Edsel
| Edsel | |
|---|---|
1958 Edsel Corsair
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| Overview | |
| Manufacturer | Edsel Division of Ford Motor Company |
| Production | 1958–60 |
| Designer | Roy Brown, Jr. |
| Body and chassis | |
| Class | Full-size car |
| Layout | FR layout |
Makes History by Making Sense (1959)
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| Division | |
| Industry | Automobile |
| Founded | 1957 |
| Defunct | 1959 |
| Headquarters | Dearborn, Michigan, US |
| Products |
Full-size: Citation, Corsair, Pacer, Ranger Station wagon: Bermuda, Villager, Roundup |
| Parent | Ford Motor Company |
The Edsel is an automobile marque that was planned, developed, and manufactured by the Ford Motor Company for model years 1958–1960. With the Edsel, Ford had expected to make significant inroads into the market share of both General Motors and Chrysler and close the gap between itself and GM in the domestic American automotive market. Ford invested heavily in a yearlong teaser campaign leading consumers to believe that the Edsel was the car of the future – an expectation it failed to deliver. After it was unveiled to the public, it was considered to be unattractive, overpriced, and overhyped. The Edsel never gained popularity with contemporary American car buyers and sold poorly. The Ford Motor Company lost $250 million on the Edsel's development, manufacturing, and marketing.
The very name "Edsel" became a popular symbol for a commercial failure.
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 sellers' 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 a premium/intermediate vehicle to the intermediate slot vacated by Lincoln.
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 B. Ford, son of the company's founder, Henry Ford (despite objections from Henry Ford II). The proposed vehicle marque would represent 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.
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Wikipedia