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Edsel, A Car Is Born

On September 4, 1957 the Edsel made its debut in showrooms across the country. The launch came on the heels of an extensive, expensive and exceptionally successful marketing campaign that had everybody talking about this mysterious new automobile. Months earlier ads began running that simply pictured the hood ornament, underscored with "The Edsel is Coming." Another ad depicted a covered car carrier with the same tag line. Meanwhile, the company went to great lengths to keep the car’s features and appearance a secret. Dealers were required to store the vehicles undercover, and could be fined or lose their franchise if they showed the cars before the release date. With all the hype it’s no surprise that consumers were eager to see what the fuss was about.

When September 4th rolled around consumers flocked to the dealerships in record numbers. For a day or so Edsel executives were thrilled—until they realized that people weren’t buying, they were only coming to look. "The company expected to sell a daily minimum of 400 Edsels through 1,200 dealers," says Gayle Warnock, director of public relations for the Edsel launch and author of The Edsel Affair. "That was the pencil pushers’ requirement for a successful launch. We never made it," he laments.

"The public thought there was something radically new coming out," reminds Bob Ellsworth, owner and operator of edsel.com. "But it was really just another 1958 [model] car. It had more gizmos and gadgets on it but it wasn’t anything that lived up to the hype." In retrospect, Warnock realizes that Edsel executives didn’t take the most sensible approach to marketing the car. "I learned that a company should never allow its spokespersons to build up enthusiasm for an unseen, unproven product," he says.

"There were cases where cars that weren’t exactly complete showed up at dealerships. They would have a list on the steering wheel saying which parts were missing."

With early sales unexpectedly sluggish, Edsel executives began to worry. Even generally positive reviews from the media weren’t enough to soothe them. "The looks and styling were lauded by the press when the car first came out," says Phil Skinner, a respected Edsel historian. "The front end design was the most prominent feature. If you consider other cars from the mid-1950s, they all looked somewhat alike. Basically it was two headlights and a horizontal grille. By having the big impact ring in the middle—what we now call a horse collar—it really set the Edsel apart," he continues.

According to Mike Brogan, president of the International Edsel Club, creating a unique appearance was one of the goals of the Edsel’s chief designer, Roy Brown Jr. "He set out to create a car that was instantly recognizable from a block in any direction," says Brogan.

Inevitably, not all the reviewers applauded the unique new look. Some reviews were downright nasty. "One member of the media called it ‘an Oldsmobile sucking a lemon’ and another called it ‘a Pontiac pushing a toilet seat’," recalls Ellsworth. Even some of the positive reviews took a wait-and-see attitude, openly wondering about the public’s reaction to a huge, gas-guzzling vehicle with such distinctive styling.

Does Size Really Matter?
The origins of the Edsel can be traced back to 1948 when Ford decided it needed another line to compete against General Motors (GM). After all, GM had Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Buick and Cadillac—a family of cars where one could start out with an economical Chevy and progress up the line to a Cadillac. Similarly, Chrysler had Plymouth, Dodge, DeSoto, Chrysler and Imperial. Ford, however, was limited to Ford, Mercury and Lincoln, and was distressed that consumers were stepping outside the family between Ford and Mercury.

As you’d expect, the Edsel was designed to meet the needs of a particular target audience. "When the Edsel was first developed it looked like big was the way to go," says Ellsworth, "but by 1958 people were thinking more along the lines of smaller economy cars. The public’s interest in huge, big fin cars with glitzy chrome was just about over," he notes.

To make matters worse, the company based its sales expectations on 1954-56 figures, a time when the auto market was going straight up. "They assumed that trend was going to continue," says Brogan. "They believed that by the 1958 model year they wouldn’t be able to build them fast enough."

It’s the Economy, Stupid
The high sales expectations became an issue when the economy slumped. "The projection was that 200,000 units would be produced the first year," says Skinner. "That would have represented about five percent of the total market, which was not too outrageous. However, 1958 was a horrible year for the automobile industry," he continues. "Only two cars—the Ford Thunderbird and a compact called the Rambler American—saw an increase over their 1957 production."

