ladies and gentlemen the Ford Motor Company would like you to see the new styling the new features perhaps one of the most famous automotive failures of all time the Edsel mark by Ford is a staple of how the success of a car is dictated by more factors than just how many people have heard about it while Ford attempted to rationalize the disastrous sales record of this short-lived range of cars through marketing and promotion the bitter truth was that the Edsel was a loss making mountain of problems that culminated in one of the most ill-conceived cars ever built so what's the story the tale of the Edsel begins in the mid-1950s where in the post-war economic boom car production in the United States was soaring at the top the detroit big three were battling it out for glory with Ford and General Motors dominating the scene while Chrysler followed closely behind it was an era where austerity was considered a curse word and flamboyance was key to a product success with cars of this time period being lavishly appointed with lashings of chrome sweeping profiles and streamlined fins On January 17th 1956 the Ford Motor Company became a publicly traded corporation taking it partially 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 executives in the Ford company had noticed that their exclusive luxury marque Lincoln was struggling to compete with the General Motors equivalent Cadillac as Cadillac had become the face of American motoring glamour Lincoln's were falling down the price bracket instead largely competing against middling Oldsmobiles and Buicks at the time Ford's brand structure consisted of three marks the luxury Lincoln at the top mercury for entry-level premium cars and the Ford name itself for low-end family models by comparison General Motors had the luxury Cadillac Buick for executive motors Oldsmobile for entry-level premium models and Chevrolet for low-end family cars to counter this Ford executives chose to create a new medium priced car division equivalent to Oldsmobile while pushing Lincoln and Mercury upmarket to make them comparable to Cadillac and Buick in addition Lincoln's top of the range model the Continental would become its own ultra luxury marque designed to rival the likes of the rolls-royce Silver Cloud market research into the development of a mark that would sit in the same bracket as Oldsmobile had begun as early as 1955 and was dubbed the experimental car or ECAR the target demographic for the e car was identified as young professionals on their way up and considered that these were people who had the money to buy cars of a higher luxury level than humdrum Fords but not enough to buy top-end Lincoln's with their market identified people that this category were asked what they expected to find in a car that would befit their pay bracket and social standing with the feedback used to guide the design for young professionals they were looking for a car that stood out at any angle a machine that would turn heads and announce their arrival with a pronounced hood and grille reminiscent of pre-war Packard's and LaSalle's at the same time the car needed to be contemporary with the space-age styling trend of the mid 50s with an aviation style interior and controls chrome fins and powerful engines there were however initial stumbling points for the e car mark most notably the name the car couldn't go under the name ECAR forever nor could it easily enter sales as the experimental car to counter this problem Ford turned to advertising firm foot cone and Belding to come up with a name eventually considering 6,000 possibilities much to the chagrin of Ford executive vice president Ernest beech who had only wanted one among the six thousand names conjured early favorites for the brand included citation Corsair Pacer and Ranger and these would ultimately end up as the model names rather than the mark itself still at an impasse David Wallace manager of marketing research and co-worker Bob Young unofficially invited freethinker poet Marion Moore for input and suggestions however Moore's modernist and somewhat unorthodox considerations gave rise to such oddities as the utopian turtle top the pass telegram the Turco Tinga the resilient bullet the andante con moto and the Mongoose civic fortunately as these names were only meant to stir creative thought and as more was under no contractual obligation to supply a title none of these weird ideas made it beyond their meeting eventually out of sheer desperation the marketing team had settled on an idea that had been circulating since early in the marks development Edsel this name was a homage to Edsel B Ford the son of Henry Ford and president of the company between 1919 and 1943 as well as being the father of the company's then current president henry ford ii going somewhat behind Ford's back Ernest beech officially declared that the new mark would be dubbed the Edsel at a board meeting that Henry Ford was conveniently absent from naturally the use of the Edsel moniker invoked the ire of the Ford family with Henry Ford himself stating that he did not want his father's good name spinning around on thousands of hubcaps to further cement the problems with the choice of Edsel as the title for Durant's surveys outside movie theaters to gather audience reactions to the name to which they reached no conclusion aside from Henry Ford's complaints