In 1957, Ford produced the car of the decade–the Edsel. Half of the models sold proved to be spectacularly defective. If lucky, the proud owner of an Edsel could enjoy any or all of the following features: doors that wouldn’t close, hoods and trunks that wouldn’t open, batteries that went dead, horns that stuck, hubcaps that dropped off, paint that peeled, transmissions that seized up, brakes that failed, and push buttons that couldn’t be pushed, even with three people trying. In a stroke of marketing genius, the Edsel, one of the most substantial and most lavish cars ever built, coincided with the rising public interest in economy cars. As Time magazine reported, “It was a classic case of the wrong car for the wrong market at the wrong time.” Never popular to begin with, the Edsel quickly became a national joke. One business writer at the time likened the car’s sales graph to a hazardous ski slope. He added that there was only one case of an Edsel ever being stolen so far as he knew.