This could have been the 1960 Edsel if Ford had stuck with it (from the fabulous site of mrjynx). Yesterday we returned to 1957, and experienced the spectacular hype and showmanship that made the Edsel such an epic fail. Ford lost $400 million on the Edsel – $3 billion in today’s money. It was far cheaper to create a new car then, when they could sell anything with lights, wipers and a horn. What should they have done with all that cash instead?
’58 Edsel without the hype? ’58 Falcon? ’58 Mustang? Real Mercurys that weren’t dressed-up Fords? Engines? Quality? Automation? New make and dealer network, or stick with Ford/L-M?
Imagine you’re Henry Ford II, it’s 1955, and you have $400 million to spend. What would you do?
Wow that is quite the face on that styling exercise.
Even in retrospect I can’t think of any project they should have pursued instead of Edsel. I don’t think that going forward with the Cardinal project would have been a success in the US.
Should they have went about the Edsel project in a different manner? I think so, over hyping it was probably part of the issue but the bigger mistake in my opinion was how broad they went with Edsel from the beginning. They just tried to hard to make it cover “all” the mid price market. I think I would have started with a lone body shell, (part of me says Ford, the other part Merc) with 2 series. Not touting it as the most revolutionary vehicle ever would have likely actually helped. Not being there I can’t say for sure but the level of expectation they built up likely caused a lot of disappointment when they actually arrived. When people found out that it wasn’t really that different from “ordinary” cars they likely felt duped. So I can see the perception, in the potential buyers mind, that if you bought one, other people would perceive you as easily duped. After all wasn’t the idea of buying a car from the “mid-priced field” meant to not only show status but also to show that you were “smart with your money” ?
I don’t think that the Falcon would have done well in 58, it really needed the recession to kick start it. Without the Falcon they obviously wouldn’t have had it to base the Mustang off of. More importantly I think that the era of austerity of the Falcon had to come before the Mustang. Otherwise I don’t think that there would have been the people looking to move to a car that made a sporty styled coupe like the Mustang look so exciting.
The Edsel, at least in 1958, did come in 2 wheelbases, so did Ford; I’m not sure about Mercury.
I think you’re correct; 1958 was about the time that the general public was getting over the idea that the POWERS THAT BE were correct on everything & should be believed about everything; that a Ford/Mercury mashup with a vertical grille was the most revolutionary vehicle ever made.
Mercury also offered two wheelbases for ’58: 122 inches for low-end models, 125 inches for the new Park Lane (the upscale Mercury intended to finally bridge the gap between Mercury and Lincoln). However, all Fords shared the same body shell, as did all Mercurys, wheelbase notwithstanding. I think the wheelbase difference was accomplished mainly by moving the rear spring shackles.
For 1958, there were two Edsel body shells. Ranger and Pacer shared the Ford shell, Corsair and Citation used the Mercury shell (although their wheelbases were 124 inches). For 1959, Edsel switched to the Ford shell across the board.
The hype was HUGE!!!!! About the only current parallel I can put about it is the latest Camaro. How we were pounded with the car for something like four years, that damned Transformer movie, and then we (finally) got to buy one.
Now, take that kind of Camaro hype, shorten it down to about a year and a half . . . . but . . . . . . . make sure that absolutely NOBODY got to see the car. Nobody under the age of 50 on this board can possibly understand what a big thing new car week was back in the 50’s. And make lots of vague promises about the upcoming car, to the point that people were just about expecting a nuclear reactor in the trunk for power, and levitation grids in place of tyres.
If anything, indirectly, I think the Chrysler Forward Look from a year before added to the hype. Ford’s attitude was, “So what, we’ve got better coming next year with the Edsel”. And those Chrysler’s were absolute knockouts – until everyone found out about the build quality.
No, Ford was on the right track during the mid-50’s. It was too early for the Falcon, Rambler’s were barely hanging on at that time (1958 was their first really successful year, and Nash and Hudson had just died the year before), and Volkswagen’s were still incredibly weird cars selling to liberal wing-nuts in the big cities. 1958 was the big change. The first time since V-J day that things got worse.
I’d spend my $400 million on hookers and blow, but that’s just me.
And you Sir, have the perfect car to carry lots of both around…
Coulda just hired Delorean? Actually, I think HF II did exactly that (hookers and blow) in the late 60s? Or was it just hookers? Face it, if you’re gonna f**k away 400 mil, might as well do it right.
Shoulda’ bought Jeep. But that would have made only a small dent in that $400 mil. Throw in Toyota, for good measure. Ford already had passed on owning VW. IBM?
I wonder about Jeep. Ford’s Bronco didn’t exactly burn up the sales charts.
Give it another decade. By the mid-eighties, Jeep was a serious cash cow. Ask Lee Iaccoca.
Sure, but thirty years is a long time to wait for a return on the investment. Imagine advising a public company today, “Buy this, it’ll be huge in 2041.”
All the same, they could have picked up Kaiser for a song in 1955, and should have just tucked Jeep into the back pocket.
