As nearly all car enthusiasts who surf the internet know by now, the 1960 compact Comet was originally planned to be an Edsel. What Edsel offered in 1958 was apparently not what the public wanted, so in just two years Edsel (as it were) “morphed” into something smaller, plainer, simpler, and less expensive–and which sold quite well.
When I saw this 1958 Edsel Citation 4-door hardtop parked just down the street from me, I thought I’d park my ’60 Comet next to it so we can visually compare the two.
Edsel’s distinctive vertical grille–love it or hate it–was blamed for the car’s failure. So the Comet’s grille is about as plain as it can be and is based on the big ’60 Mercury grille. The Edsel’s front end is so much more “architectural” and three-dimensional than the Comet’s.
I like how the quad headlight pods “leap out” from the front fenders. Then there are these radiating “spokes” around the headlamps. The taillights have the spokes too.
Down the side, E D S E L in smart gold letters. The green Edsel symbol sparkles like a polished emerald. This vertical oval motif appears in several places around the car.
The same style letters appear on the rear of the Comet, but they’re chrome, not gold. (By the way, that’s the original gas cap, which is often missing on these cars. People replace lost originals with modern aftermarket caps, and they look really bad!)
Here’s the classic green oval again on the C-pillar. Edsel stylists must have really been in love with this shape. I guess they were trying to establish a strong Edsel identity.
This rear view mirror could only be from an Edsel! (Or maybe the Packard Predictor.)
Optional spinner wheelcovers are truly a complex work of art!
The Comet wheelcovers retain the tri-bar pattern, but are much more subdued.
The rear deck is flat, with just the suggestion of “fins”. The taillights are exaggerated boomerangs–pure ’50s Googie design! I also take note of the nicely-formed backup lights and the rear bumper which echoes the split bumper up front.
The stylists, as I said, were really enamored with ovals. So for the Comet they made a plain oval taillight, and mounted it diagonally (you know, like the 1958-60 Lincoln headlights). The Comet has big fins in order to make this work.
The aborted 1960 Edsel (which was only offered for one month late in 1959) has similarly-shaped taillights, doubled with backup lamps and mounted vertically.
You can really see Comet’s family resemblance to the ’60 Edsel from the rear, with the oval taillights (now canted) and that coved-in section with chrome lettering.
State of (or is it “Republic of”) Texas 1957 inspection sticker on passenger side of Edsel windshield. Homer approves.
Now let’s take a look inside this top-of-the-line 1958 Edsel Citation. (Note: Before anyone freaks out, I had permission to enter the car and take pictures.)
My first impression was, “This is really lush!” The seats are soft, supportive, and comfortable. The upholstery is very high quality–seats, door panels, and the black vinyl headliner which is nicely stitched. Roomy, too! Feels airy and you’re not sitting too low. However, I’m not a fan of modern “add-on” radios in a vintage car.
The “Control Center Instrument Panel” is one of the neatest dashboards of the ’50s. No, that’s not a bathroom scale in the center, but a revolving speedometer that lights up red when you go over a pre-set speed. There’s a tachometer, fuel gauge, clock, and a “Dial-Temp” heating and air conditioning control. Engine temperature is monitored by warning lights. There’s also a low fuel level and low oil level light. The plastic ivory switches were susceptible to becoming brittle and cracking over time.
The hood has a bulge in it which gives the impression that you’re driving a ’30s or ’40s car. Certain Pontiacs of the ’60s and ’70s also were like this. I like looking over a broad, sculptured hood that isn’t just a flat sheet of metal.
Internet photo of a ’58 Edsel with the E-475.
Under that hood is the E-475 (the bigger of the two Edsel engines–basically a Lincoln engine). It provided the Edsel with waves of smooth, silent, flowing power and lots of torque (and lousy gas mileage–if you care about that sort of thing.)
Here’s one of the premiere Edsel features–the “Teletouch” transmission control buttons in the steering wheel hub. Not only is it beautiful to look at, but these buttons snap in and out in such a clean, satisfying way. They are electrical, not mechanical. When it worked, it was great. Unfortunately, there were reliability problems. Sometimes a low battery wasn’t powerful enough to get a car out of PARK. Other units caught on fire. Many ’58 Edsel owners who had problems with Teletouch gave up on it and put in a floor shift. Which really is a shame. But if something breaks and you can’t fix it, what else can you do? Luckily the buttons on this Edsel still work.
