JP’s A to Z Challenge – E is for Edsel

Is there a car that says “The 1950’s” more than the Edsel? Certainly there are none that outdo it on this score. Which is saying something for a car that only survived for two full model years (and a teeny bit of a third).

The Edsel was a product of the Ford Motor Company’s hubris of the mid 1950’s. “We need another middle-priced car brand” they said. “It needs to be spectacular” they said. But what buyers got was a mishmash of Fords and Mercurys. The initial 1958 lineup of 4 models (Ranger, Pacer, Corsair and Citation) and 7 body styles resulted in 18 variants, none of which hit 7,500 units of production.

The 1959 follow-up was down to two models (Ranger and Pacer) that shared the Ford body. Total production was down by about 1/3, with 47,396 cars being built. This put Edsel only behind Lincoln and Chrysler’s ever-struggling Imperial in the U.S. industry. Even little Studebaker produced about triple the number of cars that Edsel dealers could unload in 1959. Ford management pulled the plug in November of 1959 after slightly over 2,000 1960 models had been built.

I am just barely old enough to remember seeing these on the streets, and could tell them by the odd vertical central section of the grille. People said it looked like a horse collar, but I had never seen a horse collar. Other than that, the styling of the car was quite ordinary compared with some of the wilder things being built that year.

This one, a low-trim Ranger 2 door sedan in a nice conservative green, was almost certainly bought at a discount by an elderly individual who seldom took it out of the garage. The clear plastic seat covers were popular among older people who wanted to keep the seats from getting dirty. Interiors are notoriously difficult and expensive to restore (if you are going for authenticity), and this car bears all the marks of one that is original. A clean, original survivor is my favorite kind of old car, which is what excited me enough to take these photos. If an Edsel appeals to you, it would be difficult to find a nicer one.

Photos by the author, June 15, 2014 at the annual Father’s Day car show in Noblesville, Indiana.

26 thoughts on “JP’s A to Z Challenge – E is for Edsel”

  1. I’ve probably only seen one in my life time, and I was alive when these were supposed to be roaming the earth. The styling just seems to be a step too far, you can see someone looking at the behemoths of the era and saying, “yeah”, “okay”, “maybe”, and then getting to this and saying “no way”. I was sitting outside the other day, and remarking on how so many different brand cars look the same, mostly because they’re designed by wind tunnel. Here’s an example of something that was designed in an era when brands tried to distinguish themselves from other brands, make themselves “different”, and the result was just a little “too different”.

    I know a lot of internal design studios were responsible for the look of these cars, but has any one person ever been identified as being responsible for that ugly front end?

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • It’s been a long time since I’ve read about these, but I’m pretty sure the stylist has been identified, and the look certainly got the approval of Ford’s design VP. These were market-researched extensively but we see how that worked out. Robert McNamara hated the whole Edsel idea, and when he took over as Company president in 1959 (before he became Defense Secretary under Kennedy and Johnson) he wasted no time in axing the whole thing.

      I think that beyond the odd grille, these were quite conservatively shaped, without a tailfin in sight.

      Like

      Reply

      • McNamara, who ends up being the Satan of my era for his Vietnam War problems, certainly also gets my kudos for pushing the whole Falcon thing. When you look at those Falcons today, I would certainly take one today if there were new ones. They looked good, and were efficient within the confines of the era. He had a reputation for not only wanting to build something efficient, but affordable. The high and low lights of his life are always worth pondering.

        Liked by 1 person

      • He is indeed an interesting figure. And the Falcon makes an interesting study – it compares the conservative, economical Falcons of 1960-61 with Lee Iacocca’s more youthful vision that had convertible and V8 versions by 1963.

        Like

    • What a great resource! I have bookmarked it – I have never seen much of the scanned material.

      One thing I read somewhere was that the only reason Ford went ahead with the 1960 model was to get past a date in November, 1959 when dealership franchise agreements expired. There was lots of dealer litigation against Ford.

      Like

      Reply

  3. Plastic seat covers! Definitely a forgotten memory from childhood. I only know about the Edsel because my brothers and I went to the Ford factory in Detroit last fall, and the museum there has one (of course they do). Couldn’t help noticing the fire extinguisher just below the dash. Wonder if that was a standard or optional feature 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • I think the fire extinguisher is there to make an insurer happy. And is good sense to keep with a big container of electrical sparks and gasoline.