Ironic to see that what Ford did when their Brazilian subsdairy bought Willys-Overland of Brasil and inherited the local licence of the Jeep CJ-3B http://www.film.queensu.ca/cj3b/World/Brasil.html
Then Ford also sold its stake of 25% of Simca to Chrysler in 1958 but what if Ford had decided to keep its stake instead? Or what if Ford had buyed AMC who just dropped Nash and Hudson to focus on the Rambler?
Edit: What if Ford decided to name the Edsel by another name like Meteor (used in Canada to fit the void between Ford and Mercury) or even moving the Thunderbird name to its own division?
Something similar to the Canadian line up might have been a better idea than the Edsel. Though I’m thinking the more reasonable route would have been using the “Ford” shell and the FE engines for all the cars sold at the Ford/Edsel dealers and then use the “Merc” shell and the MEL engines for all the cars sold at the Meteor/Mercury dealers. That option though possibly spending more on the design, tooling, advertising of introducing 2 new brands, putting them in the existing Ford and Merc dealers would have saved money there. Fact is they did do something similar in Canada and it didn’t seem to break the bank. That would have allowed them to match GM’s 3 mid priced brands and target those buyers directly.
Ford did…kinda. Ford bought Willys Overland do Brasil in 1967; and the Brazilian Jeep CJ-5 was made with FORD stamped on the fenders and with Pinto 2.3L engines.
Apparently they weren’t sufficiently impressed to repeat the move in the States – even though Willys’ successor, Kaiser Jeep, was on the market with the death of Henry Kaiser in 1967.
Honestly, I think wheelbase differentiation and interior differentiation would have solidified the distictions between Ford, Mercury, and Lincoln. That and stopping Lee from inventing the LTD and signing Mercurys death warrant.
Hmmm. A Mercury LTD?
Somehow…I don’t know; I just never thought the NAME, “Mercury,” really communicated luxury and status. That may have been part of the problem, right there.
Lido was obviously “into” gawdy, pricey cars…pimpmobiles; erzatz luxury. And his position in the 1960s was president of the Ford DIVISION. Meaning, at the time, Mercury was off-limits to him.
A “promotion” to Mercury’s presidency would have been no promotion and he knew it. And Hank da Deuce was in no mood to give Lido total control.
But Lido was moving iron, and shaping the Ford image…Mustang, Maverick, Torino. He wasn’t going to get kicked out, either. Not yet.
Some things…were just meant to be. What happened with the Edsel, apparently, was a clash of alternate realities.
It probably wouldn’t have taken up that much of the $400 mil, but what if Ford had bought Standard-Triumph and run it as a kind of European Mercury/Lincoln above Ford Europe?
Looking at the lost opportunity of 1960s & 1070s Triumph as it got swallowed into the mire that was BL, burying promisingly advanced performance/luxury cars from the 1950s and early 60s, it’s tempting to think an insulated Triumph could have flourished under Ford
Then again looking at how they fumbled Jaguar a few decades later, maybe not…
Triumph and Rover were good brands and both had fairly advanced cars on the market the Rover engine and the Triumph 2500 suspension were pillaged by Leyland Austra;lia for their P76 Lemon but the original cars were good many Triumphs survive in NZ they were very popular here when new.
Given the ability of hindsight, you’re thinking way too far ahead of yourself. In the 1950’s Ford of England was doing respectively well, Ford of Germany was holding it’s own very nicely. Ford wasn’t thinking in terms of being a international automaker. Why should they, when over 50% of the world’s autos were American made. After all, those two foreign concerns weren’t really that important, not when your talking about real (American) automobiles.
Internationalism didn’t really rear it’s head until it became necessary – about ten years after the Edsel project was started.
Ford’s European operations have “done respectively [sic] well” for… well pretty much forever! I wasn’t suggesting that it was either likely or necessary for Ford in the real 1950s to have bought Standard-Triumph. This is a “what if” question after all!
I put this “what if” forward because I personally think that the modern (global) automotive landscape would maybe be richer today if some mid-20th Century British firms – Triumph among them – had survived instead of all being shovelled into a great big pile called BL and left to rot.
Standard-Triumph in the late 1950s seemed as feasible an imaginary British acquisition for Dagenham as I could think of: there was no significant product overlap, and Triumph had some exciting sports and luxury products in the pipeline, which lend themselves to the idea of a European Lincoln/Mercury equivalent. Also (as witnessed by its actual acquisition in 1961 by Leyland) Standard-Triumph conceivably could have been for sale…
Back in cold reality, you’re dead right: Ford in the 50s wouldn’t have had any interest in buying additional overseas concerns, but since the real (American) experiment in Edsel was such a gigantic waste of cash it’s still fun to imagine what else they might have done. Even if hindsight’s required to see how.
A little more money spent developing the Falcon wouldnt have gone amiss. It survived ok in gentle Us conditions but when transplanted to Australia it was meant to replace the Zephyr Zodiac which was race and rally proven tough and durable the Falcon was neither its fragility was eventually solved but by then the Zephyr had 4wheel discs and 4wheel independant suspension and a V6 and had been dropped in OZ so the Falcon would sell. A bit more time in the oven would have helped since Mcnamara knew Ford OZ didnt want it and were going to be forced to give up the Zephyr and take the Falcon.
