The Short-Lived and Expensive Tale of Ford's Edsel

ladies and gentlemen, Ford Motor Company would like you to see the new styling the new features perhaps one of the most famous automotive fails of all time Ford's Edsel brand is a staple of how a car's success is dictated by more factors that how many people have heard of it, while Ford attempted to rationalize the disastrous sales record of this

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range of automobiles through marketing and promotion, the bitter truth was that the Edsel was a loss-making mountain of problems that They culminated in one of the most ill-conceived cars ever built, so what's the story? The story of the Edsel begins in the mid-1950s, when during the post-war economic boom, automobile production in the United States was soaring to the top, Detroit's big three were fighting for glory.

With Ford and General Motors dominating the scene, closely followed by Chrysler, it was an era when austerity was considered a dirty word and extravagance was key to a product's success, with cars of this era lavishly decorated with chrome trim. and aerodynamic fins. On January 17, 1956, Ford Motor Company became a publicly traded corporation, partially taking it out of the hands of the Ford family under which it had originally been founded by Henry Ford in 1903, with the new change of management, Ford company executives had realized that their exclusive luxury brand, Lincoln, was struggling to compete with General Motors' equivalent, Cadillac, as Cadillac had become the glamorous face of American motoring.

Lincoln was falling down the price range, rather than largely competing against mediocre-level Oldsmobiles and Buicks at the time, Ford's brand structure consisted of three brands. By comparison, the Lincoln luxury tops the Mercury for entry-level premium cars and the Ford name itself for lower-end family models. General Motors had the luxury Cadillac Buick for executive powertrains, Oldsmobile for entry-level premium models, and Chevrolet for low-end family cars. To counter this, Ford executives opted to create a new mid-priced car division equivalent to Oldsmobile, while pushing Lincoln and Mercury up a notch to make them comparable to Cadillac and Buick. Additionally, Lincoln's top-of-the-line model, the Continental, would become its own designed ultra-luxury brand.

To rival companies like the Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud, market research into developing a brand that would sit in the same range as Oldsmobile had begun as early as 1955 and was dubbed the Experimental Automobile or ECAR, the target demographic for The electric car was They identified themselves as rising young professionals and considered these to be people who had the money to buy cars of a higher level of luxury than the drab Fords, but not enough to buy high-end Lincolns with their market . People in this category were identified and asked what they expected to find in a car that suited their salary level and social position with the feedback used to guide the design for young professionals looking for a car that would stand out from any angle. angle, a machine that would attract attention and announce its arrival with a pronounced hood and grille reminiscent of pre-war Packards and LaSalles;

At the same time, the car needed to be contemporary with the space age styling trend of the mid-1950s with an aviation-style interior and controls, chrome fins and powerful engines; However, there were initial setbacks for the car brand and, in particular, the name of the car could not carry the ECAR name forever nor could it easily enter sales as an experimental car to counter this problem. Ford turned to Firm Foot Cone and Belding advertising to find a name. 6,000 possibilities were eventually considered, much to the chagrin of Ford executive vice president Ernest Beech, who had only wanted one among the six thousand names conjured up.

Early favorites for the brand included the Corsair Pacer and Ranger and these would eventually end up as the model names rather than the dead end David Wallace, marketing research manager and colleague Bob Young, unofficially invited the freethinking poet Marion Moore for input and suggestions; However, Moore's modernist and somewhat unorthodox considerations gave rise to oddities such as the utopian turtle at the top of the Turkish Pass telegram. Tinga, the resistant bullet, the motorcycle-riding and the civic mongoose, fortunately, since these names were only intended to stimulate creative thinking and since he had no contractual obligation to provide a title, none of these strange ideas managed to get out of his meeting, finally out of sheer desperation.

The marketing team had settled on an idea that had been circulating since the beginning of the development of the Edsel brand. This name was a tribute to Edsel B Ford, son of Henry Ford and president of the company between 1919 and 1943, in addition to being the father of the brand. The then current president of the company, Henry Ford II, was a bit behind Ford's back. Ernest Beech officially declared that the new brand would be called Edsel at a board of directors meeting from which Henry Ford was conveniently absent. Naturally, the use of the nickname Edsel drew the ire of the Ford family. with Henry Ford himself stating that he did not want his father's good name hanging around on thousands of hubcaps to further cement the problems with the choice of Edsel as the title for Durant's polls outside of movie theaters to gather reactions of the hearing about the name they arrived at.

