea as the Evoque was a good one. And this was one of those ideas that you really could tell wasn't brilliant at the time.
Sure, the SUV market was rapidly changing at that point and there were some unlikely sales hits, namely Audi's turbo-diesel SQ5. If a diesel SUV can be a popular performance car, surely a convertible would be appealing, right?
Wrong. Very, very wrong.
Introduced in mid-2016, the final Evoque drop-top rolled off the production line in 2018. A footnote in the history of Range Rover, and one they'd probably like to forget.
Mazda MX-30
As Mazda prepares to launch its second and third EVs, the sharply-priced 6e and CX-6e, it can be easy to forget its first attempt. And they might prefer you did.
The MX-30 was a bolder-than-average design, with 'suicide doors' that were actually more like 'choke the front seat occupants if you opened the rear doors', but it fit nicely into the popular Mazda line-up.
The problem was what was powering the MX-30. For starters, Mazda hedged its bets, offering its much-hyped EV with a mild-hybrid powertrain option, just to confuse the issue.
Which was needed because the EV only had a small battery and a theoretical driving range of only 200km, but a big price tag of over $66k.
While EV sales were starting to increase at this point, so seemingly the time was right, Mazda was behind the times in terms of both capability and cost. It was destined to fail and that's what it did, quietly pulled from sale after only three years.
Tesla Cybertruck
The American brand's attempt to crack the lucrative ute (or 'truck' if you're American) market was over before it began. On the one hand you have to give credit to Tesla for not trying to take on Ford, Chevrolet and Ram head on. But, on the other hand, what the heck were they thinking?
The Cybertruck was always going to be a niche offering, with Tesla frontman Elon Musk's 250,000 annual sales claim being wildly optimistic (to put it very delicately). As the flop of the F-150 Lightning demonstrated, there is simply not a market for electric utes, whether they look like a traditional ute or something created by the work experience kid after a lot of caffeine.
Where Musk and the rest of Tesla management thought they'd find 250,000 people who wanted to look like they just drove out of a 1990s computer game remains a mystery to equal the lost city of Atlantis.
Electric utes may seem like a good idea, but their time has simply not come year, but certainly the Cybertruck is not what people want.