about the name there were other vocal critics of the Edsel mark within the company management most notably Robert McNamara McNamara had been hired by Ford immediately after World War two as the company was teetering on bankruptcy and thus required a significant change in its internal policy and management structure McNamara was one of 10x US Air Force veterans dubbed the whiz kids who helped to reverse the fortunes of the firm McNamara's cost-cutting and cost containment skills standing out among the rest in a manner similar to the original Henry Ford McNamara was solely focused on developing the Ford mark itself while its subsidiary marks such as Lincoln Mercury continental and Edsel was seen as superfluous therefore when the proposal was made to create the Edsel division as well as the individual continental Lincoln and Mercury divisions McNamara varmint Lee opposed the idea instead considering that the mark should be consolidated into a single division called a Miele mercury Edsel Lincoln it was in this capacity that he proved to be the voice of reason behind the scenes to Ford's rather rash creation of new marks like Edsel and Continental eventually spelling doom for the both of them in the meantime the edsells first range of models underwent development with styling for the car based entirely on market research gathered and seemingly incorporating many different features from a variety of other popular cars initially the Edsel marque consisted of seven models the Ranger two-door sedan the Pacer 4-door sedan the Corsair two-door and four-door hardtop the citation two-door drop-top the roundup two-door station wagon the villager four-door station wagon and the high-end Bermuda 4-door station wagon among these cars they followed the same general styling cues of long sweeping curves scallops in the profile round for lamplight clusters and rear fins however the most controversial addition to the car was the fitting of a giant vertical oval grille penned by assistant stylist Bob Jones and done in response to the feedback from market research desiring the fitting of such an element although original concept drawings by Edsel chief designer Roy brown were envisaged as very slender with an almost delicate opening in the center the choice of such a gaping hole in the front of the car was settled on due to engineering reasons with the fear being the cooling problems for the engine would arise from having such a small intake final input on the design was made by breach who demanded that it be both taller and wider so it was a major parts of the cars face and image without the grille the edsells look would be somewhat comparable to contemporary Oldsmobiles and Buicks but with the grille it took on a unique and distinctive stance when the designers would later regret another odd choice was the era shaped taillights for the station wagon models in order to give the cars a unique rear styling they were fitted with sheetmetal lights that pointed inwards who gave the impression to drivers behind that when the indicators were running the arrows were pointing to the intended direction of travel the right indicator pointing left and the left indicator pointing right despite later complaints about these lights causing driver confusion the management insisted that no sheet metal could be changed internally the car once again attempted to meet the demands of market research by providing extremely complicated driver features as standard the car was fitted with interior styling cues like a rolling dome speedometer warning lights for such conditions as low oil level parking brake engaged and engine overheating ergonomically designed controls for the driver self adjusting brakes and seat belts which were optional extras on other models and childproof rear door locks that could only be unlocked with the key most notable of all was the teller touch push-button automatic transmission selector a system pioneered on the Edsel after years of research and development the teller touch system had been conceived by Ford in the early 1950s and was based on earlier developments in solenoid trip and transmission shift devices for a standard sliding gear gearbox this electromechanical push-button transmission system placed the transmission buttons in a ring within the center of the steering wheel providing more space on the dashboard and removing the need for a gear handle on the center console while the low-end Ranger pacer and station wagon models maintained a traditional automatic transmission high-end Corsair and citation models came with the teller tuchis standard for power the Mel Division of Ford chose to create a brand new power plant for the Edsel model that being the Mel v8 which replaced the older Lincoln wide block powerplant of 1952 for Edsel models the high end citation in Corsair came with a 410 cubic inch or 6.7 liter Edsel e 475 v8 engine while the lower range models comprised a motley crew of ford inline six and v8 engines with displacements ranging between 3.7 liters and 5.9 litres in terms of performance the Edsel models were generally comparable to its rivals with the citation presenting a nought to 60 time of 7.4 seconds a top speed of 123 miles an hour and an average fuel consumption of 11.8 miles by contrast the Buick series 70 Roadmaster Riviera presented a nought to 60 time of nine point nine seconds a top