Does the Edsel deserve better?

• 
• 

59 Years after ‘E-Day’, the time may be ripe to look back at the Edsel once more and reconsider its qualities. On September 4, 1957, the new car arrived in showrooms throughout the US. No less then 1300 of them, as the Ford Motor Company had enormous plans with their latest sub-make. And the launch – marketed as E-Day – did not go unnoticed either, not in the last place for the financial department of FoMoCo, who’d invested huge sums. Not such a bad idea, it seemed, during the economic wealth of the mid-fifties. But the first financial cracks had begun to appear in the summer of ’57. What’s more: the public thought the car did not exactly live up to the huge marketing efforts (and budgets) the new car company had been subjected to. For months, the company had been running advertisements only envisaging the car’s hood ornament with the tag line ‘The Edsel Is Coming’. All of the rest had been well shrouded in mystery until that much-discussed E-Day. If dealers failed to keep their Edsels hidden, they’d lose their franchise! And then there was the styling, particularly that of the radiator grille, which one journalist compared to “a Pontiac pushing a toilet seat”, while another described it as “an Oldsmobile sucking a lemon”. But the one that stuck best was the comparison to a woman’s private parts… Edsel lost $250 million dollars in their first year and decided the mother company was better off without Edsel, dumping the new make after the 1960 model year. And, remarkably, in the decades to come, the Edsel has always remained a bit of a laughing stock and is now even called ‘The Titanic of Automobiles’. Now, looking back on this particular E-Day so many years later – doesn’t the Edsel deserve a little better?

(Words Jeroen Booij, picture courtesy Ford Motor Company)

Make a comment, ask a question, give your opinion, share additional information or start a discussion by filling in the fields below.