No conclusion, apart from Henry Ford's complaints about the name, there were other vocal critics of the Edsel brand within the company's management, notably Robert McNamara. McNamara had been hired by Ford immediately after World War II, when the company was on the brink of bankruptcy and therefore needed significant investment. change in the company's internal policy and management structure McNamara was one of 10 U.S. Air Force veterans, dubbed the Boy Geniuses, who helped turn around the company's fortunes. McNamara's cost reduction and containment skills stood out from the rest in a similar way to the original. Henry Ford McNamara focused solely on developing the Ford brand, while its subsidiary brands, such as Lincoln Mercury Continental and Edsel, were considered redundant, so when the proposal was made to create the Edsel division as well as the Continental divisions individual Lincoln and Mercury, McNamara varmint.

Lee opposed the idea, believing that the brand should be consolidated into a single division called Miele Mercury Edsel Lincoln. It was in this capacity that he proved to be the voice of reason behind the scenes in Ford's rather hasty creation of new brands such as Edsel and Continental which ultimately spelled doom for both; Meanwhile, Edsell's first model range was developed with a style for the car based entirely on collected market research and apparently incorporating many different features from a variety of other popular cars. Initially, the Edsel brand consisted of seven models: the two-door Ranger sedan, the 4-door Pacer sedan, the two-door and four-door Corsair hardtop, the two-door Citation with a drop top, the two-door Roundup pickup truck. , the Villager 4-door station wagon and the High-Final Bermuda 4-door station wagon among these cars, followed the same general styling cues of long, sweeping curves, scallops on the round profile for the light clusters and tail fins;

However, the most controversial addition to the car was the installation of a giant vertical oval grille penned by assistant stylist Bob Jones and made in response to market research feedback desiring the installation of such an element, although the original concept drawings by Edsel chief designer Roy Brown were conceived as very thin with an almost delicate opening in the centre, the choice of such The huge hole in the front of the car was decided for engineering reasons, with fears that problems would arise of engine cooling by having such a small inlet. The final input into the design was made by noncompliance, who demanded it go higher and higher. wider, making it an important part of the car's face and image, without the grille the appearance of the Edsell would be somewhat comparable to that of contemporary Oldsmobiles and Buicks, but with the grille it took on a unique and distinctive stance when the Designers would later regret another strange choice.

Period-shaped taillights for estate models to give the cars a unique rear style, were fitted with sheet metal lights that pointed inward, giving the impression to drivers behind that when the indicators were on operation, the arrows pointed to the desired direction. travel with the right turn signal pointing left and the left turn signal pointing right Despite subsequent complaints that these lights caused driver confusion, management insisted that no sheet metal could be changed internally, the car tried once again to meet the demands of market research by providing extremely complicated features for the driver. As standard, the car was equipped with interior styling details such as a rolling dome, speedometer warning lights for conditions such as low oil level, applied parking brake and engine overheating, ergonomically designed driver controls, brakes and self-adjusting seat belts, which were optional extras on other models, and child-resistant rear door locks that could only be unlocked with the key.

Most notable of all was the ATM's touch-button automatic transmission selector, a Pioneered in the Edsel after years of research and development, the touch cashier system had been conceived by Ford in the early 1950s and was based on earlier developments in solenoid-activated and transmission shift devices for a standard sliding gears. This push-button electromechanical transmission system placed the transmission buttons on a ring inside the center of the steering wheel, providing more space on the dash and eliminating the need for a shift lever on the center console, while the Ranger Pacer and Low-end station wagons maintained a traditional automatic transmission, high-end Corsair models and the Citation came with standard cashier tuchis for the power that Ford's Mel Division chose to create a brand. new power plant for the Edsel model, being the Mel v8 which replaced the old 1952 Lincoln wide block engine for the Edsel models, the top end appointment in Corsair came with a 410 cubic inch or 6 Edsel e 475 v8 engine .7 liters, while the lower-end models were made up of a motley crew of Ford straight-six and V8 engines with displacements ranging from 3.7 liters to 5.9 liters.