Two more subtle economic issues also weakened the Edsel’s early sales. At the time, new models typically came out in November for the following model year. However, the September launch meant that the cars reflected 1958 pricing, but were being sold against everyone else’s 1957 models. With dealers discounting their 1957’s (trying to clear them off the lots in anticipation of next year’s models), the Edsel looked expensive by comparison.

Compounding this problem was the fact that Edsel pushed its biggest, most luxurious and expensive model first—a tough sell against end-of-year specials in a recession year. Recalls Skinner: "Edsel would have done well to bring out the Pacer and Ranger series and promoted them as ‘You can buy this for just a few dollars more than a Ford, Plymouth or Chevrolet. You’re buying next year’s model today.’ And then brought in, ‘If you’re looking for the tops in luxury, here’s our Citation and Corsair.’" Towards the end of the 1958 model year the company began promoting how inexpensive it was to own a bottom-line ’58 Edsel, but the damage was already done.

Without an established customer base it’s no surprise Edsel sold only 64,000 units in its first year. And by that time, the company’s warts had really started to show.

EDSEL: Every Day Something Else Leaks
When Ford launched the Edsel it made a fateful and costly decision to create a brand-new division. "Edsel was its own division, with its own everything," says Ellsworth. "One of my pet peeves is that people are fond of calling it the ‘Ford Edsel.’ But the word ‘Ford’ doesn’t appear anywhere on the car. They even recruited brand-new dealerships instead of franchising with Ford/Mercury," he notes.

Ironically, the only thing Ford didn’t create from scratch was separate manufacturing facilities. "There were no plants set up to produce the Edsel, so the Edsel division had to rely on Ford and Mercury employees," notes Skinner. But squeezing in Edsels on the Ford and Mercury assembly lines proved to be disastrous from a quality control perspective because many Ford/Mercury employees resented having to build another division’s vehicles.

"There are a lot more Edsels out there than people who love them."

"As a result, the cars would come to the end of the line with parts missing and brakes not working," says Skinner. "A lot of cars that were unsafe for the road were being delivered to dealerships, as well as being very poorly put together. A lot of that is attributed to intentional vandalism, but to what extent, I don’t know."

Ultimately, a reputation for mechanical problems preceded the Edsel. "They occasionally ran out of parts and occasionally put the wrong parts on," concurs Ellsworth. "There were cases where cars that weren’t exactly complete showed up at dealerships. They would have a list on the steering wheel saying which parts were missing."

Mike and the Mechanics
The Edsel’s quality control issues were compounded by mechanics’ unfamiliarity with the car’s state-of-the-art technology. The most vexing problem was its automatic Tele-touch transmission, whereby the driver selected the gears by pushing buttons on the center of the steering wheel. "It was a pretty complicated system for its time and mechanics didn’t know how to fix it," claims Brogan.

Design flaws also created issues for Edsel owners. Even the hood ornament became a safety hazard. "They had to redesign it," quips Ellsworth, "because once you got the car up to 70 mph—which was easy to do—it would just fly right off."

Edsel? What About Utopian Turtletop?
Forty-five years later many people assume that the car’s name played a major role in its downfall. "Probably five percent of the problem was its name," claims Skinner. "A high quality car can be called almost anything except ‘lemon’." Oddly, the name could have been a lot worse. "One of the more popular stories kicking around is that they went to Marianne Moore [a popular poet] and asked her for input. She was good with flowery words but not all that good at naming cars and came up with things like ‘Utopian Turtletop’," claims Ellsworth.

Ultimately, the company did extensive surveys and even asked Ford staffers for suggestions. After considering thousands of names the company narrowed things down to a handful of choices including: Ranger, Pacer, Citation, Corsair and Ventura. Then they threw away all the market research and named it after Henry and Clara Ford’s only child, Edsel Bryant—a bizarre choice considering that the name didn’t mean anything to people living outside the state of Michigan. Ironically, four of the finalists ultimately became names of individual models.

