Why Edsels? North Americans reading this may nod and understand – but why should an Australian, who’s never even seen an Edsel, want to build so many of them?
Something about these cars appeals to me. Being a child of the fifties, there were three big automotive impressions made upon me in my formative years.
One was the 1959 Chevrolet, specifically this view. Picture yourself as a three-year-old, in a country where most cars were considerably smaller (105” wheelbase, 132CID six) and much more conservative – seeing this for the first time. As this is the Australian version, it has those cute little indicators hanging down from the batwings. Like little chrome bats. I was really intrigued. Someone at Holden (which assembled these) had a sense of humour;
The next was once I’d started school. I had a mile walk each way (no money for a bus), and there was such a variety of cars both moving in traffic and parked by the curb. Ones I remember still were an MG ZA Magnette a 1938 Chevrolet and a 1947 Buick. And there were always Holdens. I soon realized Holden styling seemed to lag behind American styling by about three or four years. Why is it so?
1959 Holden. Yep, same year as the Chevy.
The third was in third grade. If you finished your classwork, there was a stack of old fifties National Geographics you could have a look at. Being something of a brainiac, I always had time – okay, I rushed through my classwork to make time. The articles were interesting, I did actually read some. But the car ads! The shapes! The colours! All that chrome! So big!
People drove cars like that? Wow! What kind of a place was this America?
And naturally I found the Edsel. The ad I remember had pictures of the whole Ford range for 1958. I knew Ford, but not this style. I knew Mercury, same. The Lincoln brand I’d heard of, but never seen one. But what was this Edsel thing?
Over the years I picked up the Edsel story, and what a huge mistake it turned out to be. I won’t go into it here, but that overdecorated styling with that weird vertical grille kind of stuck with me. Over the years I also developed a sense of what looked right and what didn’t. I’d see a car and want to take off some excess chrome, reshape this, move that line to there. Cars like the Edsel were just begging to be ‘corrected’.
Fast forward to 1999. I’d been building cars for about thirty years. By now Scale Auto Enthusiast magazine was established (it’s now defunct), and in their annual polls US car modellers had been asking for an Edsel for ages. Finally, AMT released one. It’s a great kit, with full engine and chassis detail, fits together really well, and still stands up well today. One of their all-time best, in my opinion;
The only criticism I’ve heard is that the engine is undersized. I can’t say that I noticed until it was pointed out, but the Y-block in their ’56 and ’57 Fords is notably larger. Hmm. Maybe done for ease of assembly?
But overall I was so impressed that I bought another one. Some guys buy the second one to take more time over and build better; I just wanted another Edsel in different colours. Never mind a two-tone, how about three? The local hardware store had just got a new line of paints in, so…
Then AMT released a second version, with fender skirts and a Continental kit. An even longer Edsel! Had to have that….
My Edsels are (mostly) the kind of thing you might have seen back then – or might not. I’m not a stickler for factory colours. No neon pink Edsels though: that’s not my style, though I’ve seen it done (shudder).
They’re kind of multiplying. But wait! There’s more!
Remember I said at the start about wanting to correct what I saw as stylistic errors? Custom model car building is a thing. I bought another Edsel and started cutting, filing, sanding…
It still has the vertical grille but it protrudes less (subtlety is the name of the game for me) I simplified the texture to match the side grilles, and dumped the thick chrome ‘horse collar’ in favour of thicker perimeter chrome. With a spotlight at the bottom, just because. I cut back the headlight pods too, and installed rectangular lights, a feature of many American show customs in the early sixties;
For the sides I linked the front and rear trim to break up the disjointed look. Now it flows. At the rear I just lowered the taillights to rest on the bumper, leaving a squared off rear deck. Why gold and green? Because the Olympics were on at the time, and they’re the Australian team colours. Right, that’s out of my system.
But wait, there’s more.
That Edsel itch was still there. Being a good American company, AMT released another version of the kit, a pre-decorated one. Now several companies will paint the body and call it a day. Somehow AMT got workers to paint everything in the right colours, cut all the parts off their sprues (the plastic frames the bits come on) and touch up the attachment points. And all for about $10 extra IIRC. I’m amazed. They must surely have lost money on these – they didn’t stay in the range for long and never reappeared. An American friend sent me one, as I hadn’t seen the pre-dec Edsel here;
Now I’m not much of a fan of black cars. Probably comes of too much time in the back of a black Austin A30 in a series of hot Australian summers. Anyway, while I liked black and red, I wanted to reverse it. And while I was at it, change the black to a medium metallic grey. Less stereotypical, more subtle;
I liked the result. Let’s try some more. How about two strongly-contrasting shades of the same colour? And let’s make the main one a dark metallic, with a light solid colour for contrast.
