I never thought I’d say those words in the title. When I was a kid, Edsels were the perpetual butt of jokes; for some inexplicable reason, we called them “Edsel Dust”. Well, Edsel had just bit the dust, the very same year we arrived in the US in 1960. So Edsel’s grand implosion was still very much on the public’s mind—including kids—at the time, and the Edsel’s very distinctive vertical center grille made them the easiest car to identify. Everybody could identify an Edsel and chuckle with schadenfreude.
My feelings on the 1958 version are rather different: it was an overly gaudy, silly and fussy makeover of the Ford and Mercury bodies that they shared. But that changed significantly with the 1959 Edsel; yes, it mostly shared the ’59 Ford’s body, which itself was something of a recycled ’58 Mercury body, but in the process of making it an Edsel, it got better than the Ford; significantly so. Seeing that “better” is subjective; let’s use “more advanced”. You might still question the toned down “horse collar” grille, but putting that aside for a moment, that front end is the most advanced of the times. And I prefer to call the vertical segment a tribute to Alfa Romeo.
1959 was a key point in the evolution of the cars’ front end, because the headlight, invariably perched high on the ends of the fenders, now suddenly started to migrate down into the lower section of the front end.
Yes, Nashes had low headlights starting in 1955, and Ramblers in 1956, both inspired by Pininfarina’s restyle of the 1952 Nash-Healey. But those were a bit different, and did not find a lot of favors with the American buying public. By 1958, Rambler went retrograde, and put the headlights back up high, on the ends of the fenders.
In 1959, there was a sea change in that, most of all by GM, whose new cars that year all had some version of that new trend, as seen on this Oldsmobile. So aren’t these the most advanced styled American cars of 1959? No, as it turned out. The front ends did have lower headlights, but the flamboyant and exaggerated styling of the ’59 GM cars, with their wild fins, jet pods, and exaggerated other elements—whose sole inspiration was in outdoing the ’57 Chrysler line—was of course a dead end, and one that was seen as such almost instantly. Which of course explains why GM rushed in drastically toned new 1961 models after only two years.
In other words, the ’59 GM cars had no lasting influence; they were stylistic dead ends, the final blowout of 1950s styling trends.
That was very much not the case with the 1959 Edsel, whose influence can be seen on various FoMoCo products for several years; well into the 60s.
Like the 1962 Ford Fairlane’s front end. Minus the Alfa grille, it’s a splendid tribute to the Edsel’s.
Backing up a couple of years, we can see a very similar front end on the 1960 Comet, which was of course conceived to be a compact Edsel.
This is a fiberglass styling concept for the 1960 Edsel Comet, although clearly not the final evolution, which would have looked just looked the actual Comet but with a split grille. What’s interesting about this concept, as well as some earlier ones that were covered here a while back, is that it reflects key point of stylistic divergence from the 1960 Falcon, that was of course the starting point and the underpinnings of the Comet. But stylistically, a new, squared-off design language was unfolding here, one that would prove to be much more durable than the rounded Falcon’s first generation’s approach.
Of course this more rectilinear design language wasn’t all-new; it started in 1957, most significantly with the Skyliner’s retractable hardtop roof, with its slab C-Pillar and set-in back light, the first of what became a highly recurring theme on Ford roofs for..way too long. The 1965 Fairlane was still wearing it proudly, and the Thunderbird made it an integral element of its look—with some evolution—for years beyond that.
As to the other elements in that new Ford boxy look, especially the roof version used on the 1959 Ford and Edsel, one can see it on quite full display in the 1957 Mercury.
But then as we’ve noted before, the 1959 Ford and Edsel quite obviously inherited the ’57-’58 Mercury body (top), with some modifications. Well, since the senior Edsels were already using it in 1958, we can also say that the 1959 is essentially a senior Edsel with a bit of nip and tucking.
There were of course some differences between the ’59 Edsel (top) and ’59 Ford (bottom), other than the rather different front ends (Ford kept the high headlights), rear ends (Ford’s was significantly less clean/modern), and Ford’s “rocket tubes” attached to its sides. All in all, the Edsel was significantly cleaner and advanced.
