Note: This post is an expansion on a previous 1959 Edsel post and a comment I made on it.
A LOT has been written about the Edsel. But there is one aspect of the story that I have never been able to understand: In 1959, after everyone knew Edsel was a loser and a lemon-sucking flop, how did they still manage to sell 44,891 copies of the ’59s? A total of 63,110 of the initial 1958 Edsels were sold, but 54,607 of them were sold in calendar year 1957, leaving only 8,503 sold in calendar ’58!* The ’59 Edsel was advertised as the car that “Makes History by Making Sense”, but to me these sales figures don’t make sense. Why the big bump in sales during calendar 1959? Was the ’59 model that much better? What am I missing here?
*Source: Standard Catalog of American Cars 1946-75
Now before the Edsel Lovers come after me with machetes for using the “lemon-sucking” crack, I want to say that I actually like Edsels! I understand why Ford Motor Company introduced the Edsel line, and I’m glad they did, because it gives us another fascinating late ’50s car to look at, drive, and talk about. I think the oval grille could have been done better–I don’t believe the story that they had to make it wider to allow more air flow. ’55 Chryslers and ’59 Pontiacs had split grilles, and no one complained about air flow.
The Predictor show car produced by the now-defunct Packard Motor Car Company undoubtedly influenced the Edsel, but Packard did the vertical grille idea in a much more pleasing way. So the theory is Edsel had to change the look in order to not to be accused of copying the Predictor. (Incidentally, former Packard president James Nance was now heading up the new Edsel Division.)
I can see why someone in late 1957 might buy a 1958 Edsel. The line is all-new, and people love newness and excitement. The looks? Well, that oval grille is quite startling, but shock value is part of the appeal of newness–“Wow, lookit that!“ New things often look unexpected and strange.
Then there were the unique engineering aspects. Two new V-8 engines, the E-400 and the E-475 (named for the foot-pounds of torque they develop) took the world by storm: “It is unlikely that you have ever driven a car with as much real, usable power as the Edsel!” Plus all the neat-o new features like Teletouch Drive (transmission push-buttons on the steering wheel hub), the dashboard key that opens the trunk, the self-adjusting brakes, the contour seats, the aircraft-inspired instruments with drum speedometer that lights up red if you exceed a certain speed, push-button power lubrication, and special warning lights to inform the driver about low oil level, low fuel level; plus some other things an Edsel salesman would be sure to point out!
A tachometer and a compass neatly integrated into the dash panel were among the unique optional extras.
And then there’s the fact that Edsel brackets the entire medium-priced field with four series in all body styles including convertibles and station wagons. If you want a car with a firmer “Ford” feel, you buy the Ford-based Ranger or Pacer. If you want a super-soft “Cadillac-Buick” type ride, choose the Corsair or Citation.
For example, if you select an E-475 Citation hardtop with its ocean waves of smooth, flowing power, plus the super-soft ride, the roominess, all the gee-whiz features, the “classically modern” styling, you have (according to Edsel publicity men) a car that rivals Cadillac, yet priced so much lower! What an achievement! Populuxe at its finest! This car can’t miss!
As a matter of fact, at a car show I recently got to sit behind the wheel of a ’58 Citation hardtop. The owner graciously let me try pressing the Teletouch buttons for the first time. Oh, they work so nice! I’m used to the Chrysler push buttons which are mechanical and work just fine, but they don’t operate with this clean, satisfying “snap” with no waste motion at all! It is, as the Edsel TV commercial says, “like switching on a light!” And the P R N DR LO symbols glow different colors in the dark. This is fantastic stuff!
Unfortunately, Teletouch proved to be rather unreliable. Many owners, unable or unwilling to make repairs, bypassed the Teletouch controls by installing a floor shift. Hacking up the car this way ruined the “World of Tomorrow” ambiance that was a major draw of the Edsel in the first place. There were other quality control problems too, leading to the acronym E D S E L (Every Day Something Else Leaks).
There’s something about that grille that just triggers people. Every car has a face, and when I see these Edsels I always imagine the car is calling out “Ooooooo!” or “Ohhhhhhh!” It’s goofy! Comedians started to make Edsel jokes like “An Oldsmobile sucking a lemon” and other unflattering references which I won’t repeat here. I’m sorry, but once your car becomes a running joke in popular culture, the game’s over. People are very status and image conscious–they want to “stand out” but “fit in”. They don’t want to appear abnormal or strange. And Edsel sales just collapsed.
This is a horse collar. I have to admit, when I read that people compared the Edsel grille to a horse collar, I didn’t know what a horse collar was! But back in the ’50s there were a still lot of people who remembered horse drawn vehicles clip-clopping along city streets, and horses were more commonly seen in rural areas. More people owned horses and knew how to take care of them.
Speaking of horses, all kinds of wacky promotions were tried to get customers into Edsel showrooms, including a “win a free live pony” contest just for stopping in. Yes, not even a cute pony like this one could get people to buy Edsels. Now if Edsel dealers would throw in a free horse collar with every pony, now that would be funny!
