A few pics in the Edsel Gallery her

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From W

The idea for the Edsel came from Ford executives who were thinkin
about market niches when they should have been thinking about cars

They were worried that Ford owners who prospered in the postwar boo
were trading in their cheap Fords for pricier Pontiacs and Buicks
They figured Ford needed a new line of medium-price cars, and the
hired a bunch of motivational researchers to probe the psyche of th
American car buyer

The '50s were the glory days of motivational research, and Columbi
University's Bureau of Applied Social Research was the mecca of th
trade. David Wallace, Ford's director of planning and a man with
PhD in sociology from Columbia, hired the bureau to find out wh
people bought the cars they bought. The bureau's researcher
interviewed 800 people, inquiring about their preferences i
everything from cars to cocktails, then produced a report revealin
the hidden meaning of cars. Ford symbolized "rugge
masculinity." Buick symbolized "upper clas
solidarity." Plymouth had a "weak image of plai
respectability." And so on

Wallace read the report and concluded that the new Ford should b
touted as "the smart car for the younger executive o
professional family on its way up.

That sounded reasonable. It was certainly better than touting it as
dumb car for families on the way down

Next, Wallace dispatched his researchers to find the perfect name fo
the nonexistent vehicle that Ford had dubbed the "E-car,
short for experimental car. The researchers buttonholed rando
Americans and asked then to blurt out their reactions to scores o
possible names: Mars, Jupiter, Rover, Arrow, Dart, Ovation. Th
responses were tabulated and analyzed and the results were . .
inconclusive. So Wallace gathered a group of Ford executives in
room, turned out the lights and flashed scores of names at them. Th
results were . . . inconclusive

After that, Wallace did what any sensible American auto executiv
would do in such a situation: He wrote to Marianne Moore, America'
most famous female poet, and asked her to suggest names. She did. Sh
suggested lots of names -- Intelligent Whale, Intelligent Bullet
Bullet Cloisonne, Ford Faberge, Mongoose Civique and, the pi?ce d
r?sistance, Utopian Turtletop

Wallace sent Moore a bouquet of roses and a card reading, "to ou
favorite turtletopper," but he did not choose any of he
suggestions. Instead, Ford and its advertising agency, Foote, Con
& Belding, asked their employees to suggest names, promisin
a free "E-car" to the winner. The employees responded wit
18,000 names. Among them was Edsel -- a tribute to Edsel Ford, wh
was the deceased son of Henry Ford, the company's legendary founder
and the father of Henry Ford II, the company's president

The folks at Foote, Cone & Belding whittled the 18,000-nam
list down to a mere 6,000 names and presented them to a committe
headed by Richard Krafve, the man running the E-car project

"We don't want 6,000 names," Krafve grumbled. "We onl
want one.

The Foote, Cone & Belding folks slunk back to their lair an
whittled some more. On Nov. 8, 1956, they presented a list of 1
names to a meeting of Ford's Executive Committee. The names include
Corsair, Pacer, Ranger and Citation. The Executive Committee hate
all of them. They grumbled for a while and finally Ernest Breech
Ford's chairman of the board, made the kind of instantaneous
intuitive decision touted in Malcolm Gladwell's best-selling 200
book, "Blink.

"Why don't we just call it Edsel?" Breech said

It sounded like a question, but it was a command. Instantly,
gazillion hours of expensive and absurd motivational research went u
in smoke

Why did Breech want to name the car Edsel

Ford's Edsel was the biggest bust in brand history. It didn't live u
to the hype of its teaser ads and never gained the glamour o
promotions such as this one for the 1958 Edsel Citation.

Ford's Edsel was the biggest bust in brand history. It didn't live up
to the hype of its teaser ads and never gained the glamour of
promotions such as this one for the 1958 Edsel Citation.

"He was brown-nosing Mr. Ford," says C. Gayle Warnock, now
91, who was the Edsel's public relations director. Warnock is also
the author of the 1980 book "The Edsel Affair" and a
forthcoming sequel, "The Rest of the Edsel Affair."

When Warnock heard about Breech's decision, he banged out a
one-sentence memo to Krafve: "We have just lost 200,000
sales."

"I knew nobody would like that name," he explains on the
phone from his home in Sweetser, Ind. "When they did interviews
[about names] and asked about Edsel, people always said, 'Did you say
pretzel?' "

Grilled to Imperfection

Of course, a company launching a new car needs more than just an image
and a name. It also needs, you know, a car.

The Ford folks were working on that. In fact, they were building not
one, not two, but 18 varieties of Edsel, including a convertible and
a station wagon. Prices would range from $2,500 to $3,800 -- several
hundred dollars more than comparable Fords.

The designers came up with some interesting ideas. They created a
push-button transmission and put it in the middle of the steering
wheel, where most cars have a horn. And they fiddled with the front
end: Where other cars had horizontal chrome grilles, the Edsel would
have a vertical chrome oval in its grille. It was new! It was
different!

Unfortunately, it didn't work. It couldn't suck in enough air to cool
the engine. So they had to make it bigger. And bigger.

"They had to keep opening up that oval to get more air in
there," says Jim Arnold, who was a trainee in Edsel's design
shop. "And it didn't look as good."

Edsel didn't have its own assembly lines, so the cars were produced in
Ford and Mercury plants, which caused problems. Every once in a while,
an Edsel would roll past workers who were used to Mercurys or other
Fords. Confused, they sometimes failed to install all the parts
before the Edsel moved on down the line.

Cars without parts can be a problem, of course, but other aspects of
the Edsel juggernaut worked perfectly -- the hype, for instance.
Warnock and his PR team touted the glories of the cars, but wouldn't
let anybody see them. They wouldn't even show pictures. When they
finally released a photo, it turned out to be a picture of . . . the
Edsel's hood ornament. And hundreds of publications actually printed
it!