Jeopardy Question: Who Is ‘An Edsel Owner’?
Over the course of three model years (’58, ’59 and ’60) approximately 118,000 Edsels were manufactured in the U.S. and Canada. Today, there are a couple thousand Edsels on the road, with three- to six-thousand others in storage or in various states of restoration.

"As a collector car it was recognized as a unique vehicle relatively early in its afterlife," says Skinner. Today, the Edsel is considered a poor man’s collectors car because "there are a lot more Edsels out there than people who love them," he offers.

What would possess someone to buy an Edsel? "I’m not a normal person to ask," quips Ellsworth. " "You definitely have to have something not screwed together right to be an Edsel owner. You get a lot of people pointing and staring, saying, ‘Oh, my God, it’s an Edsel.’"

"To this day, it’s still pretty embarrassing to be broken down on the side of the road with one."

These days, you’re not likely to see one on the road unless there’s an Edsel covention in your area. At these get-togethers, owners ogle each other’s cars, inquire about parts, and even engage in valve cover racing. "I’ve never seen it anywhere except an Edsel convention," says Ellsworth. "You take an Edsel valve cover, strap wheels to it, and then race each other." According to Ellsworth, owners also show off vintage memorabilia such as miniatures. "When the car first came out the dealers had 1/25-scale Edsels and if you took a test drive you got the little one for free," he says.

If it sounds a little strange most attendees would probably agree. "I don’t think any of us are normal, but for the most part it’s a good group of people," attests Ellsworth.

Bump In The Road?
Despite the perception that the Edsel was a catastrophic financial failure, Skinner contends that the monetary losses sustained by Ford weren’t overwhelming. "They lost $250 million in 1958 dollars, which would be comparable to $2.25 billion today. That’s a lot of money, but the stock didn’t really take a hit and Ford paid a dividend and posted a profit in all the years the Edsel was produced," claims Skinner.

Perhaps more significantly, much of the money invested in the Edsel paid off down the road. Many of the new technologies developed for and charged to the Edsel’s budget were applied to future Ford models. For instance, the Edsel was the first car to have self-adjusting brakes; by 1962 all Ford’s were equipped with self-adjusting brakes.

Bump Ahead
It’s also clear that the automobile industry benefited from Ford’s experience with the Edsel. For its part, Ford took its assembly plants away from the individual divisions and created a new division known as ‘manufacturing.’ The guy on the assembly line no longer worked for the Ford division, he worked for ‘manufacturing.’ "That meant that whatever car was coming down the line, he was responsible for making it the best he could. Quality was greatly increased," claims Skinner.

One company even used the Edsel as the model for what not to do. "About five years ago I interviewed Skip LeFauve," says Skinner, "who was the president/CEO of the Saturn Corporation. He said, ‘The Edsel Affair is what made Saturn a success.’ He bought a case of the books, gave a copy to all his executives and had them underline everything that Ford did wrong with the Edsel."

Not all Edsel devotees were convinced that Saturn was going to be successful. "I’ll never forget the first time I saw one," says Brogan. "I was driving my Edsel to one of the [Saturn] rallies in Nashville. I said, ‘Yeah, there’s the next Edsel.’ I guess I was wrong," he says.

You Drive Me Crazy
At this point it’s safe to assume that the Edsel will always be associated with failure. However, the car still has its defenders: "The Edsel is very misunderstood," claims Ellsworth. "It was a good, solid, fast, well-handling car. Sure it had problems, but nothing that should equate the name Edsel with failure."

Nevertheless, current-day owners will attest that there’s still a stigma attached to the Edsel. "Once it got a bad rap it became a joke to be caught driving one," reminds Brogan. "To this day, it’s still pretty embarrassing to be broken down on the side of the road with one."

Henry Ford Changes the World, 1908

At the beginning of the 20th century the automobile was a plaything for the rich. Most models were complicated machines that required a chauffer conversant with its individual mechanical nuances to drive it. Henry Ford was determined to build a simple, reliable and affordable car; a car the average American worker could afford. Out of this determination came the Model T and the assembly line - two innovations that revolutionized American society and molded the world we live in today.
Henry Ford did not invent the car; he produced an automobile that was within the economic reach of the average American. While other manufacturers were content to target a market of the well-to-do, Ford developed a design and a method of manufacture that steadily reduced the cost of the Model T. Instead of pocketing the profits; Ford lowered the price of his car. As a result, Ford Motors sold more cars and steadily increased its earnings - transforming the automobile from a luxury toy to a mainstay of American society.