Are they kidding? Maybe not . . .
The 1958 model year is finally over with 63,110 Edsels sold (a lot less than the 200,000 expected) and as mentioned, only 8,503 of them were sold in calendar 1958. Where do we go from here? Well, no matter how badly it bombs, the show must go on. So on Halloween (how appropriate), the “all-new” 1959 Edsels are introduced.
You know we live in a screwed-up world when you can make history by making sense!
But what kind of car IS this 1959 Edsel? Well, the “distinctive” oval grille is still there, but it’s been re-worked. But all the things that were uniquely Edsel have been stripped away: the E-400* and E-475 engines, the Teletouch, the four series based on two separate bodies, the unique options, all gone. All Edsels are now strictly Ford-based, with standard Ford engines. Except for a fancier instrument cluster and few more inches in length, this is just a Ford with different (and polarizing) styling.
*The “E-400” stayed on as extra-cost optional equipment (now called “Super Express”), but advertised torque was down to 390.
This incredible “gorpy” dashboard is perhaps my favorite thing about the ’59 Edsel.
Edsel prices were cut, but the fact remains that you could buy a much more popular and better looking 1959 Ford Fairlane 500 or Galaxie for the about the same money as this Edsel. Resale value would be much higher too. (Edsel owners really got creamed on resale!) So why would over 44,000 people choose a ’59 Edsel over the Ford? I don’t know!
The Edsel story just gets more weird as time goes on. On October 15, 1959 Edsel introduces another “all-new” car, but this one really is all-new and actually looks pretty sharp! The hated “horse collar” is now gone, thus alienating the few Edsel fans who remained true to its offbeat look (certainly a small minority by now). But again, this car is strictly Ford, with a few styling touches that won’t be enough to entice anyone to select the damaged Edsel brand over another make of car. The laughing had stopped, but no one cared anymore–the whole saga was just too ridiculous. So after only a month, company planners pulled the plug on Edsel for good, with only 2,846 1960 models produced. If the Edsel hadn’t been prematurely killed off and production continued at the same rate, perhaps 34,000 1960 Edsels could have been made. But would it have been worth it?
Ironically, it’s harder today to find 1958-59 Ford sedans than Edsels, even though Ford out-produced Edsel by about 20 to 1. And I’ve seen more ’59 Edsels around than ’58s, even though a third more ’58s were made than ’59s. In the late ’70s/early ’80s there was a white ’59 Edsel parked in a driveway near my house. It looked a lot like the photo above. And a friend of mine had a ’59 Edsel wagon into the 1990s!
But the question remains: How did Ford sell over 44,000 ’59 Edsels (by this time, without the ponies) when the car was generally despised and, unlike the ’58, there was nothing really special about it?
EDSEL, the Right car at the Wrong time?🤔. Although the first EDSELs controversial styling was in keeping with mid 50s. Ford spent millions developing this car, including selecting the EDSEL name. The deep recession at the time of its debut, hit all auto manufacturers hard. Marketed between Ford and MERCURY, most buyers were loyal to those two brands. To save money, the 59 became a face-lifted Ford, not well done. How any of these 59s has always been a mystery to me. BUT the big question is why did Ford introduce a redesigned 60 EDSEL, only to drop it almost immediately? Same goes for DeSoto, introducing a 61,only to axe it within months after approximately 3200 61 DeSotos were built. Actually for me,I would love to have one of those DeSotos now. Not so much an EDSEL! 😎
One theory is that the ’60 Edsel was only ever meant to be a placeholder until the new compact Edsel was ready at midyear at which point or no later than ’61 new-model time the compact Edsel would be THE Edsel.
A few months before that happened, Ford wisely chose to give the new deluxe compact a fresh start unencumbered by the “lemon” Edsel name and changed it to Comet. At that point the placeholder big Edsel became entirely unnecessary.
I’ve always guessed, in both cases (’60 Edsel, ’61 DeSoto), it was to offset the possibility of lawsuits from dealers.
In the case of the ’59, I’d guess that it was an honest attempt to regroup after the ’58 disaster. Cut back all the expensive stuff, just go with the Ford-based cars (which I assume way outsold the Mercury-based one) and see if you can’t beat the previous year’s sales. Which it didn’t.
Also, do not underestimate the entropy in the corporate decision making process. I’ve read multiple reports that MacNamara hated the Edsel which was originally designed and planned before his watch, but it took two calendar years (plus?) from the time he decided, “that car has got to go.” until it was finally possible to shut the whole division down. No doubt there were some people high enough in Ford wanting to try to let the brand find its footing and succeed. The story of the second generation ’60 Edsel, er, Comet is evidence of that.