The dash was redesigned for ’59, featuring more chrome and an even more “out-of-this-world” design. But Teletouch is gone, as well as the tachometer, the Dial-Temp, the bubble speedometer, and the ivory switches.
The Two Chrome Oval Theme was incorporated into the Comet dash, which was like a miniaturized ’59 Edsel dash. The metal knobs for lights, wipers, heater and defroster are the same as those used on the ’59 Edsel.
So which was a better car–an Edsel or a Comet? Depends on who you ask and what your priorities are. From a functional point of view, the Edsel has much more power, rides smoother, has more room, looks more impressive, and has a lot of detail features that are very satisfying. It’s definitely a far better car for cruising the new interstate highways at high speed. However, it is also thirstier, harder to maneuver in tight spaces, costs more, and a lot of people weren’t comfortable with the looks.
The Comet apparently had what people were looking for. Styling that was modern but simpler. It provided better gas mileage with an engine that was much easier to service. The Comet was smaller outside but not too small, retaining something of the familiar “big-car feel.”
The Comet, as a car, is rather mediocre. Jean Shepherd, walking through a junkyard found the example above and asked, “What is a Comet? A Comet Custom! We all know, don’t we, friends. Just a bad car with lousy valves.” (Shep could be rather harsh sometimes.) While the Edsel was a flawed car that “reached for the stars”, the public preferred a down-to-earth car with an outer space name.
“Thrift-Power” six runs like a sewing machine, while the Edsel V-8 thunders through its dual exhausts.
Despite its pedestrian nature, a Comet can be “lovable”. I remember how satisfying it was to get that little engine to run so smoothly (after it ran so badly when I got it). I did carburetor adjustment, valve adjustment, and a bunch of other tweaks and got everything working as it should. Just about everything is easy to get to and understandable. The car is solid and durable with fewer things to go wrong than in, say, an Edsel with a stuffed engine compartment and power everything.
A Comet has just enough of that ’50s Space Age charm–the “gunsight” fender ornaments, the chromed dashboard, the graceful fins ending in slanted oval taillights–to keep it from being dull. I even like the way they wrote “Comet” in ’50s Rocket Script.
So like dinosaurs that supposedly became birds, the Edsel (by way of Falcon) became a Comet. Which car would you pick–Edsel or Comet?
See also:
Ford may have had more success with the Edsel if the ’59 facelift was used for ’58 model.
Completely agree.
To me it wasn’t the upright grill that made the Edsel ugly, it was the receding gums look of the below the headlights grill and turn signals. It also gave the headlights a protruding bug eye look. The ’59 fixed that by putting the entire front end on the same plain. The rear was just fine on the ’58 and in keeping with the trend to toning down the fins.
The styling language does work but only if one has a wider grill and clean surfaces under the headlights. This is a Ferrari 400 Superamerica, built for Giovani Agneli, head of of Fiat, by Pininfarina. Similar style was also used on the 1st series Lancia Flavia. Aston Martin’s Lagonda of the early 60s followed the same approach as Edsel (narrow horseshoe grill) and thus was not as attractive…
Count me in as a Comet fan, I appreciate a good running inline six, and those taillights make me swoon!
To a less degree I like Edsels too, the 50’s exuberance and the guts to take a chance on something different. Different styling anyway, perhaps they should have made a less conventional car with more conventional styling.
I couldn’t sleep the other night, and watched an old “Barnaby Jones” episode where one of the characters had an early Comet. I’ve known for years that the car was originally intended to be released as an Edsel, but for some reason, seeing it on tv that night really made me think of an Edsel. The way the hood has that little roll at the front, as it tucks under, above the grille, and the way that roll carries over to the fenders, made me think of a ’59 Edsel. The ’60 Mercury had a similar effect, so for that model year I think the styling of the two ties well together. But, I see a bit more of ’59 Edsel in the Comet’s DNA, than ’59 Mercury.