speed of 119 miles an hour and an average fuel consumption of 12 miles per gallon as a start-up mark Edsel had no dedicated assembly plants with all models sharing the production line with contemporary Ford and Mercury models every Edsel was tested measured and assigned a quality score as it came off the line with the daily shipment of cars to dealerships being dictated by the average quality score of every car built that day despite all the background problems regarding the edsells development September 4th 1957 was declared --day by Ford who went all-out with promoting the launch of their new model range the Edsel models entered sales at prices on par with Mercury's at the time with the low-end Ranger starting at 2484 dollars the Pacer at $2,700 the Corsair at 3311 dollars and the citation topping the range at $3,500 with options the citation reached a price of three thousand seven hundred and sixty six dollars on October 13th a top-rated television special called the Edsel show was broadcast an hour-long program starring Bing Crosby Frank Sinatra Rosemary Clooney Louis Armstrong Lindsay Crosby the four preps and Bob Hope the sole purpose of this TV special was to raise awareness of the brand name and was presented as a musical variety show that garnered favorable reviews from contemporary critics even winning the look magazine TV award for best musical show as well as being nominated for an Emmy as the best single program of the year however despite --day bringing approximately three million people to Ford showrooms across America in Canada very few people actually went home with an Edsel for a variety of reasons the first bone of contention was the name of the brand Edsel the truth was that the Edsel mark to the paint customer had no meaning unless they possessed some prior knowledge of the inner management structure of the Ford company among a sea of marks that usually adopted either the name of their company founder rolls-royce Ford Buick or were based on historical figures Lincoln Mercury Cadillac Edsel stood out as something very obscure and unidentifiable next was the pricing which failed to justify the brand's existence overall in comparison to other models in the mail lineup the very concept of the Edsel was to fit into a price bracket between low-cost Ford models and premium mercury models but instead was priced almost identically to its kin [Music] instead of having a series of stepped price brackets that covered each market segment the 1957 Edsel Ranger for instance cost almost exactly the same as the Ford Fairlane 500 and the mercury medallist while the pacer cost nearly the same as the Monterey and the citation cost nearly the same as the montclair the only instance of the Edsel coming in as a less costly option than a mercury was between the citation and the Park Lane but this couldn't hide the multitude of sins being put front and center for the lower Edsel models a question was very quickly on the lips of customers 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 further add to the Edsel Rose was its timing as Europe Canada and the United States was struck by an economic recession that began towards the end of 1957 known as the Eisenhower recession the recession the first since the end of World War two was caused due to a general slowdown in economic activity and pressure on businesses for supply to meet demand essentially the excessive mass production of the post-war boom cause the economy to trip itself over and what began was a year-long economic slump that resulted in many businesses shutting down and the price of living to rise as such sales for many of America's luxury and high-end motors faced a significant decline with overall car sales falling 31 percent by the end of 1957 exacerbated by the edge sores poor pricing which put it in league with the mercury mark rather than bridging the gap between it and lower end Ford's the mark suffered as an equal drop in its prospective sales failing to meet forecasts even without the Eisenhower recession though the Edsel as a medium priced car range was entering into a shrinking market as Marx and companies were consolidated market trends were moving away from medium-range models with a new breed of compact cars such as the Rambler American by AMC and economy cars like the Volkswagen Beetle and the Austin America emerging to undercut larger models in essence smaller models sold by Ford were being moved up into the medium car bracket as compacts burden beneath them on the market and thus builders who specialized in creating medium-range models such as Studebaker faced demise a far more reasonable choice considering these altering market trends would have been for the Edsel mark - instead proposed a series of compact and economy cars beneath the Ford brand to compete directly with the likes of the Rambler American and the beetle as is breech considered that medium-range cars of the manner in which the Edsel suggested were not a dying breed and steamrollered the concept regardless of what market research was telling him problems weren't just in the pricing and timing of the car but also in the build while much of the edsells mechanics were based on contemporary Ford models of the era there were still a number of differences that the line workers struggled to adapt to on the mass production Ford and Mercury lines workers were conditioned