The comparison between the ’60 Edsel and the ’61 DeSoto seems obvious, but I’m not so sure. Edsel dealers spent a lot of money to become Edsel dealers only a few years prior and I can see how FoMoCo might have had some sort of contractual obligations to offer those dealers cars for at least 3 years.
OTOH, DeSoto was a long-established brand and I see less likelihood that Chrysler was in any way obligated to build and offer ’61 models.
The simple reason for the ’60 Edsel’s existence is quite simple. Ford had a 3 year contract with the dealers and had to produce a car for them to sell or they would have been sued for breach of contract. So, the answer was to make a car based on the Ford Fairlane body at a minimal expense. As soon as the contract expired on November 19, 1959, they pulled the plug.
By then there were only two stand-alone Edsel dealers; all the rest had been paired with either Ford or L-M, so that was not the reason. There was never a firm contract to supple Edsel dealers for three years.
The 1960 was planned all along; by the time it arrived, Edsel sales were in terminal decline, so it made no sense to keep it in production. And the Comet was originally going to be an Edsel, which further supports that the intention was to continue with Edsel, even into 1961.
I had a toy friction 58 Edsel as a kid, so I knew exactly what one was. But I have experienced the same thing as you – every single Edsel I have come across, whether at a show, an auction, or in the wild has been a 59. Also, I think every single one of those 59s was the low end Ranger series, but that would be expected given that they were the lion’s share of Edsel production that year.
Also, I had not thought about it, but you are right that those 59 Edsels are almost everywhere compared to 1959 Fords (that are not retractable hardtops). I guess Everyone found Edsels to be such oddballs that they were worth preserving, as opposed to the Fords that just flushed through the normal car ownership arc (from ore you were created and to ore shall you return).
Those sales numbers for 1958 and 59 are interesting. 1958 was a disaster at FoMoCo, with every division seeing massive drops totaling over 750k units. It should not be surprising that 63k people predisposed to buy something from Ford would pick one. The 44k units in 59 is almost exactly the same as the number of units Studebaker moved in 1958, which was a really pathetic year, so I suspect that almost anything with a dealer network could move that many cars. Also, every other FoMoCo brand saw substantial jumps in sales – even Mercury was up by 12% in 59, so Edsel was the only one to drop.
All I can guess is that every Edsel sold in 1959 was a screaming deal.
Another thought occurs – I think most people in that era bought a car because they had a relationship with the local dealer. If Bob the Edsel dealer is in your Moose lodge or a member of your church or lived in your neighborhood, you were inclined to buy a car from him just because Bob was a good guy who treated you right. Or maybe because you felt sorry for him.
Also, by the time the 59s hit, the weakest dealers were dropping like flies so the strongest (which had sold most of the 58s) were still in there pitching.
Oddly, and this evidence is anecdotal at best, when my Dad and I attended Carlisle’s FORD weekend back in 2019, when we went over to the Edsel section, all we saw were ’58 Edsels. There were no 1959 or 1960 models to be seen….
I was really taken with the wagon, having never seen an Edsel wagon, and that color… WOW!
If it’s any indication of the amount of promotion the ’58 Edsel got, for some reason I have a dealer promotional model of that car in my ’53-65 Chevrolet collection. That, and a ’64 Rambler Classic are the only non-Chevies in the cabinet, and it was obviously something my father brought home for me.
It’s still there, although sometime in the early ’60’s a modified the car into what would have been back then a NASCAR dirt track stock car. Still have it that way.
The reason has to be the price cuts in ’59. Remember, there was a serious recession in ’58 and this severly hurt all the automakers. In ’59, Ford was taking no chances. Reduce prices and sell more.
I agree – I think the price cuts and the accompanying marketing of “value” and “sensibility” have a lot to do with it. Plus, on top of the competitive list prices, I’m sure the typical Edsel buyer was able to negotiate an even better sales price.
There’s lots of marketing examples of this, but here’s a dealer billboard (from Newark, NJ) that fits in with that theme – an appropriate strategy for selling an unpopular product during recessionary times:
Ha! That’s the same dealership (989 Broad St.) where my former 1962 Mercury Monterey was purchased new! But by then (Sept. ’61) the dealership name was changed to Leeds Lincoln-Mercury Inc. Maybe the whole Edsel debacle ruined Midwood?
That looks like one of the Samuel Berg Newark photos. Do you have an address for that corner? I’m willing to bet all those buildings are gone!
Wow – that’s great!
Unfortunately, I don’t know where the photo was taken (I don’t remember where I found the photo – it was in my batch of potential photos to use for my Edsel dealership article a few years back, and don’t recall where I found it). I tried looking up where “Victoria Restaurant” was located in North Jersey, but all I found was a Paterson restaurant, and the surroundings didn’t match this photo.
