Bad car or just ugly?
Mostly just ugly, with a stupid name.(one of Henry Ford’s sons, I think). It was really only a failure when compared to all the hype that preceeded it’s release. Ford had a lot of prestige riding on the new model, and its less than steller sales was a real downer for company morale.
Edsel was Henry’s Mother.
Sweet Basil
My grandfather worked for Ford from the '20’s through the '50’s. My dad says that the failure was a combination of too much hype and the fact that it was a luxury car introduced right into an economic recession. The car and a division of Ford were named after Henry’s son Edsel.
The problems with the Edsel–not the least of which was it being named after one of Henry Ford’s grandsons–included its basic idea–just another gas guzzler, at a time that the American car-buying public wanted a gas-thrifty compact (hey, it could have competed with the VW beetle).
Besides, according to an after-the-fact commentary–in Mad Magazine, of all places–the car had problems with its size (it couldn’t fit in most garages), “wind resistance resulting in a funny whistling noise,” and its excessive gas consumption. I’ve noticed in other sources that the Edsel’s transmission control buttons, mounted as they were on the hub of the steering wheel, tended to malfunction.
Have you seen an Edsel? The thing is butt ugly. No, butts are nice in comparison. Bad timing certainly played a part in it but who would want a car that looked like it had just sucked a lemon when you could buy the classic Chevy bel air.
My father was an Edsel owner when I was a child (1960). There were quite a few reasons why they failed:
- They were ugly.
- They were a big car when people wanted small.
- They had a lot of mechanical problems the first year, especially with the pushbutton shift on the steering wheel (I don’t recall that feature on ours, so they must have given up quite quickly).
- They were badly hyped. Ford promoted them almost as though they were top secret (though the same sort of campaign seemed to work for Infiniti years later). Sort of: “It’s new and it’s from Ford, so it’s great! We’ll show you one someday.”
- When it was finally unveiled, on live TV, they couldn’t get the thing to start. You can’t buy that sort of publicity.
- The name stunk. (It was Henry’s son, who was named after a friend of the family). The car was supposed to have a better name (Ranger, I believe), but Ford overruled it at the last minute.
The fiasco of the first model year (1959) was too much to overcome.
“East is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.” – Marx
Read “Sundials” in the new issue of Aboriginal Science Fiction. www.sff.net/people/rothman
I think it was on the Discovery Channel, but I remember some documentary stating that one of the major reasons for the downfall of the Edsel was its grille. Supposedly, it resembled a… vagina.
Anyone who heard this too ?
Coldfire
“You know how complex women are”
- Neil Peart, Rush (1993)
It probably looked more like a horse collar to the simpler people of '50s America. People subconciously saw the Edsel as a regression to an earlier more primative mode of transportation: The horse drawn carriage.
Elmer J. Fudd,
Millionaire.
I own a mansion and a yacht.
Yeah, they were ugly… but so were ALL the cars in the 1950s… I don’t see the Edsel as being particularly MORE ugly than any of the other bloated beasts of the day.
<p align=center><img src=http://home.ici.net/~edsel/teptran.gif>
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O p a l C a t
www.opalcat.com
The failure of the Edsel is the more ironic for the fact that it was supposed to represent the triumph of market research. It was intended to be the perfect match to consumer demand.
I think you’re over generalizing, Opal. Let me introduce you to one of the great works of art of the 20th century:
The 1957 Chevy Belair!
http://www.myclassiccar.com/fungames/gallery/galleryarchives/jdevore.jpg