to assemble models of the same type over and over again which they did with a certain degree of success however throwing an Edsel model in at every eighth and tenth car meant that workers assembling these machines had to build the cars in a different manner which also had to be done in a timely fashion so as not to reduce the plant output the resort was many aspects of the Edsel cars being put together either hastily or incorrectly resulting in reliability problems for the customer not every car that left the factory with problems though was due to the inexperienced workforce with some workers deliberately singling out the Edsel models for sabotage due to the fact that they shared the same name as the former company president the American labor union United Automobile Workers had poor memories of Edsel Ford due to his constant locking horns with them and thus chose to deliberately build the cars that bore his name in an improper manner simply despite his memory this wasn't helped by the Edsel average reliability scoring for daily batches of cars the average score was based on the number of cars that left the factory without significant faults but this was an arbitrary figure that meant that if the average score was just over the acceptable minimum then a significant number of cars would still be shipped to the showroom with reliability problems while the problem cars should have had their faults rectified at the factory Ford chose instead to push the problem downstream and even on cars that were evidently poorly built including loose body panels and broken mechanics they passed on notes to the showroom explaining how to finish off the barely assemble units in some cases loose pieces of trim or other poorly fitted parts were placed in the trunk of the car for the showroom mechanics to fix when they were delivered aside from poor reliability the cars also presented a number of design flaws which made them unpopular among both customers and mechanics alike the teller touched push-button automatic transmission was a highly complex piece of equipment and was seen by drivers as a problematic gimmick that replaced the horn button on the steering wheel hub thus when drivers attempted to blow the horn that accidentally changed gears instead furthermore the control wires for the teller touch system were routed too close to the exhaust manifold which often caused 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 that order to avoid overloading the TEL attached motor this motor was also not powerful enough to bring the car out of parked while on a hill so dealerships would instruct drivers to set the parking brake before pushing the park button issues were also encountered with the design of the e 475 engine as the cylinder heads were set at an angle with the roof Pistons forming both a squish zone on the one side and a combustion chamber on the other combustion thus took place entirely within the cylinder bore and mechanics were unable to confidently repair the engine due to a lack of distinct combustion chambers based on these problems are staggering 16% of Edsel owners reported poor workmanship these included both mechanical and build quality concerns with the car even the test cars presented to motoring critics had faults with the test car used by Popular Mechanics illustrating a badly leaking trunk during rain and the odometer showing fewer than actual miles traveled the biggest and most jarring issue with the Edsel however was its ever-present horse-collar grille the vertical elongated oval intake yoke to the front was a point of derision from the moment the car was unveiled and by far the cars most notable trait giving rise to a cavalcade of jokes and jeers aside from being noted as reminiscent of a horse collar the grille was also parallel to a toilet seat the expression one pulls when sucking lemons and most vocally of all a woman's privates with such easily identifiable and profoundly ugly styling no one wanted to be seen driving these cars which served to tip the iceberg of the edsells many other design build and image problems in fact in one famous instance when Vice President Richard Nixon was on a state visit to Lima Peru crowds of people threw eggs at him and the Edsel Corsair he was riding in to which he famously stated that they were throwing eggs at the car not him surprisingly though despite the Edsel mark coming in below its expected sales forecast the car represented the second largest launch for any new American car brand to date selling 63,000 110 cars in the USA and 4935 in Canada during its first year of production this number is only exceeded by the launch of the DeSoto brand under Chrysler way back in 1929 where eighty-one thousand units were sold during the 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 Bedford but the current whereabouts of this celebrity car are unknown regardless in the face of the Edsel seemingly calamitous sales entry Ford descended into full damage control mode having convinced themselves that their marketing campaigns including --day and the Edsel TV special hadn't reached a wide enough audience despite the fact that customer feedback was proving otherwise the Ford management decided to pull out all the stops to get the car promoted while there were the controversial slew of billboards and TV commercials public relations executive Walter Tommy