Edsel is a defunct brand of automobiles that was produced by the Ford Motor Company from the 1958 to 1960 model years. The namesake of Edsel Ford, the Edsel line was developed in an effort to give Ford a fourth brand to gain additional market share from Chrysler and General Motors. Established as an expansion of the Lincoln–Mercury Division (re-christened as the Mercury–Edsel–Lincoln Division), Edsel shared a price range with Mercury and its bodies with both Mercury and Ford.
Competing against Buick, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Dodge, and DeSoto, Edsel was the first new brand introduced by an American automaker since the 1939 launch of Mercury and the 1956 launch of Continental; the latter was retired and merged into Lincoln during the 1957 model year.
In the year leading up to its release, Ford invested in an advertising campaign, marketing Edsels as the cars of the future. While 1958 Edsels introduced multiple advanced features for the price segment, the launch of the model line became symbolic of commercial failure. Introduced in a recession that catastrophically affected sales of all medium-priced cars, Edsels were considered overhyped, low quality, and unattractive; a central part of their design featured a vertical grille said to resemble a horse collar.
Following a loss of over $250 million (equivalent to $ in dollars) on development, manufacturing, and marketing on the model line, Ford quietly discontinued the Edsel brand in November 1959, shortly after the 1960 model line was introduced.
Background (1956–1957) Ford Motor Company became a publicly traded corporation on January 17, 1956, and thus was no longer entirely owned by members of the Ford family. The company was now able to sell cars according to current market trends following the seller's market of the postwar years. Ford's new management compared the company's roster of makes with that of General Motors and Chrysler, and concluded that Lincoln was competing not with Cadillac, but with Oldsmobile, Buick, and DeSoto. Ford developed a plan to move Lincoln upmarket, with the Continental broken out as a separate make at the top of Ford's product line, and to add premium/intermediate vehicles to the intermediate slot vacated by Lincoln.
Ford explained in 1958 that "The Edsel is new but it's actually the germination of an idea conceived by Edsel Ford who thought years ago that the company should have greater representation in the medium-price range. This idea was furthered by his son, Henry Ford II, in 1948 when another car was proposed to keep abreast of things in the automotive market."Blume, N.L. "Engineering the Edsel". SAE Transactions Vol. 66 (1958), 557.
Marketing research and development for the new intermediate line had begun in 1955 under the code name "E car", which stood for "experimental car." Ford Motor Company eventually decided on the name "Edsel", in honor of Edsel Ford, son of the company's founder, Henry Ford despite objections from Edsel's son Henry Ford II. The proposed vehicle marque represented the start-up of a new division of the firm, alongside that of Ford itself and the Lincoln–Mercury division, whose cars at the time shared the same bodies.
Ford later claimed to have performed more than adequate, if not superior, product development and market research work in the planning and design of the new vehicle. Ford assured its investors, and the Detroit automotive press, that Edsels were not only superior products, as compared to their Oldsmobile/Buick/DeSoto competition, but the details of their styling and specifications were the result of a sophisticated market analysis and research and development effort, that would essentially guarantee their broad acceptance by the buying public when the cars were introduced.
In November 1956, the Edsel Division of Ford Motor Company was formed to establish a retail organization and dealer network, alongside Ford and Lincoln–Mercury. The Continental Division had ceased to exist several months earlier. With a network of 1,187 Edsel dealers, Ford Motor Company now had approximately 10,000 dealerships among its three divisions, bringing it closer in line with Chrysler, with 10,000 dealers across five brands, and General Motors, with 16,000 across six brands.
Edsel name etymology Edsel takes its name from Edsel Ford, son of Henry Ford and Ford company president from 1919 until his 1943 death. Once the "E car" began development, "Edsel" came under proposal, but was strongly opposed by the Ford family. Ford president/CEO Henry Ford II declared that he "did not want his father's good name spinning around on thousands of hubcaps". To come up with a name that would win the approval of company leadership, internal studies were started to decide on a name; Ford also began to seek the opinion of the public, standing outside movie theaters to poll audiences on their thoughts of several proposals. No conclusive ideas were reached.
Subsequently, Ford retained the advertising firm Foote, Cone & Belding to come up with a name; the agency issued a report citing over 6,000 possibilities. Ford chairman Ernest Breech responded negatively, commenting that they had been hired to develop one name, not 6,000. Early favorites for the name brand included Citation, Corsair, Pacer, and Ranger; all four were ultimately chosen for the Edsel sedan lines, and each saw further use elsewhere in the American auto industry. David Wallace, Ford manager of marketing research, and coworker Bob Young unofficially invited freethinker poet Marianne Moore for input and suggestions. Moore's unorthodox contributions, among them "Utopian Turtletop", "Pastelogram", "Turcotinga" "Resilient Bullet", "Andante con Moto", and "Mongoose Civique", were meant to stir creative thought and were not officially authorized or contractual in nature.