One more thing: although they shared the basic body structure, there was a key difference: the Edsel’s 120″ wheelbase was two inches longer, which can be seen in the reduced curvature of its rear door cutout. That means that the rear doors don’t interchange, and that there’s some differences in that part of the body. But then bodies are made up of a lot of little pieces, and Detroit figured out a long time ago how to stretch things a few inches one way or another without incurring big tooling costs, like a roof panel. Or windshields and back windows.
Let’s talk about the Edsel’s other end. It’s relatively advanced for 1959 too, lacking any fins or glued-in jet pods and afterburners. This one doesn’t show it to best advantage, but this design is something of a harbinger of things to come, as in the 1960 Corvair. Is that a wee bit of a stretch?
In any case, it’s where cars in the sixties were clearly going, with a simpler, cleaner boxy trunk and tail lights in the vertical area below. The baroque 1950s were left in the Edsel’s dust.
So much for the positives; there’s negatives too. I have always had a hard time with this general vintage of FoMoCo’s designs in one key area: the “shoulders” at the belt line are too big and wide. Great for the elbows of the passengers when tooling along with the windows open, but not so great for the look and proportions overall.
It tends to create the visual impression that the whole greenhouse is a bit too small, and that it’s melting into the lower body. I’ve actually called this Ford’s “two box” designs, because it really is a slightly narrower and of course shorter upper box sitting on a wider and longer lower box.
This is in stark contrast to the 1960 Valiant’s “fuselage” design, where the doors and windows are all in one plane. This was a quantum step forward in design, a true trailblazer. And of course before long all cars emulated it to one degree or another. It’s as groundbreaking as the C3 Audi 100/5000 was, with its completely flush windows and slick aerodynamic body. It would be a long time before Ford got on that bandwagon.
As to the Edsel’s styling influence, it went a lot further afield than on just other FoMoCo products. Thanks the the astute eye of CC’s Jim Cavenaugh, it’s all too obvious that the legendary Alfa Romeo Giulia was quite significantly influenced by the Edsel, both its rear end as well as roof. I had never noticed it before, although I had thought that the Alfa’s roof design was rather unusual for Europe at the time.
As to the front ends, let’s just say that an even smaller vertical center section a la Alfa might have been more palatable. Clearly the Alfa went its own way otherwise in the front.
The irony in all this is that Ford freaked out when it saw the wild new 1959 GM cars, and decided its boxy Ford (and Edsel) were going to be slaughtered by them.
Not so; the boxy 1959 Ford had a great year, adding two percentage point in market share, nipping at Chevrolet’s bat wings.
Ford rushed their Quicksilver concept into production, and it fell on its face: sales crashed by over 35%; market share plunged by 37%. Undoubtedly the new 1960 Falcon played a significant role in that, but the styling of the 1960 big Ford was clearly a factor too; it just didn’t resonate, and was changed for 1961 as much as possible, given tooling budgets. The 1961 – 1964 big Fords were all laggards.
This new styling direction was a dead end. Meanwhile Ford was selling plenty of junior Edsels in the form of Comets and Fairlanes. It’s interesting to speculate how things would have turned out if Ford had just continued to refine and update this body.
Let’s move on from our analysis and take in this car a bit more, to raise your enthusiasm for being its next owner.
Yes, this is the still the 1950s speaking.
The 1956 Packard Predictor, in particular.
If there had been all-new 1957 Packards, the 1958 Edsel would have looked like a copy-cat.
As to its name, that was a travesty to the impeccable taste of Edsel Ford.
Given the three-on-the-tree and otherwise spartan aspects of this low-end Edsel, I assumed it was a six, which was new to the ’59s. It was the 223 CID unit as used in the Fords. Frankly, from in here, there’s not much to distinguish it from a basic Ford Custom or Fairlane. The Ranger six started at 42,684; a Custom 4-door was $2,273; a more comparable Fairlane was $2,410.
This was the best I could do to get a shot of the dash, which was a bit more elaborate than the Ford’s. Not a whole lot, though.
