Ford Motor Company introduces its newest make, the Edsel.
In an industry celebrated for its spectacular failures, the Edsel still takes the cake. Although as mechanically sound as other Ford products, the car was criticized from day one for being ugly, expensive, and overhyped.
The 1958 Edsel was intended to be an intermediate-level brand that bridged the gap between the cheaper Fords and pricier Mercurys and Lincolns. The most affordable Edsel (the Ranger) cost seventy bucks less than Ford’s top-end Fairlane, while the most expensive (the Citation) cost more than a Mercury Montclair. Ford later cited the pricing as a big reason the car failed. And sales weren’t helped by rolling the Edsel out just as a recession started. But there was more.
The Edsel (named for Henry Ford’s son) was the subject of an intense marketing blitz while still on the drawing board. The company promised something revolutionary, baited the hook, and then failed to deliver. The Edsel was just another sedan on the basic Ford chassis. An ugly sedan. The superhype that had generated so much anticipation boomeranged almost immediately. Automotive writers roundly trashed the Edsel, even comparing the oval-shaped vertical grille to female genitalia—racy stuff for 1957.
During the Edsel’s first year, four models were produced and barely more than 63,000 sold in the United States. Ford cut back to two models in 1959, but sales dropped further. On November 19, 1959, the company threw in the towel on the Edsel.
The Edsel today is a prized collector’s item, fetching as much as $200,000 for a rare 1960 convertible. Another victim of this historic automotive fiasco was the name Edsel itself. Although never a particularly popular boy’s name (rising to four hundredth on the 1927 list), Edsel has now almost entirely vanished.—TL