In terms of performance, Edsel models were generally comparable to their rivals; The Citation featured a 0 to 60 time of 7.4 seconds and a top speed of 123 miles per hour and an average fuel consumption of 11.8 miles. By contrast, the Buick 70 Series Roadmaster Riviera featured a zero to 60 time. of nine point nine seconds, a top speed of 119 miles per hour and an average fuel economy of 12 miles per gallon as The newly created Edsel brand had no dedicated assembly plants and all models shared the production line with the other models. Contemporary Ford and Mercury. Every Edsel was tested, measured and assigned a quality score as it rolled off the line and the daily shipment of cars to dealers was dictated by the average quality score of each car built that day, despite all the underlying issues involved. with the development of the Edsell, it was declared on September 4, 1957 by Ford, who did everything possible to promote the launch of its new model range, the Edsel models went on sale at prices. on par with Mercury at the time with the low-end Ranger starting at $2,484, the Pacer at $2,700, the Corsair at $3,311 and the Citation topping the range at $3,500 with options the Citation topped out at three grand. seven hundred and sixty-six dollars On October 13, a top-rated television special called the Edsel Show aired, an hour-long program starring Bing Crosby Frank Sinatra Rosemary Clooney Louis Armstrong Lindsay Crosby, the Preparation Four, and Bob Hope.

The sole purpose of this television special was to raise awareness about the brand and was presented as a musical variety show which garnered favorable reviews from contemporary critics, even winning Look magazine's television award for best music show, as well as being nominated for an Emmy as best single program of the year, however, even though --day broughtApproximately three million people flocked to Ford showrooms across the United States and in Canada, very few people returned home with an Edsel for various reasons. The first bone of contention was the Edsel brand name. The truth is that the Edsel brand for the paint customer had no effect. that is, unless they possessed some prior knowledge of the internal management structure of the Ford company among a sea of ​​brands that generally adopted the name of their company's founder, Rolls-Royce Ford Buick, or were based on historical figures, Lincoln Mercury Cadillac Edsel stood out as something Next, very obscure and unidentifiable, was the price that failed to justify the overall existence of the brand compared to other models in the mail line.

The very concept of the Edsel was to fit into a price range between low-cost Ford models and premium Mercury models, but instead it was priced almost identically to its relatives rather than having a series of tiered price ranges. that covered every segment of the market, the 1957 Edsel Ranger, for example, cost almost exactly the same as the Ford Fairlane 500 and the Mercury Medalist, while the Pacemaker cost almost the same as the Monterey and the Citation cost almost the same than the Montclair; The only instance where the Edsel appeared as a less

expensive

option than a Mercury was between Citation and Park Lane, but this could not hide the multitude of sins that are put front and center.

For the inferior Edsel models, a question quickly arose on customers' lips: why buy an Edsel of questionable origin when you could just as easily buy a Mercury for the same price and guarantee you know what you're getting to add more to the Edsel? Rose was the time when Europe, Canada and the United States were hit by an economic recession that began in late 1957, known as the Eisenhower recession, the first recession since the end of World War II was caused due to a slowdown general economic activity. and the pressure on businesses to make supply meet demand, essentially excessive post-war mass production.

The boom caused the economy to stumble and what began was a year-long economic crisis that caused many businesses to close. businesses and a rising price of living, as a result of which sales of many of America's luxury and high-end motors faced a significant decline with total automobile sales falling 31 percent by the end of 1957 , exacerbated by poor pricing that allied it with the Mercury brand rather than closing the gap between it and Ford's lower range, the brand suffered an equal drop in potential sales. to meet forecasts even without the Eisenhower recession, although the Edsel, as a mid-priced car range, was entering a shrinking market as Marx and the companies consolidated, market trends were moving away from mid-range models with a new generation of compact cars like the Rambler.

American by AMC and economy cars like the Volkswagen Beetle and Austin America that emerged to undercut the larger models, in essence, the smaller models sold by Ford were being moved into the midsize car segment as the compacts weighed below them on the market and, therefore, the builders who specialized in creating mid-range models like Studebaker faced disappearance; A much more reasonable option considering these changing market trends would have been to go with the Edsel brand; Instead, they proposed a series of compact, economical cars under the Ford brand to compete directly with models such as the American Rambler. and the beetle considered mid-range cars the way Edsel suggested were not a dying breed and swept the concept regardless of what market research told it, the problems weren't just in price and timing of the car. but also in construction, while much of Edsell's mechanicals were based on contemporary Ford models of the time, there were still a number of differences that line workers struggled to adapt to in mass production.