The rear seat is missing. That makes for a handy pass-through to the trunk, though.
The high mounted outside rear view mirror is an oddity, although not unusual back then. Hi!
Now we get to the moment of truth. There was no price given, so I called, naturally. The owner said “$950. But I will take offers!” He came across as a motivated seller. This fine old Edsel could probably be bought for $750 or so. Depends how good of a negotiator you are.
The body has a few blemishes and it does have some rust on the lower front fenders, front doors and rocker panels, but this looks like a classic Oregon car; meaning whatever rust there is is likely fairly superficial. I took a quick peek of the undersides, and confirmed that. But I’m not vouching for anything either.
It needs a new home; sitting out there in the rain on Seventh Avenue is not a long-term proposition.
My last thought: How different would things have turned out if this had been the 1958 Edsel?
Related reading:
1960 Ford Starliner: Haste Makes Waste Greg Beckenbaugh
Alfa Romeo Giulia Design Inspiration Discovered JP Cavanaugh
As much as I prefer the ’58s, you make a very good case that the ’59 is a better design and I really can’t argue.
That said,, I don’t think bringing this out first would have made a bit of difference. All of the mid priced cars had awful sales years for ’58. One source I’ve seen suggests that as badly as the Edsel did, they still met their target for market share because of how badly the competition did. Given that Robert McNamara wasn’t in favor of the project in the first place, I can’t imagine what sort of sales numbers they would have needed to satisfy him to keep the Edsel going as a brand.
Really as events played out, trying to match GM brand for brand was a bad idea all along, since even GM couldn’t manage it forever.
“I don’t think bringing this out first would have made a bit of difference. All of the mid priced cars had awful sales years for ’58.”
That was my thought, as well. The timing of the short “Eisenhower Recession” (August ‘57 to April ‘58) did most of the auto industry no favors when it comes to the’58 model year.
I’m sure there are others, but a couple of exceptions that come to mind were Rambler and Thunderbird. Rambler’s increase in sales was likely due to some buyers reacting to the bloated sizes of the Big Three’s offerings, as well as a temporary shift toward economical transportation during to the recession. T-bird sales increased because it gained a rear seat, making it more practical to a larger pool of buyers.
Thanks for the shout out! That era of FoMoCo styling from, say, 1957-60 is completely bipolar. Everyone else had a basic look or theme, but not Ford. Some, like this one, follow the “fill the corners” school that were so predictive of the rectangular shape that dominated for the next 20 years. But most of that group (57-8 Mercury, 58-60 Lincoln and Thunderbird) added so much deep sculpting and gingerbread that the designs have not really aged well. Others (57-58 Ford) were still in that late 50s fins and flair thing that go back to the Mystere show car. The 59-60 Mercury, well I still can’t figure out where that one sits. I guess the 60 was really pretty clean but for that bizarre rear end.
You make a great point that this car was quite predictive – it took the basic rectangular shape and screwed with it less than anything else out of the company at the time. Even that grille doesn’t look as jarring as it would have in 1959 because we all have 68-70 Pontiacs sorted into the “normal styling” section of our brains, and this car was a decade ahead of them.
There must have been a bunch of 6 cylinder Edsels sold – the 59 survivors I have seen at shows and such seem to have an inordinately high proportion of stripper 6 cars among them.
Great timing here, since I also came across a ’59 Edsel earlier this year, and will have a (rather long) article on Edsels next week. The one I found is a more upscale Corsair (picture below)… but really, how many ’59 Edsels are for sale at any given time?
Prior to researching that article, I was somewhat ambivalent about Edsels – fascinated by their unfortunate place in history but otherwise with few opinions. But since I’ve been immersed in Edsel information for the past few months, I’ve come to appreciate them much more, and particularly the ’59s. If I were interested in buying a car of this era, a ’59 Edsel would be high on my list.
I do like the ’59 front end, and I can’t help wondering how differently things would have turned out if the original car had had more of the ’59’s styling… though the styling was by far not the only reason for Edsel’s demise. Interestingly, a lot of the ’59 Edsel styling details were already planned even before the brand ran into sales turmoil.