      On the seat covers – the backs of my thighs still sting when I remember the sun-drenched plastic car seats of my youth!

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  4. I was about age 11 when the Edsel came out. My Dad worked for General Motors and we had just moved from Detroit into the suburbs and Edsel sightings were a big deal and a part of many conversations during their short reign.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  6. Leaving the plastic on – that was common with the Arabs in Qatar. I have read that some Qataris do it to keep the light coloured seats from getting stained by the black fabric of the Abayas that women wear.

    The front of the Edsel seems to have changed quite a bit in each of the three years. I have a photo of a 1958 one, two tone white body with what they seem to call Powder Blue on the roof.

    Not many car names start with ‘E’! The only other one I found in my photo file was a Hudson Essex.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • I also had an El Dorado, an El Camino, a Jaguars E-Type and even a Lamborghini Espada! You can see I come prepared. 🙂

      The 59 Plymouth I bought in 1979 had these same seat covers protecting perfect upholstery.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      • Got moved to Milwaukee in the mid-1960’s, and it was a highly working class town, mostly of German background. I had never seen plastic covered furniture before (at least not where I grew up in Chicago), and I was amazed that a lot of my high school friends were living with plastic covered furniture, and there were any number of small shops on the main drags of working class neighborhoods that made plastic zip on covers for your furniture, measured and sized for perfect fit! There was probably a whole page in the yellow pages for these places! My mother, of course, wouldn’t have anything to do with it.

        Liked by 1 person

  7. Look at that car shine, especially the bumpers! And the right side of the car’s front bumper is so close to that cement curb, I’d be afraid of scraping it. I scrolled back to look at the front of the car again – I can’t say I’ve seen a horse collar either, but it looks like an oxen yoke to me. We visited Upper Canada Village, a vintage town from the 19th century, when I was a kid and had my picture taken in front of the ox(en). We had those nasty plastic seat covers on the car seat – on a VW Beetle yet! I was in the back seat and sitting on a blanket so my legs didn’t stick to the plastic in the hot sun.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • I love the soft shine on 50+ year old paint. And chrome plating only stays that nice if it has been kept out of the weather.

      It was challenging to get those shots, in a parking lot with cars on either side of it.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

    • Thanks! I am a little surprised nobody noticed the Nixon Lodge bumper sticker. Kennedy-Johnson stickers seem so much more common for those who like vintage bumper stickers.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      • Okay, I had to go back and look at the pictures again (like that was hard, lol.) and saw the sticker. Now I wonder why someone would have that particular bumper sticker made? Interesting…

        Liked by 1 person

  9. Ye old Edsel! That is much better for the “E” than Escalade, the oldest of which are now pushing 30 years of age.

    In various Edsel sightings, it seems like the ’59 is so much more populous than the ’58. Not sure I’ve ever seen a ’58 in the wild, but I did a ’60 years ago. Thinking of it, there are two ’59 Edsels, both red, in my town. One is a display for a tattoo parlor and the other is still parked at a mechanic’s shop that closed a number of years ago. I can also think of another red ’59 I found and wrote about at another website about six years ago. Then, I know of a field having two or three of them parked for safe keeping.

    Legend has it a great-uncle bought two Edsel’s new. I have no further information, although I’ve been told he purchased Mercurys for years after the Edsel went away. Sadly, his last car was a gray ’77 LTD, which seems like a come down from what he had previously.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • I have had the same experience – the other one I have photographed was red 59 too, and at a garage being worked on! I remember seeing 59s here and there over the years, but maybe a single 58 – a convertible being driven into a car show I was not attending. With 58 production being so much higher than 59, that seems odd.

      Like

      Reply

      • Same here, I have seen a reasonable number of each year, but the survival rate seems much higher for the ’59s

        So much of the Edsel problem was timing. As bad as the sales were the 1st year, the competition did worse and Edsel actually ended up with a higher market share than projected.

        My other weird Edsel fact, the ’59 has a “normal” rear hinged hood. All of the other ’57-’59 Ford, Edsel & Mercurys had front hinged hoods.

        Liked by 1 person

Leave a comment