So that’s it from me on Edsels. I do have a spare kit or two in my stash, but don’t hold your breath!
Next fortnight, probably more Skylines. We’ll see.
Beautiful work and assortment, Peter! Yes – compared to the ’59 Chevy, the same-year Holden does look a little like a breadbox. Years removed from the new-car context of both cars, I like both for different reasons.
The extreme body sculpting on these Edsels make me think they were more difficult to paint and detail than models of other cars with more straightforward styling.
I had also bought two models of a Javelin AMX, thinking I might botch one. The one is still in the box.
Thank you Joseph. With only one ’59 Chevy in our suburb (which must seem unimaginable to Americans!) you can see why it made such a lasting impression.
The Edsels are a little bit more difficult to paint around the front end, making sure the spray coats the underside of the headlight pods in particular, though I hadn’t thought about it until you asked. I have another two on the bench since writing this article, and that was a tricky spot to cover. In real life that must’ve give the stamping guys problems too.
Love the 2 tone green of that one at the top!
And really miss SAE magazine :^(
Thanks! That green one might be my favourite too; 1960s Humbrol #37 (long discontinued) over 1990s Aussie Ford Everglade.
SAE was great. Gary’s enthusiasm for the subject matter really shone through, year after year. It was never the same after that big publishing company (who shall remain nameless) bought him out. Eventually I stopped buying it, Enough people do that, and…
Didn’t AMT have a 1/25 scale 3 in 1 kit of the Edsel back in the day? I have dim but distinct memories of seeing one in a shop, maybe in 1962 -63. That was the time I started building models a lot.
AMT did release a “promo” style kit in late 1957 and I don’t think it was ever re-issued. It did not have an engine or opening hood.
Right, dman. They surely did have that. It’s the sort of thing only a mad keen collector would search out these days. I’m not sure, but I think that old tool got cut up into a funny car some time in the sixties; they went through a stage in the sixties of repurposing some of their old tools into drag or speedway cars. The old annual kits in those days were basically unassembled promos with some optional custom or racing parts. As Blue Oval Dave says, no engine; AMT’s first kits with engines were in 1960, and that wasn’t all the kits in their range either.
You`re right, it was a `60 Edsel 3 in 1 customizing kit, a ‘curbside’ with no motor. AMT ALSO had 58 Edsel funny car issued in 1967 called nreal’There is a good possibility that the pre painted `58 AMT Edsel was based that, but I`m not an expert on the subject.
TYPO, computer bad today, The Edsel funny car was called ‘Unreal’. The `58s you built are the bodies from that kit with a full chassis, interior buck and more chrome plated parts.
Wow, so much inventiveness and good works here ! .
Glad you ‘got the bug’ and are sharing he results here .
In the early 1979’s there was a large Edsel only salvage yard near San Diego .
-Nate
Thanks Nate. I wasn’t sure about an Edsel-only article, but it seems tyo have worked. An Edsel-only yard must’ve been a real sight. I know some guys into dioramas and wrecks who’d have a go at building that one – you there, Douglas? 🙂
I love the one in the lede picture. The two-tone turquoise looks great.
You mentioned that you don’t stick to original factory colors, but you may have with this one.
Although the accent color on the one below (picture taken at Carlisle in May of 2018) is white, the darker turquoise looks just like your model.
The lighter turquoise you used as an accent (I like it better than the white) was likely a period correct factory color back then as well….
Hey Rick, thanks for pointing that out. No wonder it looks ‘right’.
I didn’t aim to go factory with this one. It was more a case of going out to my paint shop and thinking what might look good – and different to what I’d aready done (yes, I have been known to accidentally paint two cars the same colour!). I’ve probably painted way too many models in Everglade, but it was really popular back in the nineties. And a white (or black) accent is easy; I try to steer away from the obvious with my models. It’s only since I started showing them online that I realized I was doing this.
I quite agree on the light turquoise certainly being a period colour. I remember seeing a lot of pastels on early-mid fifties cars. Were they ever paired? Well, they are now! 🙂
Bat wing Chevs were in the showroom briefly where my dad worked they would be parked on display after the pre delivery check over untill the customer came in for their car, New cars were presold to holders of overseas funds and paid for before assembly and 59 Chevs repeated what the 57s did, nobody ordered any more.