For the back end design, though, I prefer the ’58… with its space-age horizontal tail light bars. The three-cluster ’59 tail lights lost a lot of distinction, in my opinion.
I hope all these ’59 Edsels find good homes some time soon!
In my experience, those Corsairs are not common at all! I have seen multiple 59s in my life, but virtually all of them have been Ranger sedans.
Your experience isn’t deceiving you — about 80% of the 2-dr. and 4-dr. ’59 Edsels were Rangers.
It shows how far downmarket Edsel fell for ’59, since for 1958, about 1/3 were Rangers, 1/3 were mid-range Pacers, and then the remaining third were the higher-end Corsairs and Citations.
They were responding to the market conditions of 1958, which was brutal on big higher-end cars. Everyone turned into a miser that year.
Eric if you need a little color variety, here’s one in red and white.
https://www.govmoco.com/details/used-1959-edsel-ranger/79823855
One additional little styling detail that I’d never noticed before looking closely at ’59 Edsels is how the Edsel name on the side of the car is split between body panels.
In the picture below, we can see the E-D-S is on the front fender, and the E-L is on the door. It’s split E-D / S-E-L on the passenger side.
It’s an amusing (to me) detail — there may well be other cars that have had their name split in this way on the side of a car, but I can’t think of any.
Also, the “Edsel” lettering on the dash/glovebox is in a completely different font from the outside.
There’s the late 60s Bonnevilles, but that’s an even number of letters.
This is sort of related but sort of not, but with the reputation that the Edsel has in the automotive world and the fact that it was a product of the Ford Motor Company, how in the world did the Ford Edge SEL ever get approved by marketing?
Is that where Benny Hill found inspiration that whenever a sign would be partially covered by an opening door (or whatever) it would happen to strategically change the sign’s meaning? lol
This Edsel has an interesting method of keeping the doors closed, not just the front doors, but the rears as well!
In the early 1990s I had an almost identical car sitting in my back “used spare parts lot”, and another rough 2-door sedan next to it. We had them there because we were restoring a 1959 Edsel convertible.
Once the drop-top Edsel was finished and delivered to the owner, my body shop manager and I seriously considered taking the front grill and hood parts, and carefully cutting and fitting the grill parts together, and matching the hood sections to match. What we were going for was a “Two headed” Edsel front. The front would have had twin center horse collars, about 18″ apart [centerline to centerline of the grills]. The hood would have had twin raised sections all the way back. Instead of the “gun sights” on the fender crowns, we intended to relocate those to above the twin grills.
The Edsel letters were removed, and replaced with a single BMW roundel in the lower area of the left grill. The gun sights would have had little BMW roundels inside them. In the license plate area would be a sign: “Prototype for an American made BMW”.
I also wasted a few hours taking a B&W photo with my 4×5 large format camera, filling the image area with a close-up of the car’s front from the center of the grill. I made multiple enlarged copies, and using cut & paste techniques, I made a fairly detailed photo of what the new BMW would look like.
A close friend said “Don’t you dare build that abomination”, while another friend begged me to build it! Never did build it, because not long after I finished the photo, a huge fire that destroyed my shop, also burned portions of the Edsel sedan.
“This Edsel has an interesting method of keeping the doors closed, not just the front doors, but the rears as well!”
You know, my grandparents had an old Edsel rotting away in their field. It too had a bungee cord holding the driver’s door shut. After seeing the same thing on this one I’m beginning to wonder if broken door latches were a common problem on these.
Great style analysis Paul & JP! I love these type of articles that bring a fresh perspective to long-ingrained opinions.
The ’59 is my favorite of the Edsels. Interesting about the poor-selling ’60 Ford…I feel despite the back end being a homage to the (sorry but it’s ugly) ’59 Chevy, I think the front end is a much more cohesive design compared to the ’59 or ’61.
Thanks for stretching my brain today.
The real travesty of the Edsel car is how it dragged the visionary Edsel Ford’s name through the mud, and it’s forever ingrained into the American psyche as being synomous with failure.
