Lemon (automobile)  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump
to: navigation, search  A lemon is a car, often new, that is
found to be defective only after it has been bought. Any vehicle
with numerous, severe issues can be termed a "lemon," and, by
extension, any product with flaws too great or severe to serve
its purpose can be described as a "lemon."   The use of the word
"lemon" to describe a highly flawed item predates its use in
describing cars and can be traced back to the beginning of the
20th century as a British and American slang.[1] Julian Koenig
used the term to refer to a defective model in Volkswagen's
1960s Think Small advertising campaign.[2]  Economist George
Akerlof has also been credited with coining the term in his 1970
paper "The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Market
Mechanism."[3] Akerlof identified the severe lemon problems that
may afflict markets characterized by asymmetrical information. A
study of rejections of important economic papers noted that
before Akerlof's