Edsel/Born: 1957 Died: 1959: Although strictly speaking a complete new brand, most people remember Ford's Edsel as a model with a variety of names and types. And it might seem strange to include what is considered Ford's greatest failure in a Past Master series, but the truth is that it was actually quite a good car. If you could get one that had the correct parts, and all its parts, that is. Then it was fast, stylish, and handled very well.
The Edsel was produced by Ford because they saw they had a gap in their range between the parent brand and the Lincoln-Mercury upper level models. The new car was heavily hyped in advance, with a lot of clever "teasing" marketing even to the point that dealers were threatened with heavy fines if they showed an actual car before public launch day. Stylistically it was heavy in design, with a very large and distinctive grille that quickly gained the label of a "horse collar".
There were four versions at the start: Pacer, Ranger, Citation and Corsair, and formats were 2- and 4-door hardtops, 2-door convertible, and a series of wagons named Bermuda, Villager and Roundup. With some 63,000 sold the first year, Edsel sales were below Ford's expectations, but it was still the second-biggest car launch in US motor history to date.
There was a number of reasons why the Edsel didn't reach its expected targets initially, including an economic change in America which saw business generally go into recession, and the motor industry itself downsize in makers and models. It was also suggested that the Edsel's design came just at a point of change in customer tastes for more simple looking cars.
Whatever the main reasons, the Edsel quickly got a poor name, and the new dealers either added other franchises or got out of the network altogether. The styles and types were cut for the following year, and there was a slight pulling back on the size of the controversial grille. The word was out, though, and sales slumped to fewer than 45,000 cars in 1958.
Just two versions were produced in 1959, a sedan and a wagon. With fewer than 20,000 sales, Ford finally threw in the towel and discontinued the Edsel. Finally recognising the shifting trends, the company's designers came up with a "compact" Edsel, which was shifted into the Mercury brand as the Comet. It was finally the right Edsel for the time, but as a runaway success it was a Mercury.
Though often cited as the car that nearly made Ford broke, the company made money right through the period and in retrospect, while the Edsel itself represented a significant loss, it didn't affect the company's viability.
There was within Ford a weak support for the project outside of the direct Edsel promoters, and along with the build and reputation difficulties -- both of which could have been fixed - this meant the project was cut off before it was given a real chance. There were also price point difficulties, and in the view of some potential buyers it was competing against other Ford models.
So much was the case later analysed, that when GM decades later was setting up its new Saturn brand, a dossier based on the "Edsel mistakes" was compiled, and the Saturn team were instructed not to make the same mistakes.
There's a certain irony in the fact that today, an Edsel convertible in top condition can command a price of up to $100,000. For the owners of these, the Edsel is a past master indeed.