If not for ‘Crazy Henry’ Ford’s constant interference and belittlement, his son would likely be ranked with the likes of other brilliant auto executives. The car was meant to be a tribute to Henry Ford II’s father, and the fact that it failed miserably is quite sad.
Given Henry Ford’s lunacy later in life (he might have been an engineering genius at one time, but he had no idea how to run a company the size Ford would eventually become), it’s a wonder that the Ford Company survived, at all. Henry Ford was no Walter Chrysler or Alfred Sloan, that’s for sure.
As well, HFII had already named his eldest son after his father. He was born in 1948, not quite 10 when Edsel the car was unveiled and by the time he was in his early teens his name had become a synonym for failure. I’m not sure if Edsel Ford II has ever gone on record about it but…ouch.
Edsel Ford would have been aghast to have his name attached to it.
Legend has it that when a Ford executive called on Eleanor Clay Ford to tell her that the new car was to be named for her late husband, she slammed the door in his face!
Who can blame her!
The headlights started the migration down into the grille a bit earlier than the Edsel. The ’55/’56 Packard was partway there, connected to the grille if still mostly above it. The ’57 Imperial (usually) had dual headlights set about halfway into the grille. That little chrome eyebrow strip over the Edsel’s headlights caught on for a few years, as it helped tall 1950s bodies carry headlights-at-grille-level look. The ’59 Studebaker Lark had it, the ’60 Valiant had it, and when Rambler headlights sank back into the grille for 1961 it had a protrusion that suggested it. The Edsel’s would have looked better if it continued around the side of the car rather than the side molding being an inch lower.
The broad-shouldered look with the lower section being wider than the greenhouse could be considered advanced in 1959. This would be a crucial design element in the 1961 Continental, which became the template for what big American sedans should look like in the 1960s. When Elwood Engel moved to Chrysler, he applied that look across the entire Mopar line in the mid-’60s. Of course they then went smooth and fuselage by the end of the decade, preceded by the ’66 Toronado over at GM.
That would-be ’57 Packard 400 is a bit underwhelming. There’s no door handles on it – anyone know if they would have been center-opening? If not, the rear passengers best be careful not to crash their head into the C pillar upon entry. The lip over the windshield thing, the fully exposed B pillar, and over-the-grille headlamps would have looked dated by ’59.
I seem to recall Elwood Engel’s broad shouldered look being referred to as a “hat section” design detail when reading about Engel’s automotive design. Not sure if that terminology came from Engel or not.
There was a “mule”, a working and running 1957 Packard mock-up known as “Black Bess”, and it had rear doors hinged at the front. Based on the diagram for the different divisions of Studebaker-Packard, all the doors for every model were hinged at the front.
Edsel Ford was in many ways a tragic figure. By all accounts he was a gentle, thoughtful and gracious man, the polar opposite of his autocratic father. Old man Henry would belittle and humiliate Edsel at every turn and gave him no real power at the company. Edsel had a fine eye for design and realized changes had to be made at Ford for it to remain successful. He never had the chance, dying of cancer at 49. Sad.
Its still fairly easy to find 1959 Edsel sedans in good condition for reasonable prices, no one need start with a rusty example such as this car.
Taking the styling approach, it would have made more sense to apply the ’59 Edsel styling without the central grille and with large round taillights to the ’59 Ford. The ’59 Ford front styling with a Edsel center grille would have visually continued the 1958 theme. Whatever styling ginned-up for the rear high-mounted taillights would have been fine. Ford got a lot of styling ‘mileage’ out of the ’59 Edsel theme over the next half-decade.
Edsel was a corporate goner by the 1959 introduction, just a rolling-dead make waiting for its demise.
My dad called it a toilet seat grill.
I see the price of gas is $3.85 a gallon there today. Higher than I thought it was Stateside, but not as bad as here.
We are running at $1.499 a litre here in Toronto today, or about $5.68 $CAD per USG. Atrocious.