I only recently learned that the Zips dry cleaner at 7215 Baltimore Ave (Rt 1) in Maryland – just two blocks from my old Hartwick Rd. home address – was originally an Edsel dealer. It was called Bowman Edsel and was one of the new Edsel-only dealerships set up to sell the new brand, but I can’t find any other info about them. The building does look like it was built for a 1950s car dealership, with lots of glass in front and garage bays on the side and back. Weird thing is that there’s no other car dealerships in the area as far back as I can remember; the others on Rt. 1 are/were miles in either direction.
That building was originally a Studebaker dealership called Nelson Motors (real estate records show it was built in the 1940s). At some point, Joseph Bowman, who owned Bowman Studebaker in NW Washington bought either the Nelson Motors building, or the business, or both (I’m not quite sure) – and then turned the building into the Edsel dealership. Briefly, of course.
After Edsel’s demise, the building served as a Rambler dealership for a while, and then a used car / leasing dealer, and eventually on to non-automotive uses.
Wow, never knew the automotive history of a building a short hop from my apartment. Bowman Studebaker (later adding Packard and Mercedes-Benz) was at 7530 Georgia NW DC before they moved (still selling those three brands at their old building whilst Edsel was set up at the new one). Here’s an ad and a pic of their dealership:
….and here’s the same address today. Same building? Sure has the round thing with tall windows still intact, as well the general surrounding walls and opening layout, but looking like it’s been either heavily renovated or largely rebuilt. Oh, it’s a psych ward nowadays, or was until it recently closed.
That’s a great ad! Sure looks like the same building now too.
Yeah, I think you hit the nail right on the head in that “value” and “sensibility” were good marketing ideas in the wake of the ’58 recession.
In our time, it feels like we have a lot of information, perhaps more than in any time in history. But there’s so much “soft” information that is lost to time. We can talk about ’59 Edsel production figures, and we can talk about the MSRP of those cars, but there aren’t factual sources of what’s now called “average transaction price”. Is it possible, even likely, that dealers who were obligated to receive cars sold them at a loss just to get them gone? Perhaps a nicely-optioned ’59 Edsel could be had out-the-door for LESS than a basic Ford? I don’t think we can know.
Stephen mentions how low resale value would have been, but there are always buyers who either ignore or don’t care about resale value. People who plan to drive a new car until it’s worth somewhere near $0 (and that was only 7-10 years for most any ’59 car) don’t concern themselves with resale value.
I can certainly envision 40,000 buyers who were pleased as punch to “steal” a well-equipped ’59 Edsel for the price of a Ford Custom 300 with a six. Honestly, I might have been one of them.
All the wonderfulness of both “bold” and “sensible” 1959 design elements… and yet Edsels still had exposed column shift rods (once they ditched the unique, expensive, and problematic teletouch hub buttons).
Well, at least the 1959 T-Birds had the integrated column shift.
Not sure why this was an issue with me back in the day; it just was. It looked cheap and out-of-date.
Our ’53 Packard, ’50 Buick, and my ’57 Olds all had had integrated column shift mechanisms. And the ’57 Chrysler, well, it had push buttons, but to the left of the steering wheel on the dash.
I agree with JPC, put enough money on the hood and you can move just about anything.
Edsel still had a dealer network in 1959 and a large advertising budget. It should have sold 50,000 just on inertia alone (see JPC’s comments above). Its 45,000 sales were pathetic for a carmaker in 1959, especially compared to Ford, which sold almost 1.5 million units. The 1959 Edsel lost most of its uniqueness, its larger, senior models and everything that differentiated it from a Ford.
I think the ’59 returned, too late, to the proper marketing position for an Edsel. It was a Meteor. Or a ‘Fairlane 1000’, a step above the existing Ford range but not infringing on Mercury’s brand identity. The ’57 Mercury was Satellite Wow! And then the Edsel duplicated Satellite Wow!
Incidentally, Teletouch wasn’t a new idea. Winton had an electric preselector shift with wheel-center pushbuttons in 1913.
Even as a child, I realized that a lot of a GM car’s resale value was due to GM sweating out the small details a lot better than Ford. The fact that the shift was was completely exposed on a Ford, which was nicely faired in on a Chevrolet was just one detail.
A killer detail (to me, at least, at late grade school age) was evident when you grabbed the door handle to enter the car. The Chevrolet’s was a solid casting, smooth to the touch as you grabbed the handle. The Ford’s was hollowed out, that door handle only had two sides (as opposed to the Chevrolet’s three) and didn’t feel near as comfortable in your fingers.
No doubt there were a lot of other small details, but these are the two that stuck out to grade-school George, and have stayed with me all these decades. It was fairly obvious back then that a Ford was a cheaper built car than a Chevrolet.
That was my experience too as a boy in the fifties and early sixties. GM products just seemed of a higher quality with more attention to the little details. For example, my fathers 1957 Plymouth Belvedere had only one turn signal indicator on the dash that flashed for both left and right turns, something GM would never tolerate. GM factory A/C featured nicely integrated vents and controls in the dash. Ford’s were basically hang on units.