The ’59 Mercury, with its headlights still above a full-width grille, sort of makes me think of what might have happened if the style of the ’57-58 DeSoto/Chrysler had continued a bit longer, and been squared off a bit. The ’59 Edsel’s styling was actually pretty modern, I guess, with the headlights down in the grille, 60’s style, rather than above it.
Problem with the Comet as a Edsel is what engine would they have put in it? The small block wasn’t out yet, and they wouldn’t dare put that wimpy 144 in a Edsel
There was no other choice. It was to be an economical compact.
Same question could be asked as a Mercury, as the intended brand hierarchy from cheap to expensive was Ford-Edsel-Mercury-Lincoln. Edsel was bridging the gap the original 58 lineup used two bodies; a fancy Ford body and the swirly less ritzy Mercury body, Comet was a better fit in that brand as a fancier Ford Falcon but not to the status of a higher end Mercury, and by 1960 Edsel was only using the fancy Ford body. Only after Edsel’s failure(and really Ford’s entire attempt at a GM like Sloan ladder) did the Comet become appropriate for a Mercury as that brand moved back downmarket.
Separating Comet from Edsel in its debut year prevented a potentially profitable upmarket compact from being tainted with the stigma of being an orphan. It was perfectly appropriate as an Edsel but Edsel was already dead brand walking in 1960 and everyone knew it
Great staging – the Edsel and your Comet are even the interior and exterior colors! This gives us a good feeling of what a hypothetical 1960 Edsel showroom would have looked like.
I knew there were some similarities between the Edsel and Comet, but I certainly didn’t know there were so many (like the common dashboard knobs).
The family resemblance would have been strongest from the rear. The brake lights of the 1960 models almost look like they could interchange, but the Comet’s ovals seem just a little flatter and rounder than those in the 1960 Edsel.
Fun comparo .
-Nate
Another giveaway is that the “COMET” block letters in the rear cove of your ‘60 are in the same font as the Edsel’s – compare the shape of the “E” which is common to both…
I really don’t believe that looking like an Edsel was high on the list for the Comet. This may be a case when not knowing that the Comet was supposed to be an Edsel is a better approach to how the Comet presents itself.
Robert McNamara is the father of the Falcon/Comet and the executioner of the Edsel. If anyone told him that his pet car was supposed to look like the it had the DNA of the car he was euthanizing – I doubt he would have been pleased.
Ford sunk hundreds of millions into the Edsel. What do you do with this? You salvage it. You end up putting the parts that were originally destined for the Edsel into other cars. How many millions of those dash knobs do you think Ford manufactured and still had after the Edsel was killed off? They were used for other Ford products.
The Falcon/Comet was a clean sheet design that used every cost savings in the book, including parts proven reliable five years earlier. There is a lot of 1955 Ford in these Falcon/Comet cars. After the Edsel bust, there were a lot of Edsel parts needing to be used as well.
This was the era of the massive annual auto restyling. There was no commitment to making a Comet look like an Edsel during the years when cars were annually restyled. There were no savings in keeping the Comet as designed as a possible Edsel product.
What I guess I am suggesting is that the Comet is 95% Falcon/Comet and 5% recycled Edsel parts. As was Mercury and Lincoln. To help offset the massive cost of the Edsel, you will find Edsel parts in other Ford products. This helped offset the loss and makes common business sense.
That Comet is a Falcon, Robert McNamara’s baby.
The parts that resemble Edsel parts aren’t all physically interchangeable with Edsel parts, so the idea that the Comet was its own pure untainted thing and that it was purely McNamera’s baby is idealized thinking. The fact is this wasn’t Henry Ford seniors Ford anymore, there weren’t unilateral decisions being made and just like the Mustang (an anti McNamera car if there ever was one, based on his baby) the Comet too was an expansion of the Falcon line to both spread cost and increase profit based on the higher entry price for an up brand model.
It’s not just speculation from a few resemblances that proved the Comet was intended to be an Edsel model, it is well documented with photographic proof it was intended to be an Edsel: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/forgotten-future/forgotten-future-1960-edsel-comet/
Performing the “experiment” was a brilliant idea, and I’d never noticed the repeated theme in all the parts.