I do like this Edsel, it appears to be quite solid, externally at least. It would be nice to know that someone would take this under their care and extend its life.
That rear trunklid doesn’t have a batwing, but it does have something resembling a shape of flight of some kind. The broad, flat wingspan. The drop at the body in the middle. Understated, nicely done.
This is kind of the “ultimate turkey”, but that’s OK b/c old turkeys can be interesting. Let’s see–3 on the tree, manual everything; that mechanical-sounding 223 6 overtaxed hauling this big hunk of metal around; the lemon-sucking grille leading the way.
In late ’57 and into ’58, I could see why someone would buy an Edsel: It was all-new, had neat-o features like Teletouch, and big, smooth, high-torque MEL V-8s. By ’59, it was basically all Ford, but with a “loser” image. Still, they sold 40,000 ’59s? Who would buy this–when you could get a much better looking and more popular ’59 Ford Fairlane or Galaxie for the same money?
There seem to be more Edsels around today than 1958-59 Ford sedans, even though Ford out-produced Edsel by about 10 to 1!
LIFE magazine listed this as one of the “worst cars ever” along with other favorites of mine: ’59 Chevy & Cadillac, ’58 Buick, ’38 Graham Sharknose, etc. Of course I disagree with the editors of LIFE.
From the LIFE article:
What’s happening here?
Was an Olds grille once substituted or is the image some sort of “shopped” composite of different models?
I agree with you that the Edsel is far from one of the worst cars ever, but it was probably the unluckiest car ever. Just about everything went wrong for Ford in trying to sell this car. It was far from perfect, but was more the victim of circumstance rather than from poor qualities of the car itself.
Back in ’62, my 55 Chevy 210 had succumbed to Michigan’s winter worm, so I drove over to Dearborn’s Bob Ford on Michigan Avenue. I looked over a 59 Fairlane post for $550 and a comparable Merc Montclair for about the same.
Then I spied a 59 Edsel Citation 4 door post on the back lot, sorta hidden. It was a loaded white on Turquoise beast with the big V8. I considered it a deal and drove off the lot leaving behind $375 and my smoking Chevy Six. Enjoyed that beast throughout my college years.
Even though it was the butt of many of my pals, I really enjoyed that car, even lost my virtue in it!
Very astute observations Paul! Car design is my profession, but I am always learning something new here! If you remove the side trim from the ’59 Edsel and shrink the shoulder a bit you can quite clearly see the hip kick up present in a lot of ’60s Fords (and other marques). And that front end configuration was definitely influential. Thanks for opening my eyes!
BTW, I really like the ’60 Fords, especially the way the kick in the rear door beltline integrates with the C pillar on the hardtop. The bodyside is really clean with the sharp crease that extends rearwards and the front fender and wheel openings are neat.
The design element that makes the headlights-in-the-grille plane work is the airfoil shape layered on top of the grille plane. It took its inspiration from an aircraft wing to resolve the section height of the hood front that had been blunt. The side benefits were the sculptural leads that trail down the upper fender into the main body and to allow a wider hood opening. The wider hood enabled less offset deep draw for the fender tops.
The ‘shoulders’ had been developing since the arrival of the fully-envelop body, were displayed prominently on the Continental Mark II, especially at the rear quarters. Separating the greenhouse from the lower body mass emphasized the perceived three-abreast width considered desirable then. The 1958-’60 Lincolns and Continentals were champions in this feature, had broader padded shoulders than Joan Crawford!
For an overview of 1959 Edsels offered for sale over the past year which we have reposted on the AACA “Not Mine” For Sale forum:
https://forums.aaca.org/search/?q=1959%20Edsel&quick=1&type=forums_topic&nodes=161
I know it’d seem a shame after all this time but if it were close to home I’d clobber such an Edsel right now for a fresh complete 6-stick set-up. The automatic keeps this one safe from execution. lol
Could have electric wipers? Just a hunch but in my unscientific not-supported-by-data observation cheap ’59s tended to be likely to have electric wipers.
Looking closely at the interior shot, I see a big brake pedal and no clutch. The shift level looks like it’s in PARK. So this may be an automatic. And it may not be a 6 either, unless Paul checked under the hood.