The Model T made its debut in 1908 with a purchase price of $825.00. Over ten thousand were sold in its first year, establishing a new record. Four years later the price dropped to $575.00 and sales soared. By 1914, Ford could claim a 48% share of the automobile market.

Central to Ford's ability to produce an affordable car was the development of the assembly line that increased the efficiency of manufacture and decreased its cost. Ford did not conceive the concept, he perfected it. Prior to the introduction of the assembly line, cars were individually crafted by teams of skilled workmen - a slow and expensive procedure. The assembly line reversed the process of automobile manufacture. Instead of workers going to the car, the car came to the worker who performed the same task of assembly over and over again. With the introduction and perfection of the process, Ford was able to reduce the assembly time of a Model T from twelve and a half hours to less than six hours.

Developing the Model T

The Ford Motor Company manufactured its first car - the Model A - in 1903. By 1906, the Model N was in production but Ford had not yet achieved his goal of producing a simple, affordable car. He would accomplish this with the Model T. Charles Sorensen - who had joined Henry Ford two years earlier - describes how Ford had him set up a secret room where design of the new car would be carried out:

"Early one morning in the winter of 1906-7, Henry Ford dropped in at the pattern department of the Piquette Avenue plant to see me. 'Come with me, Charlie,' he said, 'I want to show you something.'

I followed him to the third floor and its north end, which was not fully occupied for assembly work. He looked about and said, 'Charlie, I'd like to have a room finished off right here in this space. Put up a wall with a door in big enough to run a car in and out. Get a good lock for the door, and when you're ready, we'll have Joe Galamb come up in here. We're going to start a completely new job.'

The room he had in mind became the maternity ward for Model T.

It took only a few days to block off the little room on the third floor back of the Piquette Avenue plant and to set up a few simple power tools and Joe Galamb's two blackboards. The blackboards were a good idea. They gave a king-sized drawing which, when all initial refinements had been made, could be photographed for two purposes: as a protection against patent suits attempting to prove prior claim to originality and as a substitute for blueprints. A little more than a year later Model T, the product of that cluttered little room, was announced to the world. But another half year passed before the first Model T was ready for what had already become a clamorous market...

The summer before, Mr. Ford told me to block off the experimental room for Joe Galamb, a momentous event occurred which would affect the entire automotive industry. The first heat of vanadium steel in the country was poured at the United Steel Company's plant in Canton, Ohio.

Early that year we had several visits from J. Kent Smith, a noted English metallurgist from a country which had been in the forefront of steel development...

Ford, Wills, and I listened to him and examined his data. We had already read about this English vanadium steel. It had a tensile strength nearly three times that of steels we were using, but we'd never seen it. Smith demonstrated its toughness and showed that despite its strength it could be machined more easily than plain steel. Immediately Mr. Ford sensed the great possibilities of this shock-resisting steel. 'Charlie,' he said to me after Smith left, 'this means entirely new design requirements, and we can get a better, lighter, and cheaper car as a result of it.'

It was the great common sense that Mr. Ford could apply to new ideas and his ability to simplify seemingly complicated problems that made him the pioneer he was. This demonstration of vanadium steel was the deciding point for him to begin the experimental work that resulted in Model T...

Actually it took four years and more to develop Model T. Previous models were the guinea pigs, one might say, for experimentation and development of a car which would realize Henry Ford's dream of a car which anyone could afford to buy, which anyone could drive anywhere, and which almost anyone could keep in repair. Many of the world's greatest mechanical discoveries were accidents in the course of other experimentation. Not so Model T, which ushered in the motor transport age and set off a chain reaction of machine production now known as automation. All our experimentation at Ford in the early days was toward a fixed and, then wildly fantastic goal.