In June 1957, three months before "E-Day," Newsweek
published a story on the Edsel with a cover photo that showed just
the right front wheel and a few inches of bumper.

Edsel ads were everywhere, but before E-Day, they never showed the
car. One ad pictured a stork holding a birth announcement for the
Edsel. Another showed two ancient Fords, one saying,
"Everybody's asking -- what's our grandchild going to look
like?" and the other replying, "I'm not saying -- but
there's never been a car like Edsel."

Meanwhile, Warnock was giving friendly reporters sneak peeks at the
car. "I let guys I trusted see the cars," he says.
"I'd unlock a couple of doors and take them down dark hallways.
It was showmanship, and it worked. They loved the cars and they said
so. And the public could hardly wait to see it because I was getting
so much publicity."

Looking, Not Buying

On E-Day, nearly 3 million Americans flocked to Ford showrooms to see
the Edsel. Unfortunately, very few of them bought the Edsel.

"They'd go in and look at it and leave," says Arnold.

"We couldn't even get people to drive it," says Warnock.
"They just didn't like the car. They just didn't like the front
end."

That weird oval grille soon became a running gag. Wags joked that it
looked like a horse collar or a toilet seat. Time magazine said it
made the car look like "an Olds sucking a lemon."

But styling was hardly the worst problem. Oil pans fell off, trunks
stuck, paint peeled, doors failed to close and the much-hyped
"Teletouch" push-button transmission had a distressing
tendency to freeze up. People joked that Edsel stood for "Every
day something else leaks."

Another major problem was caused by bad luck: The Edsel was an upscale
car launched only a couple of months after a stock market plunge
caused a recession. Sales of all premium cars plummeted.

But the Edsel folks did not give up. No way. After months of sluggish
sales, the crack PR team gathered to brainstorm ideas for selling
Edsels. They were battered and weary and devoid of ideas until an
adman named Walter "Tommy" Thomas blurted out a
suggestion.

"Let's give away a  pony," he said.

Much to Thomas's amazement, his idea was not only accepted, it was
expanded. The geniuses at Edsel decided to advertise a promotion in
which every Edsel dealer would give away a pony. It worked like this:
If you agreed to test-drive an Edsel, your name would be entered into
a lottery at the dealership, with the winner getting a pony.

Ford bought 1,000 ponies and shipped them to Edsel dealers, who
displayed them outside their showrooms. Many parents, egged on by
their pony-loving children, traipsed in to take a test drive.
Unfortunately, many of the lucky winners declined the ponies, opting
instead for the alternative -- $200 in cash -- and soon dealers were
shipping the beasts back to Detroit.

Now the Edsel folks were not only stuck with a lot of cars they
couldn't sell, they were also stuck with a lot of ponies they
couldn't give away. The cars were easy enough to store, but the
ponies required food. And after they ate the food, they digested the
food. And then . . . another fine mess for Edsel.

Before E-Day, Edsel's hypemeisters promised to sell 200,000 cars the
first year. Actually, they sold 63,110. And it got worse. Sales
dropped below 45,000 the second year. And only 2,846 of the 1960
models sold before Ford pulled the plug.

"The advertising talked about a remarkable new automobile, but it
wasn't so remarkable or so new," says Angus MacKenzie, editor in
chief of Motor Trend magazine. "The Edsel was just another
chrome-laden land yacht of the era. There was nothing new other than
the funny-looking grille and the name."

To MacKenzie, there's a lesson in the Edsel debacle: "Market
research has never created a great car," he says. "Great
cars are the product of passion."

The Collector

Passion? Jim Popp pulses with passion for Edsels. He loves them,
restores them, collects them. Popp has so many Edsels he can't count
them.

"I don't know the exact number," he says. "I've got
half a car here, half a car there. Call it 40-ish."

Popp is 66, retired from a Defense Department job he says he can't
talk about, living in Davidsonville. Today, he's wearing a green
T-shirt advertising Edsel's 50th anniversary. He points to the sign
mounted on his huge multi-car garage. It shows the Edsel's famous
oval grille beneath the words, "Shrine of the Holy Grill."

Popp bought his first Edsel on Dec. 14, 1959, about a month after Ford
announced the car's demise. He paid $2,300 for it -- the desperate
dealer took $1,000 off the list price -- and he drove it for 17
years.

"It was a great car," he says. "Very few problems with
it."

He opens the door, steps inside the Shrine of the Holy Grill, flips on
the lights. The huge room is packed with vintage cars, most of them
Edsels. His first Edsel is there -- a tan 1960 sedan, lovingly
restored to its original glory. There's also a red 1960 Edsel
convertible. And a turquoise 1958 Edsel convertible. And a brown 1959
Edsel sedan with a white top. They're all spotless and shiny and Popp
is eager to show them off. But he's not about to take them out for a
drive. No way.

"They've crossed a philosophical line from mode of transportation
to work of art," he says. "You wouldn't take the Mona Lisa
and write your shopping list on it."

Popp has a point. By strange quirk of financial fate, a restored Edsel
is now far too valuable to use as an actual automobile. The car famous
for its ugliness is now a rare and valued collector's item, like a
Faberge egg.

"First came the jokes, then the oblivion," Popp says,
"and now it's resurrected with the collectors. It's one of the
most popular cars for collectors."

These days, a fully restored, spiffed-up, mint-condition Edsel can
sell for $100,000 . And some of the rarest models, like the 1960
convertible, can sell for $200,000, Popp says.

Ironically, being the most famous flop in history is exactly what
makes old Edsels so valuable.

"People say, 'Isn't it a shame the Edsel didn't survive?' "
Popp says, smiling. "I say, 'If it survived, it would just be
another Ford.' "

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