Good ideas. They have a funny way of coming back and biting you on the arse.

Here are ten car-related ones that did just that…

10. Panther Rio
Conceived during the 1973 energy crisis, the Panther Rio sought to offer all the bespoke luxury of a Rolls Royce, but in a smaller, more economical package. Packed with the finest Connolly leather, deep pile carpeting and lashings of burr walnut, the hand-built Rio was the kind of car that should have been a huge success. Except it wasn’t.

Probably because, although it was extravagant luxury in a small package, the package was actually based around the Triumph Dolomite, and for some odd reason even rich people object to paying almost three times the going rate for what is essentially a re-bodied car with a bit of extra leather, fancy carpet and wood slapped here and there…

9. Ligier JS4
When Formula One manufacturers get involved in building road cars, the result is usually a snorting, fire-breathing performance car, and initially that is exactly what Ligier did with the Maserati V6-powered JS2 mid-engined sports car. But then that damned energy crisis scared the hell out of the performance car market, and for some ungodly reason Ligier produced this…

Essentially a blue box on lawn mower wheels, the JS4 was powered by a 49cc 2-stroke engine that drove the rear wheel via a belt. Its main claim to fame, however, was the fact that it could be driven on only three wheels in the event that one of them fall off…

Small, affordable micro-cars ARE a good idea. Its just, Formula One manufacturers probably AREN’T the best people to make them. And to think, silly McLaren only produced the BMW V12-powered F1…

8. Holden Starfire Engine
In a response to the ongoing energy crisis of the 1970s (Damn you energy crisis! You are responsible for so much pain…) Holden thought it a mighty good idea to lop a couple of cylinders off their venerable inline six to create a fuel efficient 1.9-litre four-cylinder engine they could throw into various models, thus the “Starfire” engine was born.

The “Starfire” soon became known as the “Misfire” or rather less charitably the “Shitfire”, mainly due to the fact that it was crap. Better performance could have been obtained if they had simply slapped lawnmower engines into the Commodore, and the need to push the hell out of the engine to approach anything that could even be considered poor performance meant that fuel consumption was similar to the straight sixes…

7. Merkur.
It seems that Bob Lutz can do no wrong. The just-retired vice-chairman of General Motors was instrumental in staving off that company’s slow plod towards inevitable bankruptcy (until the Global Financial Clusterf*ck hit, that is…), and was also responsible for essentially saving Chrysler when he was president there. But look back a bit further…

When Lutz was at Ford in the 1980s, he was instrumental in the concept of importing and marketing some of the company’s European cars under the newly-created “Merkur” brand, which seemed like a very good idea, especially given that their competition was, well, American cars.

However the idea quickly turned sour due to the wildly fluctuation US dollar and the fact that the American public couldn’t get their heads around the euro-styling of the Sierra XR4i and Scorpio. Not to mention the fact that it had a very silly name…

6. Jaguar XJ220
Conceived in the heady days of excess that was the 1980s, the XJ220 was to be the glittering performance jewel in Jaguar’s crown. The concept car that appeared at the 1988 British motor Show promised a 6.2-litre V12, all-wheel drive and blistering performance all wrapped up in a stunningly sleek and sexy body. At least the body stayed the same…

When the production version was unveiled, the all-wheel drive had been dropped and the V12 had become a turbo V6. And the price had been jacked up considerably. It was a bit like a nostalgic trip back to the old days of the British car industry really, when they would promise so much with a new model, only to make a total rat’s cock out of the execution of it…

5. Pontiac Aztek

At a time when “crossover” SUVs were taking off in popularity, General Motors rightly decided it needed a slice of the softroader action. Unfortunately with the Aztek, Pontiac took a leaf out of the British car industry of the 70s handbook (probably titled “Who Needs Good Design and Quality Workmanship? We’re Unionised!”) and utterly buggered up a promising concept car.

While the original concept wasn’t exactly a stunner, it was at least better than the slab-sided monstrosity that GM eventually unleashed on an unsuspecting public. GM forecast 75,000 sales a year for the Aztek, and needed to sell 30,000 a year to break even. They sold 27,322 the first year, with more than half being sold to rental companies that had contracts with GM (and therefore no choice…) or internal sales to be used by GM executives, who, presumably, had done something very, very bad…

Sales improved the second year (by 400 units…) but never threatened to bother the break-even point…

4. AutoWorld
Americans love their theme parks. Americans also love their cars, so what would be better than a theme park that celebrates the car? As it turned out, just about anything…

Intended to do wonderful things for the city of Flint, Michigan ― the birthplace of both Buick and General Motors, and home to a large number of car manufacturing plants, the closing of which contributed to its eventual decline ― AutoWorld folded less than two years after it opened, largely because: a) It was an odd mixture of theme park and museum that, rather than being interesting, was just plain weird, and: b) The city of Flint was a desolate hellhole with soaring crime rates, racial tension, widespread poverty and crumbling buildings…

“Let’s get in the car kids! We’re going to see a strange automotive-themed amusement park in an ugly, dying city! And afterwards, you may get to see daddy get stabbed in the car park by a desperate, homeless ex-auto worker…”

3. Fordlandia
Fordlandia was Henry Ford’s modestly-named attempt at becoming self-sufficient by setting up his own rubber plantation in Brazil in the 1920s. Seemingly a good idea ― at the time all rubber was naturally produced and imported from tropics ― Ford royally buggered it up by being too, well, American…

Although workers were paid double the going rate and provided with cheap, modern accommodation, things soon descended into rioting as the native workers were forced into an “All-American” lifestyle, utterly alien to them.

The puritanical Ford prohibited tobacco and alcohol, only provided American food – such as hamburgers – and forced workers to work a traditional American working day of 9 to 5, meaning they had to work in the brutal midday sun, rather than the early morning/late afternoon they were previously used to.

Ford eventually sold the land for a US$20 million loss, the equivalent of more than US$200 million today…

2. German Manufacturers Buying British or American Manufacturers
BMW tried it with Rover, Daimler tried it with Chrysler, and both SEEMED like good ideas at the time…

It soon became apparent that the Germans had no idea how to deal with their new acquisitions. BMW struggled vainly with trying to get its head around Rover before simply giving up and flogging it off for a tenner to a bunch of likely lads who proceeded to fleece the company into oblivion, while Daimler persisted for longer with Chrysler, watching it plummet into a financial tailspin before finally admitting defeat.

The most obvious clash of cultures since Basil Fawlty tried his hardest NOT to mention the war. Wonder if anyone at Rover or Chrysler offered to “do the funny walk”…

1. Edsel
The Edsel is possibly the most legendary example of a good idea going bad ever. Despite most people thinking of Edsel as a car, it was actually conceived as a new division of the Ford empire, to sit between the Ford and Mercury brands. Except it didn’t.

Priced almost exactly the same as the equivalent Mercury, Edsel only served to confuse the public as to what exactly the hell it was. Promoted as “All-new” cars, Edsel’s were actually parts-bin specials, sharing the majority of components with existing Fords.

As far as marketing went, Ford did almost everything wrong with Edsel, and the fact that the grille reminded people of either a horse collar, a toilet seat or, erm… lady parts, killed it before it even started.

Actually, scratch the first paragraph ― nothing about Edsel was ever a good idea. It shouldn’t even be on this list…