By March, 1908, we were ready to announce Model T, but not to produce it, On October 1 of that year the first car was introduced to the public. From Joe Galamb's little room on the third floor had come a revolutionary vehicle. In the next eighteen years, out of Piquette Avenue, Highland Park, River Rouge, and from assembly plants all over the United States came 15,000,000 more."

Birth of the Assembly Line

A few months later- in July 1908 - Sorensen and a plant foreman spent their days off developing the basics of the Assembly Line:

"What was worked out at Ford was the practice of moving the work from one worker to another until it became a complete unit, then arranging the flow of these units at the right time and the right place to a moving final assembly line from which came a finished product. Regardless of earlier uses of some of these principles, the direct line of succession of mass production and its intensification into automation stems directly from what we worked out at Ford Motor Company between 1908 and 1913...

As may be imagined, the job of putting the car together was a simpler one than handling the materials that had to be brought to it. Charlie Lewis, the youngest and most aggressive of our assembly foremen, and I tackled this problem. We gradually worked it out by bringing up only what we termed the fast-moving materials. The main bulky parts, like engines and axles, needed a lot of room. To give them that space, we left the smaller, more compact, light-handling material in a storage building on the northwest comer of the grounds. Then we arranged with the stock department to bring up at regular hours such divisions of material as we had marked out and packaged.

This simplification of handling cleaned things up materially. But at best, I did not like it. It was then that the idea occurred to me that assembly would be easier, simpler, and faster if we moved the chassis along, beginning at one end of the plant with a frame and adding the axles and the wheels; then moving it past the stockroom, instead of moving the stockroom to the chassis. I had Lewis arrange the materials on the floor so that what was needed at the start of assembly would be at that end of the building and the other parts would be along the line as we moved the chassis along. We spent every Sunday during July planning this. Then one Sunday morning, after the stock was laid out in this fashion, Lewis and I and a couple of helpers put together the first car, I'm sure, that was ever built on a moving line.

We did this simply by putting the frame on skids, hitching a towrope to the front end and pulling the frame along until axles and wheels were put on. Then we rolled the chassis along in notches to prove what could be done. While demonstrating this moving line, we worked on some of the subassemblies, such as completing a radiator with all its hose fittings so that we could place it very quickly on the chassis. We also did this with the dash and mounted the steering gear and the spark coil."

Implementation

The basics of the Assembly Line had been established but it would take another five years for the concept to be implemented. Implementation would await construction of the new Highland Park plant which was purpose-built to incorporate the assembly line. The process began at the top floor of the four-story building where the engine was assembled and progressed level by level to the ground floor where the body was attached to the chassis.

"By August, 1913, all links in the chain of moving assembly lines were complete except the last and most spectacular one - the one we had first experimented with one Sunday morning just five years before. Again a towrope was hitched to a chassis, this time pulled by a capstan. Each part was attached to the moving chassis in order, from axles at the beginning to bodies at the end of the line. Some parts took longer to attach than others; so, to keep an even pull on the towrope, there must be differently spaced intervals between delivery of the parts along the line. This called for patient timing and rearrangement until the flow of parts and the speed and intervals along the assembly line meshed into a perfectly synchronized operation throughout all stages of production. Before the end of the year a power-driven assembly line was in operation, and New Year's saw three more installed. Ford mass production and a new era in industrial history had begun"

Great Quotes by and about Henry Ford and the Model T.

From Mr. Ford's notebooks:
"Money the root of all evil, unless used for good purpose."
In the book written by Robert Lacey "Ford The Man and the Machine"

"I will build a car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family, but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one-and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God's great open spaces."-Henry Ford

"History is more or less bunk."--Henry Ford

"The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed ."
--Henry Ford

"The Customer Can Have Any Color He Wants So Long As It's Black". -- Henry Ford

"It is all one to me if a man comes from Sing Sing or Harvard. We hire a man, not his history." --Henry Ford

"Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success."--Henry Ford

"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young." - Henry Ford

"Don't find a fault. Find a remedy." --- Henry Ford

"What we call evil is simply ignorance bumping its head in the dark." - Henry Ford

"If you think you can or you think you can't, you will ALWAYS be right." -- Henry Ford

If you chop your own wood it will warm you twice. - sign in Henry Ford's house.

