Today's Washington Post had an article by Peter Carlson about the Edsel, which Ford introduced in 1957. The Edsel was actually an entire line of cars aimed at a more middle-class market (like Buick). It flopped because the actual car couldn't live up to the marketing hype. The article discusses in detail the marketing research and marketing tricks that Ford used during the development of the car.
The theme of American manufacturing firms ignoring product quality and manufacturing operations in favor of marketing is discussed in Factory Physics (by Hopp and Spearman), the text for my production management course. The Edsel is a great example.
Of course, there are those that love the Edsel, which is now a collector item, since only 100,000 vehicles (approximately) were sold. See, for instance, www.edsel.com.
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