Re: Why was this car a failure?
nickwe21 is spot on. I had 2 Xfires and loved them both, but only got them due to the steep discounts. I would never have paid the full price for the car. Nick is also correct that the car was a sales & marketing debacle and overall money loser for DC.
Nonetheless, FCA tried the almost exact same thing with the recent FIAT 124 (Fiata) with equally disastrous results.