Fail of the century #15: Dodge Avenger

Not that we’re calling the Avenger a catastrophic sales flop, but put it this way. By 2008 – a mere year after Avengers went on sale in the UK – Dodge dealers were offering British customers a two-for-the-price-of-one deal. Literally, genuinely, no strings attached: if you bought one Avenger, they’d throw in a second Avenger for free. Avengers assemble!

It was a sales policy that raised some interesting issues. In particular: what, exactly, was one supposed to do with two Dodge Avengers? One for weekdays and one for Sunday best? Clone the numberplates and stage a series of increasingly elaborate pranks on the neighbours?

Not that it mattered, because pretty much no one took up Dodge on its generous offer. Two Avengers simply meant twice as much bad stuff.

Because, boy, was there a lot of bad stuff. Aiming to inject a soupçon of muscly Americana into the staid family saloon market, the Avenger entirely failed to achieve this aim on account of, well, pretty much everything, but if we must narrow it down, let’s go for a) the distinct absence of burbly V8s driving the rear wheels, b) the distinct presence of wheezy four-pots driving the front wheels, c) an interior apparently assembled from old ready meal cartons, and d) that chin. If people didn’t want to own one, they definitely didn’t want to own two.