I think Edsels had vacuum wipers.
My bad; it is an automatic. But it’s a six for sure, as I talked to the seller.
I wonder if the 1957 to 1960 Mercury and the 1958 Edsel Corsair and Citation used a different platform from the Fords or was just a long wheelbase version of the same platform. I have noticed that the 1959 Ford had similar styling to the 1957 and 1958 Mercury, but used a 118 inch wheelbase. My understanding is that 1957 Ford was all new and the 1957 to 1964 Fords used the same platform.
They’re cut from the same cloth, so to speak.
To be more specific: There were two body versions, narrow (’57-58 Ford and ’58 Edsel Ranger) and wide (’57-58 Mercury, ’58 Edsel Citation.Corsair, ’59 Ford and Edsel). There were also wheelbase variations within both of these bodies.
But these bodies only varied from the cowl back, and were a bit wider there. The front ends could interchange, for instance both the ’58 Edsel Ranger and Corsair/Citation had the same front clip.
They all rode on the same basic frame design and suspension, with different wheelbase lengths. They all had the same front track. There were two rear axles; a narrow one for the Fords and ’58 Edsel Ranger, and a wide one for the Mercury and ’58 Edsel Citation/Corsair.
All variations of the same theme.
“The front ends could interchange, for instance both the ’58 Edsel Ranger and Corsair/Citation had the same front clip.”
Although they can be swapped, the FE-Bodied Edsel Ranger/Pacer and the ME-Bodied Corsair/Citation have different front fenders. The ME has more of a shoulder and different surface development through the doors that match up with the Mercury. FE Ranger/Pacer front clips swap onto Fords perfectly matching the Ford.
Thank you for your response. Did the 59-60 Mercury use the same chassis or was that all new?
Yes, aame “cowbelly” chassis.
We’ve slighted Ranchero and wagon, which were beefed in subtle ways. Convertible had a serious heavy “X” reinforcement to the frame, with Skyliner and Sunliner each having different frames, but still of the same family. Skyliner only, packed the fuel tank over the tunnel.
In case that’s not enough detail lol there was a large and small axle/bearing. A 5″ “Mercury” bolt-circle hub, vs the “Ford” 4.5″, with differences not necessarily related to capacity.
You are correct Mr. Niedermeyer. Yet – the narrative.
For sixty years plus, we’ve been told the same old stories about how door handles fell off, how transmissions fell apart, and about how the public turned away from the car Ford spent millions of dollars advertising as the latest thing. The number one television show, winning buckets of awards was “The Edsel Show”, which you and I probably enjoy on YouTube. How couldn’t anyone not love that all-star cast?
We’ve got lengthy business models explaining where Ford went wrong. You can’t possible shed any new light on the Edsel like you did the “Winter Party” that cause Chrysler to downsize their cars, right?
Hmmm.
Ford should have attacked an unoccupied part of the car market. The early boomers weren’t old enough for a Mustang-type car, but what about a luxurious midsize, clean and de-baroqued like a ’61 Continental, but lower priced? Was that too close to the Squarebird?
I suppose I hadn’t paid that much attention before to how the headlights on the ’59 were smoothly integrated into the horizontal part of the grille, in contrast to what now looks like a bug-eyed effect on other FoMoCo products of its era.
Its styling influence on the Giulia is also something I wouldn’t have thought to put together. It’s undeniable.
It’s nice to read something positive (or not negative) about an Edsel. I hope this one finds a good home.
The Edsel was the best-looking car Ford made in 1960. Nice full-width grille. Clean sides. The back is a bit unusual but not unattractive IMO and much better than the “59 Chevy batwing lite” look of the Fords.
The ’59 Edsel doesn’t do much for me, though.
look at the head-on view of the Edsel ….
…. and think Pontiac Tempest, of 10 yrs later….
“just sayin’ ” …..
So is this edsel really for sale for $950?
Last time I drove by there a couple of weeks ago, it was still there.
I live in Oregon City.. Is it still there??