Edsel

Big Rear Edsel (IMGP2057h), photo by norjam8.

September 4, 1957: It’s E-day, as Ford Motor Company introduces its newest make, the Edsel.

In an industry celebrated for its spectacular failures, the Edsel still takes the cake. Although as mechanically sound as other Ford products, the car was criticized from Day One for being too ugly, too expensive and vastly overhyped.
–Short, Unhappy Life of the Edsel, WIRED

The Edsel was named for Henry Ford’s son Edsel Bryant Ford, president of Ford Motor Company from 1919 to 1943. Edsel was responsible for making the design & styling of automobiles a key consideration at Ford in their manufacture before he died in 1943 at the age of 49. (also see this great bio of Edsel Ford)

While Edsel was never a very popular name (peaking at 400th behind names like Kermit, Buford and Elvin in 1927), Edsel Agonistes in TIME Magazine says that a quick check of demographic records suggests that a convention of Americans first-named Edsel could be held in a hotel linen closet. Why?

The Edsel had been frantically ballyhooed for months ahead of its arrival with a new kind of highly scientific marketing, an alchemical blend of psychology, mass media and old-fashioned hucksterism. Call it the iEdsel. By the time the silk was pulled off the Edsel in hundreds of showrooms around the country, people were panting to see their automotive deliverance, the plutonium-powered, pancake-making supercar they’d been promised. What they saw was a large, relatively expensive, curiously styled Mercury–curious insofar as the vertical grille looked like a midwife’s view of labor and delivery.

A thorough article in Failure Magazine about the Edsel relates how the Edsel drew scorn from reviewers as “an Oldsmobile sucking a lemon” and “a Pontiac pushing a toilet seat” and nowhere near the forecast sales. If you click through, you’ll see that it was impacted by the same faulty assumptions that have lots full of SUVs today. You can get 1000% of the minimum RDA of Edsel at edsel.com.

Norm has some sweet Edsel photos in his Rusty Cars & Trucks set (slideshow). You can find even more in the Edsel group and some of my friends have some pretty sweet Edsel photos too!