Ive seen Edsels in OZ they do exist, more than a few have washed up on NZ shores since they were made, though they didnt sell here new, hell my home burg didnt even have a Ford store that guy dumped Ford and went Simca, later they went Toyota and thrived, parts flew off the shelves trying to keep early Corollas running a mate of mine worked there in the spares section Toyota parts sold well.
Thanks k. I only recall seeing the one in out part of St. Kilda (Acland Street). It must’ve seemed surreal to see these things in the showroom.
I remember reading in a magazine back in the seventies about this guy cutting up an Edsel because people were laughing at it, so I know there were some here. And I’ve no doubt more have been brought in since. They’re just so way out, sort of a middle finger to the designs of today.
Great models and color combinations!
I particularly like the gold and green custom model. I never thought what this car (or other American cars of the era) would look like with rectangular headlights, but the result looks surprisingly good. The taillight treatment looks better than on the original as well.
Thanks Eric.
Our resident lighting expert (you still out there, Dr. Stern?) would probably tell you these were the Cibie units first used on the Citroen Ami, and he’d probably tell me off for leaving the accent off the e. 🙂 Not quite as sharply rectangular as eighties styles and thus more in tune with the Edsel’s curves, these often popped up on sixties concept cars. Some guys in the nineties tried building old-style customs with the newer headlight shapes; the results were often unfortunate. Square pegs in round holes, and all that…
The Edsel’s tail bothers me. You’ve got a strongly vertical-themed front end when most cars were horizontal, but a horizontal rear when most cars were vertical. And there’s all that sheetmetal below those overdecorated horizontal taillights, that just has this funny-shaped reversing light plonked on it, as though the designer felt it needed something to fill the massive void he’d created. The rear still looks too high and square. Ideally I’d raise the bumper a bit.
Some nice colour combinations there, Peter; certainly puts Hillman’s ‘Gay Look’ in the shade. The Edsel grille is an oddity in America even if there were still vertical grilles on some European marques into the 1960s.
In that respect your reworked green and gold example reminds me a little of the 1948-57 Humber Hawk, though Humber dropped the vertical look in ’57.
Thanks Bernard.
Regarding Humber’s vertical grille, true for the Hawk and Super Snipe certainly, they looked very American. Though Singers and Sunbeams kept that look alive, they were based off a different body. I’d have to google for the smaller Humbers, I can’t recall them.
Oh, and in case anybody was wondering, here’s that early fifties Humber look applied to a Chevrolet…
TYPO, computer bad today, The Edsel funny car was called ‘Unreal’. The `58s you built are the bodies from that kit with a full chassis, interior buck and more chrome plated parts.
No worries, Phil, you should see my typos. It’s taken me two hours to respond with these comments. Fingers keep going the wrong place…
As always, a great read and terrific models.
Thanks F-85! After I finish the Skyline series I’ll be going back to more ‘mundane’ (well, common) subjects, but that doesn’t mean mundane models, oh no….. 🙂
Beautiful work Peter! Your confidence with colour is very special!
Thank you. Sometimes it’s confidence, sometimes bravado, sometimes something else again, I feel. Form and colour seem so intertwined (says he with no training) that it can be a challenge to find the colour that lets that shape really shine. I think that’s why I’m so disappointed with modern cars: designers’ creativity is shacked, stultified by the monochrome colour palette which does no favours to their work.
The best colour is often one that’s unexpected. 🙂
Edsel itself sold, or gave away, promo models at introduction. My brother and I each went to the Edsel dealer in San Francisco and got one. They were identical, both two door hardtops which, best as I can remember, were the shorter Ford body, in a kind of turquoise with white roof and side cove. Unfortunately the plastic in both warped with age and we used the chassis to build balsa wood models of other cars. One of them was, and is, a 1964 Pontiac Grand Prix, so the warpage took place in well less than ten years.
I have an unbuilt AMT Edsel kit stored away.
Ah yes, the old acetate-bodied promos. I’ve heard of them. I have a friend who restores those for a dealer, but often finds they are too far gone to work with. That must have been so disappointing to a child to have a car with such special meaning to you that warped so quickly. It seems odd they would use styrene for the kit but a less stable plastic for the promos. The cynic in me would say that since they were basically a sales tool they weren’t meant to last past the real car’s selling season. Sad, that.