Fix Auto Portland

Why Did the Ford Edsel Flop?

Every several years, a particular type of vehicle captures the imagination of the American public. Some succeed, like the Mustang and the Corvette while many also fail and fade into obscurity. The 1958 Ford Edsel is a good example of this. It was supposed to be the new go-to car for middle-class Americans, but in the end it flopped worse than the VW Thing or AMC Pacer—two vehicles that also failed dramatically many years after the doomed Edsel.

At Fix Auto Portland, we love our American classic cars, so here are some interesting facts about the 1958 Ford Edsel, a car that had great plans but was never fully embraced by American drivers.

The 1958 Ford Edsel

Ford had big plans for the Edsel, at least initially. The carmaker sunk $250 million into it, but instead of starting a trend, they lost $350 million on this unappealing vehicle that got lousy gas mileage.

It surely didn't help that the first Edsels were delivered with a wide range of serious mechanical issues, highlighted by oil leaks, sticking hoods, trunks that wouldn't open, and push buttons that didn't work. New owners were not pleased and the Edsel got off to a bad start, to say the least.

Ford spent a ton of money on marketing and polling drivers all over the country before they started developing the vehicle in 1955. The car's designers thought they were creating our society's new popular car that was perfect for growing families, but they obviously missed the target by a lot.

Advertising people (like the characters in the show Mad Men) brainstormed to come up with a suitable name for the car. They spent a lot of money to conduct focus groups and even hired the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Marianne Moore to come up with the perfect name. After suggesting names such as the Utopian Turtletop and The Intelligent Whale, the company settled on Edsel, the name of Henry Ford's son.

One of the main problems behind the Ford Edsel is that Ford attempted to please everyone, and that's why they manufactured made the terrible decision to debut 18 variations of the car at launch. The famous philosopher S.I. Hayakawa named the car the Edsel Hermaphrodite because it was trying to be masculine and feminine, he explained.

Ford execs seemed to never once consider failure to be an option. They created an entire Edsel division and persuaded dealerships to order a certain number of cars before the Edsel was even finished.

At launch, the car was too expensive, used up too much gas, and was mocked in the press. A redesigned 1959 Edsel debuted to better reviews, but the damage was done.

Nobody wanted an Edsel. A 1960 Edsel came out in limited production, but Ford president and future secretary of defense Robert McNamara finally pulled the plug in 1960.

The Edsel Today

If you try to find an Edsel today, there are obviously not many still around and we've never really seen any here in Portland or within the state of OR. We saw one online recently that was being sold for $45,000, but no one bought it. So, even today, American drivers are rejecting the poor little Edsel!

Sources: Ford Motor Co., Wikipedia and Japolik