Thomas decided to take it a step further by offering customers a pony with their car the most surprising thing about this was that this outlandish idea actually passed muster and in association with the primetime TV show wagon train customers who agreed to test drive an Edsel would have their name entered into a lottery at the dealership and the lucky winner would receive a live Pony as a pet this idea went over about as well as you'd expect to support this very strange promotional campaign Ford purchased 1,000 Opelousas oneis and had them shipped to Edsel dealers across America this created a severe rift between the dealers and the Ford management has not only were they burdened with finishing the Assembly of the cars they received as well as dealing with the numerous customer complaints regarding reliability but now they had to buy food and clean up after live ponies that were kept on site while at the encouragement of their children many parents did test drive in Edsel the winners of the lottery chose instead to take the alternate cash prize of $200 or around $1700 in 2020 the failure of the campaign together with the discontent it spawned between the management and the dealers meant it was soon curtailed and the animals were shipped back to Detroit following this Ford finally realized that the problem wasn't promotion but the car itself and chose to undertake a downsizing of the range to try and recoup its substantial losses for the 1959 model year only the low-end Ranger and the high-end Corsair were made available these two cars being based on the underpinnings of Ford models while those based on mercury products were discontinued as the top-of-the-range replacement for the Pacer the Corsair was now offered as a two-door and four-door hardtop two-door and four-door sedan and the village's station wagon mechanically the car abandoned the Troublesome tella touch system in favor of a more conventional --marla Matic two-speed automatic transmission and a dual powered drive three-speed automatic transmission the Mel v8 was also removed from the Edsel range with only the 5.4 liter Ford Fe v8 being offered in the Corsair while the Ranger was provided with both inline six and v8 power plants depending on trim most notably though was the toning down of the styling while the vertical grille was still present it was now presented with a fine bar pattern to cover up the gawking intake and look largely comparable to contemporary Pontiacs in essence the Ranger in the Corsair looked externally the same and could only be distinguished through trim options at the same time the cars were stylistically similar to the contemporary Ford Fairlane and were easily mistaken at a glance of the many Ford executives who struggled to see a reason behind continuing the ailing Edsel the most vocal of them was Robert McNamara who had recently brought about the end of the Continental Mark after only one full year of use by the middle of 1959 McNamara had succeeded in vetoing the marque successive advertising budget and now with money pouring from the division he went in for the kill convincing Henry Ford the second in the company management that the marque had no future and that the loss making Edsel division should be axed before it bled the company dry Ford announced on November 19th 1959 that the Edsel division would be discontinued although production of cars would continue until the end of the month following this announcement values for Edsel products dropped by as much as $400 or $3,500 in 2020 and dealers scrambled to reinvigorate newspaper advertising contracts involving the 1968 sell models while others dropped the name from their dealerships advertising entirely the press release by Ford was followed by the distribution of coupons by the company to customers who had purchased the 1960 model Edsel cars which were valued at 300 to 400 dollars towards the purchase of new Ford products to offset the decreased values of the Edsel models the company also issued credits to dealers for stock unsold or received following the announcement in the end only a hundred and sixteen thousand dead souls were sold which represented less than half the company's projected breakeven for the entire project [Music] more worryingly was the fact that 118,000 287 cars have been produced overall 7,000 440 of which being from Ford's Factory in Ontario Canada meaning that by the end of the project 2,287 units were left unsold in all Ford had lost 350 million dollars on the venture which equates to approximately 3 billion dollars in 2020 following the end of the Edsel questions echoed across the American motor industry as to what caused its downfall initially Robert McNamara and his harsh policies towards Ford's subsidiary brands were vilified but the truth of the matter was that he saw the car for what it was a poorly designed and poorly built failure there was no single reason as to the collapse of the Edsel it truly was a perfect storm of timing design build quality marketing and management while the concept did have its merits when conceived in 1955 by the time the car was launched in 1957 the American auto market had changed substantially and this coupled to the cars widely maligned styling and attempts at innovation that came across as gimmicks only fueled its 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 I'll see you next time
