Pontiac Aztek Fail — what it teaches us

I read a very interesting discussion recently, in Road and Track “The Pontiac Aztek Debacle”.

The article was about the Pontiac Aztek. Maybe you’ve heard of it, maybe you haven’t. To sum it up, a quote from the story, “the greatest failed model [automobile] in recent history”. Yea, it’s that kind of car. Even Homer Simpson could design a better car.

The article went over this story and I found three salient points. The first, that it didn’t just fail market research, it came “dead last”. And respondent’s quotes were true gems here;

“I wouldn’t take it as a gift”.

Ouch. Pretty harsh for a car.

Now, you can read my rant about market research data here and why this alone would not necessary speak ill of the Aztek design. But it should have been at least a “yellow” cautionary flag for GM.

This made me think the Aztek design team should have at least wondered about this data point and get to the bottom of what it really meant. But the next point here may have served to prevent that kind of diligence.

The second item from the article about the Aztek spoke to the danger of the “totalitarian management style” that was the culture at GM. No one dared say the emperor had no clothes. I wish I could say different but I’ve seen this in my career as a designer and a developer, and it creates a bad outcome and worse, a sense for all the team that logic, reason and sanity are no longer in play.