"Life is a series of experience, each of which makes us bigger even though it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and griefs which we endure help us in our marching onward." - Henry Ford

"One of the great discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn't do. Most of the bars we beat against are in ourselves --- we put them there, and we can take them down." --- Henry Ford

"Money is like an arm or a leg; use it or lose it." Henry Ford

"Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few engage in it." - Henry Ford

"Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently." -- Henry Ford.

"If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man can have is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability." - Henry Ford

"A business that makes nothing but money is a poor kind of business." -Henry Ford. Interview 1919

"Exercise is bunk. If you are healthy you don't need it, if you are sick you shouldn't take it." - Henry Ford

"We wants to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today." - Henry Ford, Chicago Tribune 25 May 1916

"At least I don't have to deal with the robot's union." - Henry Ford

Henry Ford (1863-1947)

Automobile manufacturer Henry Ford was born July 30, 1863, on his family's farm in Dearborn, Michigan. From the time he was a young boy, Ford enjoyed tinkering with machines. Farm work and a job in a Detroit machine shop afforded him ample opportunities to experiment. He later worked as a part-time employee for the Westinghouse Engine Company. By 1896, Ford had constructed his first horseless carriage which he sold in order to finance work on an improved model.

Ford incorporated the Ford Motor Company in 1903, proclaiming, "I will build a car for the great multitude." In October 1908, he did so, offering the Model T for $950. In the Model T's nineteen years of production, its price dipped as low as $280. Nearly 15,500,000 were sold in the United States alone. The Model T heralds the beginning of the Motor Age; the car evolved from luxury item for the well-to-do to essential transportation for the ordinary man.

Ford revolutionized manufacturing. By 1914, his Highland Park, Michigan plant, using innovative production techniques, could turn out a complete chassis every 93 minutes. This was a stunning improvement over the earlier production time of 728 minutes. Using a constantly-moving assembly line, subdivision of labor, and careful coordination of operations, Ford realized huge gains in productivity.


In 1914, Ford began paying his employees five dollars a day, nearly doubling the wages offered by other manufacturers. He cut the workday from nine to eight hours in order to convert the factory to a three-shift workday. Ford's mass-production techniques would eventually allow for the manufacture of a Model T every 24 seconds. His innovations made him an international celebrity.

Ford's affordable Model T irrevocably altered American society. As more Americans owned cars, urbanization patterns changed. The United States saw the growth of suburbia, the creation of a national highway system, and a population entranced with the possibility of going anywhere anytime. Ford witnessed many of these changes during his lifetime, all the while personally longing for the agrarian lifestyle of his youth. In the years prior to his death on April 7, 1947, Ford sponsored the restoration of an idyllic rural town called Greenfield Village.

You Can Paint It Any Color As Long As It Is Black.

It has never been proven that Henry Ford ever said, "You can paint it any color...," but the phrase has survived for 3/4 of a century and does indicate something about America's beloved Model T: its "steadfastness," its enduring and endearing "sameness." The first production Model T Ford was assembled at the Piquette Avenue Plant in Detroit on October 1, 1908. Over the next 19 years, Ford would build 15,000,000 automobiles with the Model "T" engine, the longest run of any single model apart from the Volkswagen Beetle. From 1908-1927, the Model T would endure with little change in its design. Henry Ford had succeeded in his quest to build a car for the masses.

With the development of the sturdy, low-priced Model T in 1908, Henry Ford made his company the biggest in the industry. By 1914, the moving assembly line enabled Ford to produce far more cars than any other company. The Model T and mass production made Ford an international celebrity.
Because of the amazing run of this model, we decided not to focus on just one year of the "T." Instead, the selected materials will follow the automobile through its entire production.

About our Car: (Pictured at top) This 1914 Touring Car is one of several Model T Fords given to naturalist John Burroughs by his friend, Henry Ford, in an ultimately successful attempt to convince Burroughs that cars aided, rather than hindered, the study of nature.

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