This all seems to change around 1963, when a friends family’s new Galaxie 500 seemed much nicer than a new Impala. Chrysler products too upped their game with the 1965 Engel re-styles..
My Uncle Bucky owned a used car dealership in Endicott, New York…having been fascinated with cars as long as I can remember, I loved it, as he would let me sit in all the cars on his lot to my heart’s content when I was a young boy. When I was ten (in 1959), my cousin, Dorothea (Uncle Bucky’s daughter), stopped by my Grandma’s in a pink ‘58 Edsel convertible, top down, similar to the one pictured…I thought I was in heaven! Dorothea and I cruised around town in that Edsel and it is one of my favorite childhood vacation memories! When I was 16, Uncle Bucky took me on a day trip with him to look at cars he was considering adding to his inventory…another memorable day!
The 59’s were locked in for some time and not created in mid ’58. These were the days of annual styling changes, so they had the 2nd year’s model ready sooner. Just the ’60 seemed created quickly, would it have looked more ‘Edsel’ if brand had not flopped in 58?
Toned down styling and ‘screaming deals’ maybe helped move the metal, but probably not as profitable as Ford brand.
Ahhh memories! Back in Sept of 1957, I had just turned 11 (yeah, I’m THAT old) and was riding in Dad’s old Chevy Fleetline (?) in Manhattan when in the opposite direction went what I later figured out to be a brand new Edsel. I was completely taken by it and have always liked the 58.
Your question assumes that communication in 1959 is similar to today’s? Adults didn’t spend every available moment watching television. They might have had a radio around, but communication during this era was not centralized and controlled as much as today. How long would it have taken to have been told that the Edsel they may have heard about, was not a good car? That it was rejected by most shoppers? That the styling was not acceptable to a majority of shoppers? That the Edsel was a lemon? Months and months is the answer. This is because communications back then were very different than today.
You got a local newspaper. You might watch an evening local telecast. You spent as much time with your family and friends, going to the local theatre, the local church, the local lodge, the bridge night, the dance night, and other weekly events. You had more than a couple of kids – probably three or more. They had events you had to attend as well.
You spent a lot of time in the kitchen. There weren’t any microwaves. You had to cook your breakfast, lunches and dinners. Then you had to clearn up all those dishes. Tend to the kids. Just how much time did you think you had left to spend consuming communications – if it was even available?
I believe that is why the Edsel still sold in 1959.
Excellent points! Times were vastly different (and to me better) back then.
Your comments are spot on. One of the best examples that I know of to illustrate the point can be heard on YouTube. It is a radio clip from the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Friday afternoon performance on November 22, 1963. The concert started as scheduled at 2 pm. At around 2:35 pm there was a delay of several minutes. Returning to the podium, conductor Erich Liensdorf announced that “ …the President of The United States has been the victim of an assassination.”Nobody in Boston’s Symphony Hall had any idea that this had happened at 12:30 pm, two hours prior. The crowd can be heard gasping in disbelief and foot traffic can be heard heading for the exits, presumably to find an appliance store with a display TV playing to get more info. In honor of the fallen President the show went on as the BSO played The Funeral March from Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony.
There’s something else.
So many of us have become conditioned to using available information to find the “best” of something. We shop and shop and shop – do research, then keep shopping. We can and we do. This wasn’t what people had at their fingertips 65 years ago.
The mentality wasn’t even there. The idea that you could read through dozens of auto reviews, watch comparisons between brands, and seek out credible authority regarding an auto purchase has given us a sense that we only buy the best – this kind of arrogant and a false sense of superiority. This means that there wasn’t really any outsider ruling out the Edsel back in 1959 if you were a shopper.
So the decision-making process in 2023, wasn’t around in 1959. Does that mean we don’t buy bad cars today? You decide on that.
Judging by dealership newspaper ads from that time, it seems ’59 Edsels were steeply discounted to help move them. The car itself moved downmarket too, with the Mercury-based models dropped and a much larger percentage of the cars built having fewer options and post rather than hardtop body styles than in 1958. The subdued, toned-down styling was less controversial (had the 1958 Edsel looked like the ’59, I don’t think the front styling would have been the butt of jokes, as it didn’t look like a horse collar or toilet seat anymore). All of these things were apparently enough to convince 40,000 people that they wouldn’t be laughed at for driving an Edsel.
I scanned the 1959 Houston Chronicle Auto ads and saw the same thing. My guess is that if a customer showed any interest at all in an Edsel the dealer was going to cut the price as much as needed to sell a car. The dealers were simply selling them to get rid of them.
Yes–those are good arguments.
My thinking was that the ’59 Edsel still had the “ugly” grille shape and was immediately identifiable as an EDSEL–and who would want that? Maybe the Edsel hate wasn’t as universal as the folklore tells us. Maybe quite a few people still liked it.