The rear-end pic of your Comet made me think of a different comparison. It’s a Valiant with big taillights. The trunk shape is Exner without the toilet seat.
I’m surprised by the tach. Aside from the fact that an Edsel seems like the most unlikely car to have a tach, I’m surprised that any car other than a Corvette would have had a factory tach in 1958, even as an option. Was this common and what was the first mainstream domestic to offer a tach?
The 1956 Studebaker Hawk and the 1957 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser also had tachometers. The Hawk also had a vacuum gauge.
Oh, and the ’55 Ford Thunderbird.
One lady i worked with in the “80’s” had a “78 Porsche”. The “tach” was always in the straight up (12:00) position; didn’t matter if the car was
on or off.
It passed inspection though. Guess ‘tachs” weren’t required to be operational in “1988”.
Tachometers are not safety or required equipment, so similarly to a radio if they are broken it doesn’t matter. Any reason you put arbitrary words in “quotes”? – it’s not how English works.
I’ll take the Edsel! It was my favorite car at age three. I remember the commercial every night on the Huntley-Brinkley Report (NBC evening news) showing a trio of Edsels speeding across the desert flats in formation. I loved the look of the “horse collar” (aka “toilet seat”) grille. I also remember the Comet. My friend’s mom across the street replaced her old black 50s Buick with a red Comet around 1960 and I rode in the back seat many times. The big slanted taillights were the most striking feature.
Great comparison! However, I like your Comet much better as I’m a fan of more subdued, understated styling! Still a shame, though, that the Edsel wasn’t more popular than it was. Part of that might have been the timing of the release in 1958, a major recession year.
I’d go with the Edsel, mainly because of how quirky it looks. I recall the Comet as a wheezy sounding car with that 6-cylinder.
Q: What is the hulking beast parked next to the Edsel in pic#2? Packard maybe?
Sure looks like a ’50-ish Packard wagon.
If the Comet were a 63 it would be my pick, V8 power, welcomed buttlift(the slanted tails may be distinctive but they aren’t my idea of attractive) and the hardtop roofline really refined the Comet formula. So between these two, Edsel. I never disliked the styling, in fact I love the rear styling, and compared to equivalent Fords and Mercurys in 58 it really is the superior design in my opinion.
Do you know if the EDSEL shown is still available for sale? I would be interested if so. MY NAME IS AL BOUNEY. My e-mail address is alanbouney13 @gmail.com. -THX.- AL B.
I sent you an email.
I am less interested in the comparison than in seeing a high end 58 Citation loaded with options! It seems like the lower end Rangers and Pacers make up the bulk of early Edsels, so seeing this car is a treat!
Had the 60 Comet been an Edsel, this would have been like the transition from a 58 Studebaker President to a 59 Lark, only with a generous budget to do it right.
I still love your 60 Comet based on my almost-ownership of one decades ago.
Had a “74 Comet”, here in the neighborhood for about 5 years. Roughly”2000-2005-6″, timeframe.
Appeared to be in quite good condition. Had that “LDO decor” option.
(orange/brown/tan color combo)
Once again showing how easy it would be to convert a ’60 Comet into the Edsel it was meant to be. I can’t believe there isn’t one out there. Am I going to have to do it myself?
I already have a 64 Comet so my choice is made:)
However, if I were living in the US and not in Austria on its narrow roads, an Edsel would definitely on the cards – but it would have to be the 1960 model…
Forgot to add this:
Take a ’59 Edsel . . .
. . . ditch the oval grille, spread the quad headlights farther apart, and you get–a Comet!
Yup. And essentially a ’62 Fairlane and Meteor. The ’59 Edsel front end was about one year or more ahead of the competition.
Your whole comparison would have been more salient with a ’59 Edsel, as the similarities are much greater.
I don’t know if this is significant, but in early 1960, CARS magazine ran an article about the newly-introduced Comet. There are photos of one of the earliest Comets built, and it appears that there are only DRILLED HOLES below the trunk where the COMET letters should be.
I’m guessing that EDSEL letters were originally supposed to go there, thus making the car an EDSEL Comet. Maybe the COMET letters weren’t ready yet, so they just released the car with empty holes!