What's wrong here? It's not like Elon designed the model S, Mercedes engineers along with Tesla ones did. Mercedes invested in 10% of Tesla and even ordered Tesla batteries for Mercedes models. But found Tesla didn't test their batteries for durability and safety. Mercedes reduced the range of their B models and added shielding to compensate. Tesla owners had to learn the hard way after several Model S cars caught on fire. Tesla fixed it after the fact.
I wouldn't trust a company cutting so many corners. Recent recall is another example.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-tesla-newera-insigh...
Tesla has sold over 1,000,000 cars at this point. Over 99.997% of those were sold after Musk was CEO.
So, while it's technically absolutely true that "they sold cars before Elon joined", it's a literal rounding error.
Musk became CEO of Tesla in Oct 2008.
As of Sept 10, 2008, Tesla had delivered 27 cars to customers.
That's about as "technically correct and practically wrong" as I've seen.