By the instruction of Ernest Breech (who was chairing a board meeting in the absence of Henry Ford II), Edsel was selected for the brand name of the "E car". Dissatisfied in its other methods to develop a name, Ford management (bypassing Henry Ford II) ultimately selected a brand name with strong ties to its company founder. In line with parent company Ford and several of its competitors, Edsel followed Buick (David Dunbar Buick), Oldsmobile (Ransom E. Olds), Dodge (John and Horace Dodge), and Chrysler (Walter Chrysler). History Edsels were introduced amid considerable publicity on "E Day"—September 4, 1957. They were promoted by a top-rated television special, The Edsel Show, on October 13, but the promotional effort was not enough to counter the adverse initial public reaction to the Edsel's styling and unconventional build.
On September 5, 1957—one day after "E day"—The New York Times reported that Ford's stock had declined by a point, with the new Edsel "being described in some quarters" as a "reborn LaSalle" (a 1927-40 General Motors brand). For months, Ford had been telling the industry press that it "knew", through its market research, that there would be great demand for the vehicles. Ford insisted that, in the Edsels, it had built exactly the "entirely new kind of car" that Ford had been leading the buying public to expect through its pre-introduction publicity campaign for the cars. In reality, Edsels shared their engineering and bodywork with other Ford models, and the similarities were apparent once the vehicles were viewed firsthand.
1958
For its inaugural model year, Edsel introduced a seven-model product line, including four sedans and three station wagons. The lower-trim sedans included the Edsel Ranger and Edsel Pacer (Ford Fairlane-based) and the higher-trim Edsel Corsair and Edsel Citation (sharing bodies with the Mercury Monterey). Derived from Ford station wagons, Edsel introduced the two-door Edsel Roundup and the four-door Edsel Villager and Edsel Bermuda.
The Edsel model line had multiple design features that were considered innovative (for 1958). In place of a horizontal strip or a round dial, Edsel used a rotating dome for a speedometer. In line with aircraft design, the dashboard adopted warning lights for conditions such as low oil level, parking brake engaged, and engine overheating. While not equipped with cruise control, Edsel introduced a speed visual warning on the speedometer if the driver exceeded a preset speed limit. While a standard column-mounted transmission shifter was offered, as a delete option, Edsel marked the introduction of the Teletouch push-button shifting system (mounted in the steering wheel hub).
Edsel vehicles integrated many elements of the Ford Lifeguard safety package into their design. Along with optional seatbelts, a deep-dish steering wheel, double-latched doors, and childproof rear door locks were also included. The model line was among the first to introduce remote-operated trunk opening and self-adjusting brakes.
In the first year, 63,110 Edsels were sold in the United States, and 4,935 were sold in Canada. Though below expectations, this nevertheless represented the second-largest launch for any new car brand to date, exceeded only by the DeSoto introduction in 1929. One four-door Citation model was purchased and delivered in October 1957 to the United Kingdom for Ian Russell, 13th Duke of Bedford. Its current whereabouts are unknown.
In January 1958, the free-standing Edsel division was added to Lincoln–Mercury, with the re-christened Mercury–Edsel–Lincoln Division (M–E–L) adopting Edsel sales and marketing operations. As the model year progressed and sales fell under expectations, multiple Edsel-only dealers closed or expanded their brand offerings with the encouragement of Ford Motor Company, including Lincoln–Mercury or imported Ford of Britain and Ford of Germany franchises.
1959
For the 1959 model year, Ford revised the market position of Edsel. Ford's general sales manager announced the "repositioning of Edsel in the lower price fieldSpielvogel, Carl. "2 Agencies Trade Ford Lines." New York Times, 4 December 1958, 68. and Ford's promotional literature noted that "Edsel is now priced down with many models of Chevrolet, Plymouth, and Ford." To reflect the marketing change, M-E-L made several changes to Edsel, withdrawing Mercury-based Edsel models. The Citation and the Pacer were both discontinued, with the Corsair taking the place of the latter (now sharing bodies with the Ranger). The Edsel Villager became the sole Edsel station wagon, dropping the two-door Roundup and the wood-trimmed Bermuda. Though Edsel sedans all used a Ford body, they moved to a 120-inch wheelbase for 1959 (2 inches longer than Ford).
During mid-1959, Ford introduced the Ford Galaxie as a higher-trim version of the Fairlane 500; no Edsel equivalent of the Galaxie was introduced, further eroding its appeal as a medium-price automobile.
1959 changes In response to the widely negative market reception to the 1958 Edsel exterior design, the 1959 Edsels underwent a revision to tone down their appearance. While the vertical center grille ultimately made its return (de-emphasized with flush-mounted grille trim), a redesign of the hood (flattening it) repositioned the headlamps into a full-width grille, along with a larger front bumper (fitting much closer to the grille). In the rear, a similar revision enlarged and lowered the taillamp housings (in contrast to the Ford Fairlane, Edsel sedans did not have tailfins).