The Pontiac Aztek is a more modern example of a car with controversial styling that became kind of a joke. Yet as the sales figures show, sales rose for a couple of years before dwindling away. (347 sold in 2006, 25 sold in 2007–LOL!) So people kept buying Azteks even though most people thought they were ugly:
2007 25
2006 347
2005 5,020
2004 20,588
2003 27,354
2002 27,793
2001 27,322
2000 11,201
Thing was, even the Aztek’s best-selling years fell short of the 30,000 break-even point, much less the 75,000 annual sales Pontiac expected.
The new car I recall being most joked about in my lifetime was the first Infiniti, though it was more because of the advertising than the car itself. The early print and television adverts didn’t show the car at all (as with pre-intro Edsel ads), and the pitchman spoke in a low-pitched unenthusiastic monotone. There were radio commercials similar in tone, and I recall one DJ mocking the Infiniti ad that had just run during the break. The cars did have some controversial elements – the Q45 “belt buckle” instead of a grille, and an interior bereft of wood trim usually found in luxury sedans. The other early Infiniti was the M30, obviously an older design that was a rebadged JDM Nissan Leopard. But I think the widespread jokes about the ads rubbed off on the cars, which got off to a slower start than Lexus that arrived the same year, and never really recovered (at least in that sales have generally been behind Lexus and the German luxury brands).
Question for another day – to what extent did the Aztek make the entire Pontiac brand a laughing stock? Sadly. I always liked Pontiac.
I don’t think the entire brand became a laughing stock. When Pontiac was axed it was outselling Buick.
Agreed. The target market may have went to look at an Infiniti while shopping, but the Lexus was a far superior bullseye for the money. Infiniti tried to reset with the ‘94 refresh, but by then it was too late.
Even today, what is Infiniti? Their last product that was cutting edge was the FX35, nearly 20 years ago.
The Aztek was a fairly clever and useful package, whatever it looked like, so it’s also likely that the sales represented the number of people willing to look past the awkward styling.
They sold only 25 in 2007? Does that mean they’re classics now?
Ha! Those would have been leftover 2005 models, the last year of the Aztek.
According to the TV ad, using Teletouch meant you kept both hands on the wheel. Which leads to the question of how you pushed the buttons? Used your nose or did you stand up and…
We didn’t have modern communications back then but we had “The Grapevine” and gossip and the Edsel was fugly with a bad name.
With the car culture totally into airplanes, jets, rockets, space travel, how could one think Edsel would be a hit?
That grill was what EVERYBODY was laughing about.
The change between the 58 and 59 tells me Ford knew they missed the mark BADLY and quickly scrambled to de-content and do a badge engineering job. How else do you explain the change so quickly? I saw cars reborn every year but Edsel went from its own unique look to a made over 59 Ford.
The big question is: would the Edsel have done better if it had come out in 1958 looking more like the ’59, especially the front end? It’s hard to separate the negativity about the grille from the actual visual impression from the scorn that the Edsel received once it was a loser. People love to pile on losers, and there’s no doubt in my mind that some/a lot of the issue about the grille came from the failure of the Edsel.
My guess is that especially if it had come out looking like the ’59, folks would not have focused on the center grille element, as it was not exactly all that controversial or unusual.
Another thing that occurred to me when writing this was the fact that the 50-51 Studebaker front end was really radical and bizarre, yet I believe these were the best selling Studebakers ever!
Of course, the 49-50 Fords had a bullet nose too (less radical)–perhaps that helped “normalize” the Stude?
So maybe the Edsel planners thought–if people will buy the bullet nose in big numbers, they’ll go for this vertical oval grille idea too?
Good point; they were the best selling Studes ever.
I’m quite convinced that it was not its grille that sunk Edsel. If it had come out as a ’57, things might have been rather different. The ’58 model year market was a disaster, especially for big, gaudy cars. There was a sudden revulsion against them. The Edsel was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
As a result, the Edsel face became the face of shame, or ridicule.
Studebaker’s best sales year ever was 1950-51, and Packard’s second-best sales year ever was 1948, the debut of the “Elephantine” styling era. Yet they were both walking dead by 1954, and Packard was an actual zombie by 1957. People think things move fast now, they moved fast back then too.
The ’50-51 Studebaker face looked like a propeller mount or jet engine. Airplanes were cool. The ’58 Edsel face looked like an Oldsmobile sucking a lemon, a horse collar, female genitalia, or a toilet seat (women everywhere deserved better than to be compared to an Edsel grille, and so did toilets everywhere). Horse collars and toilet seats weren’t cool. The Edsel became the butt of jokes.
P.S. the postwar Studes were also the butt of endless “which was does it go?” jokes (“he wore his baseball cap backward, it made him look like a Studebaker”). Economic differences between 1950 and 1958 played a role, but the bottom line was the Edsel grille was ugly and widely mocked, whereas the Stude grille was unusual but futuristic and not ugly, and thus not mocked. And so the first year of bulletnose Studebakers more than doubled the sales of all three years of Edsels.
