I disagree. A personal luxury sports coupe that was built for a specific market segment is not expected to sell 100,000 cars. I'm actually surprised that it sold 32,370 units in its first year, because the Lexus SC300/400 only sold 20,677 in 1992 and the Cadillac Eldorado sold 28,583 that same year. And neither of those cars sold that many again.
The Mark VIII was built more as a halo car for the entire Ford line, showcasing their latest achievements in electronics, suspensions, and multi-valve engine technology. Like any other halo car, its main goal was to bring attention to the Ford brand and get people into the dealerships. For the people who can`t afford the expensive Mark, theres a nice Cougar sitting right over there that the customer will probably drive away in.
There are tons of examples of cars being built with almost no profit to be earned from them. The Ford Taurus sold 303,833 units in 1991 and only 9,136 of those were the high performance SHO model. Cadillac sold 55,042 CTS models total in 2011; I`m sure the Coupe model sold a lot less. Nevermind the CTS-V.
I`m not sure the Mark VIII can be called rare either. I still see about 2 a week but haven`t seen another SHO in over a year