Workers on the Ford and Mercury lines were conditioned to assemble models of the same type over and over again, which they did with some degree of success; However, putting an Edsel model in every eighth and tenth car meant that the workers assembling these machines had to build the cars in a different way, which also had to be done in a timely manner so as not to reduce plant production, The complex had many aspects of the Edsel cars that were hastily or incorrectly assembled, resulting in customer reliability issues, although not all of the cars that left the factory with problems were due to inexperienced workmanship. with some workers deliberately selecting Edsel models to sabotage them due to the fact that they shared the same name as the company's former president, the American union United Automobile Workers had bad memories of Edsel Ford due to its constant clashes with them and, therefore, Therefore, they deliberately chose to build the cars that bore their name inappropriately simply despite their memory, this was not helped by Edsel's average reliability score for daily batches of cars, the average score was based on the number of cars which left the factory without significant flaws. but this was an arbitrary figure which meant that if the average score was slightly above the acceptable minimum, then a significant number of cars would still be sent to the showroom with reliability problems, while the faults of the problem cars should have been rectified in the factory that Ford chose.

Instead of taking the problem down and even on cars that were obviously poorly built, including loose body panels and broken mechanisms, they transmitted notes to the showroom explaining how to finish off barely assembled units, in some cases loose pieces of trim or other poorly fitting parts. They were placed in the trunk of the car for showroom mechanics to fix when delivered, apart from unreliability, the cars also featured a number of design flaws which made them unpopular with both customers and mechanics. . a very complex piece of equipment and was seen by drivers as a problematic gimmick that replaced the horn button on the steering wheel hub, so when drivers tried to honk the horn, they accidentally changed gears, in addition, the control cables of the ATM touch system were also routed. near the exhaust manifold, often causing unpredictable movement of the selector mechanism and, in some cases, complete failure.

Another problem was that the electrical design required drivers to shift from park to reverse to neutral to drive in order to avoid overloading the TEL's attached motor. The engine was also not powerful enough to get the car out of park while on a hill, so dealers instructed drivers to set the parking brake before pressing the park button. Problems were also found with the design of the e 475 engine when the cylinder heads were fitted. at an angle to the roof The pistons formed both a crush zone on one side and a combustion chamber on the other, so combustion took place entirely within the diameter of the cylinder and the mechanics could not repair the engine with confidence due to the lack of distinct combustion chambers based on these problems are staggering, 16% of Edsel owners reported poor workmanship, these included mechanical and build quality issues with the car, even the test cars presented to Motorsport critics had issues with the test car used by Popular Mechanics, illustrating a trunk that leaked heavily during rain and the odometer showing fewer miles than actual miles traveled, the biggest and most jarring problem with the Edsel, however.

However, it was its ever-present horse-neck grille, the elongated, upright oval intake yoke towards the front that was a point of ridicule from the moment the car was introduced and by far the most notable feature. of the car that led to a cavalcade of jokes and ridicule, in addition to being noted as reminiscent of a horse collar, the grill was also parallel to a toilet seat, the expression one makes when sucking on lemons and, more vocally, the private parts of a woman with A style so easily identifiable and profoundly ugly that no one wanted to be seen driving these cars, which served to tip the Edsell iceberg and many other design, construction and image problems, in fact, in a famous case when Vice President Richard Nixon was on a state visit to Lima.

Crowds of people in Peru threw eggs at him and the Edsel Corsair he was traveling in, to which he said they were throwing eggs at the car, which is not surprising to him, although even though the Edsel brand was below of its expected sales forecast, the car represented the second largest. launch of any new American automobile brand to date, selling 63,000 110 cars in the US and 4,935 in Canada during its first year of production, this figure is only surpassed by the launch of the DeSoto brand under Chrysler back in 1929, where eighty-one thousand units were sold. sold during Marc's first year, the Edsel also gained international notoriety when a four-door Citation was purchased and delivered in October 1957 to the United Kingdom for the Duke of Bed

ford

, but the current whereabouts of this famous car are unknown despite Ford's seemingly calamitous sales entry of Edsel descended into full damage control mode after becoming convinced that its marketing campaigns, including --day and the Edsel television special, had not reached a sufficiently large audience.