My understanding is that as awful as ’58 Edsel sales were Ford still basically met their target for market share because mid priced car sales as a whole tanked so badly that year.
The auto market shrunk by 40% in 1958.
From what I’ve read, the 1950-51 Studebakers nose-dived in value as used cars, and not because of any mechanical issues. Apparently that front didn’t age very well in the minds of potential used-car buyers.
FYI, Edsel in 1958 sold more cars than Studebaker & Packard combined. Alfa Romeo still sells cars and SUV’s with a similar grille. If the Edsel was a ‘loser’, the Canadian Meteor and Monarch and Mercury trucks, which sold in far less numbers, should have also been ‘losers’ but FoMoCo must have made money on them, or they would not have remained in production for as long as they did. It was insiders at Ford, namely, Robert S. McNamara who wished the Edsel to fail, and him and the others got their way. Most notable was when Ford and Mercury started sharing the same body shell from 1961.
Your comparisons are irrelevant.
What created such huge losses from Edsel was the investments in developing the car, the tooling, new production facilities, marketing, advertising, dealer support, etc. Ford in Canada was a totally different situation; they were Fords and Mercurys built in Canada, in plants that were long built.
I’m baffled how you come up with such a comparison.
Think of how much GM spent on Saturn long before it came out, overpromising on what was actually delivered. Ford did the same with Edsel, with the first ‘hints’ of a new ‘E-car’ line that went back to 1952. GM started their ‘Saturn’ project in 1984 at the start of the disasterous Roger Smith years. But even with ‘good-but-less-than-flattering’ first year’s sales Edsel and Saturn never kept their momentum going, thanks to the higher-ups in each company. The economy improved in 1959 and had Edsel retained its four-model lineup, it just might have succeeded. Ford’s corporate cost cutting would have made Edsel redundant by 1961 when Ford and Mercury lost their distinct bodies which the Edsel split between the upper and lower models. Saturn never improved their product lineup any in the interim years, and staggered on like a wounded bull with badged-engineered platforms until its end in 2009.
Also, let’s not forget that the ’58 Pacer was every bit as much Ford-based as the ’59 was. All they did was drop the bigger Mercury-based Corsair/Citation.
“I’m sorry, but once your car becomes a running joke in popular culture, the game’s over”
See British Leyland for more details.
Edsels are so awful to look at they’re somehow fascinating. There’s a word for that, but it escapes me at the moment.
The whole Edsel schemozzle is so ‘period’. Dysfunctional management – now we want it, now we don’t. Manipulative advertising – ‘designed around YOU’. Gross styling – that awkward grille, headights thrusting so far forward, narrow high-mounted taillights, etc. And depite the hype, it was just a Ford or Mercury in a bad suit.
And yet…..
I use “barbaric beauty”.
Nice. I have one unbuilt one in my stash that I’m going to get to soon. Styling was ahead of it’s time, Pontiac certainly cribbed it 10 years later. I think the rear end and the coves on the side are pretty good for 1958.
I won`t use vulgarity, but that ‘horse collar’ grille looks like ‘female anatomy.’
Does anyone know if there were many (any) stand-alone Edsel stores? The “invasion” ad which lists the East (San Francisco) Bay dealers doesn’t include any Ford names that I recall … I think Berkeley Motors was a Lincoln Mercury dealership.
dman,
Back in the early 1970s I was buying the remaining parts inventories of Studebaker-Packard dealers, and many of these companies I found had switched from S-P to Edsel-only dealerships, especially those in larger cities or close-in suburban locations where Ford’s research indicated an Edsel-only place would do well.
In multiple cases where I was in negotiation to buy obsolete inventories, I ended up in talking with the principle person who had been involved with the S-P to Edsel change. In more than one instance, they said Ford Motor Co had insisted on the dealer giving up the S-P franchise to obtain an Edsel one.
For example, In Bethesda, MD, a very upscale suburban Washington, DC town, Covington Packard’s owner told me he was approached by Ford in 1956 to switch to Edsel. As the new Packard Clipper line would be in direct competition with the Edsel, he said that the new dealership would be Edsel only.
He also said that on realizing Edsel was a failure, he would once again need to find another automotive brand. After looking at the various alternatives [mostly Foreign makes] he made the decision to switch to GM, becoming a Buick franchise.
As for the Author’s comments on Packard’s James J Nance’s move to Ford Motor Company and his direct involvement in Edsel, I would suggest that anyone interested in the upper management decisions at Edsel, read vol 2 of Stuart Blond’s book on Nance [“Spellbound”], where the reader will find plenty of information on the corporate side of the Edsel brand’s demise.
The answer to your question is statistics.
Funny thing ~ I saw a parked two door EDSEL Ranger Tuesday and then when I next checked my E-Mails there was this great article .
The visuals of Edsels have waxed and waned on me over the decades, at this point I like the last gasp 1960 model’s looks the best .
