The story of Edsel

An article on how and why the Edsel is a failure to many in the car industry 

Ford was an ambitious company who had faced and was yet to face one of the biggest hurdles in their entire career. The year is 1949 and ford was doing well with their existing brands such as Lincoln at the top as the luxury brand, Ford as the regular and inexpensive division, Mercury that sat above Ford. Ford saw the need to fill in the gap between Ford and Mercury, hence came along the brand Edsel created by Henry Ford the second along with his business partners. The designer was Roy Brown. The grand unveiling was September 4, 1957, designated as "E-Day" by Ford Motor Company. The car was initially named as the “E” car for short or as experimental car. The car was going to rival the cars from General Motors and was going to put Ford as the number one car manufacturer. But what it did become was an example of poor marketing bad timing and a huge flop that affected many of the masterminds behind the car, people like Roy Brown were now known as the Edsel designer, and all their other works were forgotten to many.

What caused its failure?

The Edsel was launched by Ford motor company in the year 1958 as a mid-priced car. Ford had seen this car as a successful car and invested 350 million dollars, man was that a bad investment! The car was pulled out of the market in the year 1960. Many said that the car failed as it was started by a group of businessmen who knew nothing about the car industry, while some blame it on the name of the car the name rhymed with pretzel and it honestly wasn’t a looker. The quality of the car was bad which might have been a cause. All the reasons aside no one expected the Edsel’s to go up in value and to be considered a collector car. The officials at Ford brought  Marianne Moore a poet to give a suitable name finally they ended up naming it after Henry Ford’s son Edsel, who died in 1943. The quality of the car was not the main issue as none of the cars coming of the production line had the best quality in the 1950s, the Edsel’s were made on the same line as the Ford and Edsel’s hence the quality was the same. By the time the first few Edsel’s were sold the American economy was in a huge recession and was one of the worst years since World War 2. 

What were the cars like?

The 1958 Edsel. The official first production day of the Edsel was July 15^th 1957. First year sales were projected to reach 200,000. Total Production for all 1958 models: 63,107 units. Apart from the lackluster sales the Edsel was ahead of its time and had many unique features such as a flowing speedometer that would glow red when you crossed the set speed limit, the Edsel promoted Self-Adjusting brakes as a safe and convenient method of compensating for normal brake lining wear.  This mechanism has been used in drum brake systems ever since. (They were not, however, an Edsel invention as is commonly thought. The same basic design was introduced on the 1948 Studebaker.) One of the most identifiable feature was the "Teletouch" shifter, which controlled the automatic transmission selection electronically from push buttons in the center of the steering wheel hub. The 1958 Edsel came in two models the “Senior” and the “Junior”, the senior was based on a Mercury based frame and the junior was built on a Ford based frame. The senior models were the citation and the cross air. The junior models consisted of the Rangers, Pacers and station wagons Bermuda, Villager and Roundup these were all built on the Ford platform. The 1958 Edsel’s used a Ford E-475 V8, it was a 6.7L engine produced 345 horse power and 475 fb-lb of torque, while the Citation and the Cross-air got the Teletouch transmission as standard the others got 3 options, including the Teletouch, however the standard was a 3 speed manual transmission.

the "teletouch" transmission selector 

In the year 1959 even though all data showed that Edsel wouldn’t last another year Ford released another car. This time along the car had come with tight pockets, gone were those hideous yet unique “horsecollar” grill and now it had the same mechanics and body style as the 1960 Ford Fairlane series. To be distinguished as an Edsel they added an hourglass in the center of the grill and long vertical taillights The 1960 Edsel introduced such innovations as horizontal coolant flow through the radiator to improve cooling, and placement of the muffler away from the passenger compartment to reduce heat. The production began on September 14^th 1959. And ended on November 19^th the last Edsel was produced.

My thoughts

In my opinion the Edsel was launched at a bad time with very poor research, sure it had many unique features but these were all over shadowed by the bad management right from the production line to the marketing. Since the Edsel’s were built on the same line as the Ford’s there would often be a mix up of parts the fitment of parts was a disaster. When the sales started to dip Ford did not do anything about this making Edsel dealers to slowly shut down one by one then this lead to customers getting worried if they won’t be able to service at all, this chain reaction brought the sales to a complete halt and eventually leading to Ford throwing the towel. Thing are starting to look up for those few Edsel owners, as these cars have started to go up in value, the ones to look out for are the convertibles as these are the most sort after cars. Edsel’s are getting scarcer and only a few exist as a remainder to bad marketing skills and one of the biggest flops in the entire car industry.

1958

1959