Broadly, despite customer feedback proving otherwise, Ford management decided to do everything possible to promote the car while there were a controversial number of billboards and television commercials, public relations executive Walter Tommy Thomas decided to go one step further by offering customers a pony with their car. The most surprising thing about this was that this outlandish idea actually happened and, in association with the primetime television show, wagon customers who agreed to test drive an Edsel would enter their name into a lottery at the dealership and the lucky winner would receive a Live pony as a pet. It went as well as you would expect when supporting this strange promotional campaign.

Ford purchased 1,000 Opelousas oneis and shipped them to Edsel dealers throughout the United States. finish assembly of the cars they received and deal with numerous customer complaints regarding reliability, but now they had to buy food and clean the live ponies kept on site while, encouraged by their children, many parents did test drives in Edsel, the lottery winners, opted to take the alternative cash prize of $200 or around $1,700 in 2020. The failure of the campaign, along with the discontent it generated among management and dealers, After this, Detroit finally realized that the problem was not the promotion but the car itself and decided to undertake a range reduction to try to recoup its substantial losses. for the 1959 model year, only the low-end Ranger and the high-end Corsair.

These two cars were made available based on Ford models, while those based on Mercury products were discontinued as a high-end replacement for the Pacer. The Corsair was now offered as a two-door and four-door hardtop. Mechanically, the two- and four-door sedan and town wagon ditched the problematic tella touch system in favor of a more conventional Marla Matic two-speed automatic transmission and a dual-drive three-speed automatic transmission, the Mel v8. Edsel was also dropped from the range and only the 5.4-litre Ford Fe v8 was offered in the Corsair, while the Ranger received straight-six and V8 power plants depending on trim, although most notable was the toning down of the styling. while the vertical grille was still present, it now featured a thin bar pattern to cover the gaping air intake and look largely comparable to contemporary Pontiacs;

In essence, the Ranger in the Corsair had the same external appearance and could only be distinguished through trim options at the same time as the cars. They were stylistically similar to the contemporary Ford Fairlane and were easily confused at first glance by the many Ford executives who struggled to see a reason behind the continuation of the ailing Edsel. The most vocal of them was Robert McNamara, who had recently brought about the end of the brandContinental. After only one full year of use, in mid-1959, McNamara had managed to veto the brand's subsequent advertising budget and now, with the money flowing from the division, he went in for the kill by convincing Henry Ford, the second in line company management, that the brand had no Ford announced on November 19, 1959 that the Edsel division would be discontinued, although automobile production would continue until the end of the month following this announcement.

Edsel product values ​​fell. by as much as $400 or $3,500 in 2020 and dealers rushed to revitalize newspaper advertising contracts involving 1968 sales models, while others dropped their dealers' names by announcing Ford's press release entirely. was followed by the company's distribution of coupons to customers who had purchased 1960 model Edsel cars that were valued between $300 and $400 for the purchase of new Ford products to offset the declining values ​​of Edsel models, The company also issued credits to dealers for shares not sold or received after the announcement at the end only. One hundred and sixteen thousand dead souls were sold, which represented less than half of the company's projected break-even point for the entire project.

Most worrying was the fact that 118,000 287 cars were produced in total, 7,000 440 of which came from Ford's factory in Ontario, Canada, meaning that by the end of the project 2,287 units remained unsold. Ford had lost $350 million in the company, which is equivalent to approximately $3 billion in 2020 after the end of Edsel. Questions that resonated throughout the American auto industry about the causes of Robert McNamara's initial downfall and his harsh policies toward Ford's subsidiary brands were vilified, but the truth of the matter is that he saw the car as a poorly designed failure. and poorly built; There was no single reason for the Edsel's collapse;

It really was a perfect storm of timing, design, construction, marketing and quality management, although the concept had its merits when it was conceived in 1955, by the time the car was launched in 1957 the American automotive market had changed substantially and this, along with the automobile's widely maligned styling and attempts at innovation. which seemed like gimmicks only fueled their demise thanks again for watching this video if you enjoyed it why not leave a like and be sure to subscribe for more great content. Thank you very much, take care and see you next time.