Thanx for all the details and considerations in thoughts .
FWIW, in the early 1960’s I heard endlessly about the Edsel was a lemon, when I asked why I was told “they’re no good is all” ~ a non answer I didn’t accept then nor now .
I agree about GM sweating the details back in the day .
I have owned more than a few Fords and all were perfectly good at what they were designed to do .
-Nate
Edsel was hyped up, was meant to compete with Buick/Olds, but was just another mid-lux car in a belt-tight market. The “lemon” and “horse-collar” were competing dealers making jokes, probably.
Someone posted that Lee Iacocca would have done a better job marketing the brand, and I agree.
I think that the ’59 is a more acceptable design with the toned down center grille, as well as the head lamps integrated in the horizontal design. The ’58 had a lot of complex metal work in the front end, with lots of tight curves that had to be expensive to manufacture. The ’58 reminds me of a person with a lot of plastic surgery displaying a surprised expression!
I really think that there was a disconnect in context, Ford hadn’t produced a front end with a strong vertical element since the ’38 Ford. The last popular car with a narrow vertical grille would have been the ’39 La Salle, which was a GM product. The Edsel was supposed to be a design for “Tomorrow,” but the reference was to styling that was already two decades old.
Of course the recession of ’58 didn’t help, and was there enough market space between the Ford and Mercury to fit another three series of cars? The Ford was known quantity that appealed to thrifty buyers, The Mercury was a bit more flash, but the Edsel just had too many gizmos and as a “new” make, I’ll bet many buyers weren’t willing to take a chance.
In Thomas E. Bonsall’s book, Disaster in Dearborn: The Story of the Edsel, there are photos of 1959 Edsels based on the Mercury body. These were never introduced.
During the corporate introduction party for the 1958 models, Robert McNamara was allegedly overheard saying that he had plans to “phase out” the Edsel.
That may be an urban legend – up there with the overheard garden party conversation driving the downsized 1962 Plymouth and Dodge – but Ford did move very fast in pruning back the Edsel line-up and its distinctive features. Given industry lead times, the decision to scale back the 1959 Edsel line-up, and make its styling less distinctive, must have been made before it was apparent that the 1958 Edsel was not going over with customers as well as Ford had hoped.
This is all very logical of course (unlike so much speculation). It’s quite obvious that the ’59 Edsel was styled and planned before the ’58 was introduced, and it was of course easy to just cancel the Corsair/Citation. The ’59 Pacer was no more (or less) Ford-based than the ’58.
I just ordered that book; long overdue.
Considering that the Edsel project stemmed in part from a power grab by some of the other “Whiz Kids,” I have no problem believing that McNamara said that, honestly.
“… McNamara who wished the Edsel to fail, and him and the others got their way. ”
Same thing happened on a longer timeline with Saturn. Many at GM not behind it, so first chance to make it “less independent” was taken.
Would you be confusing manufacturing totals with sales totals? There was a huge dealer stock of unsold Edsels available on January 1, 1958. The resulting imbalance of sales versus manufacturing totals is a result of that unsold inventory.
A much better read than Bonsall’s book is the account by C. Gayle Warnock, “The Edsel Affair,” although you’ll find it a much more sought-after book, and much more expensive to acquire. A lot of the December discussions held at FoMoCo regarding what to do about the poor sales of the 1958’s and how to handle the 1959 model year are presented in Warnock’s third book “The Rest of the Edsel Affair.”
BTW, the Pacer was a 1958-only model. It was discontinued along with the Citation, Roundup and Bermuda. The models offered in 1959 were the Ranger, Corsair and Villager. In the brief 1960 model year, only the Ranger (in two interior trim levels) and the Villager were left.
If you’d asked me whether any model name was used by both the Edsel and the Aero Willys, I would have said no off the top of my head.
Every Edsel model name was used by other makes before or after the Edsel. Roundup was a Dodge SUV sub-model from 1980. Villager was used on 1960’s Comet and 1993-2002 Mercury minivans, Bermuda of course on the 1952-55 Willys. Ranger became a 1965 Ford F-Series trim package, then later a Bronco trim package and then the compact Ford pickup line. Pacer was that wide, stubby-looking AMC mid-size car of the 1970’s. Corsair was a 1952-54 Henry J model and prior to that it was a 1937 prototype unto itself that never made it to production. Corsair was also used on an English Ford and Australian Ford. Of course now it’s a Lincoln cross-over. Citation was that compact Chevy model of the 1980’s.
Here are the *real* numbers:
While 54,607 Edsels were produced in calendar year 1957, year-end sales stood at only around 30,000. The other 24 some-odd thousand were still in dealer stock! Those cars were mostly sold in the first ten months of 1958, along with another 9,000 or so Edsels produced in 1958.
Doing the math will show you the monthly sales of 1959 models was only slightly higher than the monthly sales of 1958 models in calendar year 1958 . . . 3,600 versus 3,300, approximately.