I wish I had a car that looked like that. Ford should have gotten ahead of the big three compact game instead of introducing a new brand of full sized cars. A 1958 or 1959 Falcon would have been a success, at least if built to the same quality standard as a 1960 Falcon.
You need to remember one little point: None of the Big 3 wanted anything to do with compact cars. “Compact cars, compact profits; big cars, big profits” was the thinking from all management. The Falcon, Corvair and Valiant only came about because the VW wouldn’t go away, the Renault Dauphine was selling decently well, and even with GM dealers disinterest the Vauxhall and Opel cars were moving respectably.
AMC had the Rambler because they were filling a niche that none of the Big 3 were interested in touching. Studebaker got the Lark out in time because it didn’t take all that much time or effort to chop the front and rear off the Scotsman.
If Volkswagen sales hadn’t climbed well about Renault, Opel and Vauxhall; and continued to climb year after year, there would never have been a Falcon, Corvair or Valiant. And the American and Lark would have sold very nicely to those small-car malcontents that didn’t want to buy (or trust) a foreign manufacturer.
Remember, all thru the 50’s there was a small, steady market for little economy cars. That went bust as soon as four or five manufacturers tried to fill it. Why should the Big 3 waste their time on an already overcrowded market with small profit potential?
Then the VW and 1958 changed everything.
It’a all true. But what if Ford had been smart enough to perceive the demand sooner, come out with a ’58 Falcon, and play VW’s game, keeping it the same year-after-year while building its quality up to VW’s level?
Its always amazing to see you guys comparing VWs to Falcons in this part of the world any buyer con sidering a Falcon Zephyr Holden etc ie 6 cylinder 4 door family would not cross shop a VW. Volkswagens were not cheap being german even NZ assembly ones still attracted a lot of tax and while performance wise they competed against Morris Minors and the like they were priced up near Singer Gazzelles etc. There were very few cars by 1960 that could not catch and pass a VW on a hill they were incredibly slow and there was still a fair bit of animosity from 6 years of war with germany. But as a market alternative to a Falcon not on your life.
For some inexplicable reason Americans seem to love the VW Beetle.
‘Herby’ probably helped, the Big 3’s teething problems with getting quality compacts and sub-compacts out the door probably helped more.
I’ve always credited the American love of the Beetle to two main factors:
1. It was the first well-built car most Americans ever drove. VW and Mercedes were the only auto makers in the 1950’s to have a reputation for 2000’s style quality.
2. In what was a very conformity-oriented decade, owning a foreign car was one way to ‘let your freak flag fly’. Add that to #1, and you’re seeing a lot of VW’s success. And, being American, as soon as you have conformity, non-conformity starts to pop out all over.
How fast did it take to develop the Falcon? Did it really only take 2 years? fall 1957-to fall 59? Stories make it sound that as soon as the ‘Ike recession’ started, they jumped to it. But it takes alot longer than 2 years, right?
But there already was a 1960 Edsel, and it was a mighty fine looking car. Too little too late to save the brand, though.
As for what I would do with the money, I would have kept the Edsel project but either pursued the original Packard Predictor-style concept or a more conventional design, not the in-between mess that the real 1958 Edsel ended up being. Another solution would be to fast track it and get something on the road by the 1956 or 1957 model year, getting off to a good start before being hit by the 1958 recession.
I think the Edsel had real potential, even during the ’58 recession, but the awful styling pushed it over the edge.
I can’t believe I forgot this. I change my mind, spend the Edsel money on a second generation Mark II. Sure, the quad headlights they were planning for ’58 didn’t have quite the same elegance as the original, but it was still a beautiful car. And while we are at it, go ahead and produce that retractable hardtop mark II concept. I’m one of the few who actually likes the 58-60 continentals (I think the 1960 Mark V is one of the most beautiful cars ever built), but there is no reason they couldn’t have called the Mark III-V something else and continued to produce the Mark II as a more restrained alternative.
There, now that I’ve taken some money away from Edsel they can’t afford to be so edgy or overhyped, and they might actually produce something desirable.
Perhaps a rhetorical question, but was the 58 recession forseeable to spur fast-tracking the car? The 2008 downturn was, but I don’t know much about 58.
Falcon would have been a big seller in ’58 and ’59. The 108″ wheelbase Ramblers sold 117K in 1958, and 260K in ’59. Studebaker sold 124K Larks in ’59.
It would surely have hastened Studebaker’s demise, and might have been a mortal blow to AMC as well. That would have been a shame. But good business for Ford.
What about the effect on GM and Chrysler? Would the Corvair have happened if a ’58 Falcon had been a success?
(http://www.carnut.com/specs/index.html)
I guess it might had forced GM to return to the drawing board for the Corvair and do a conventionnal version.
As for Chrysler, with DeSoto sales suffering by the quality problems of the 1957 models and the 1958 recession, they might let DeSoto to test the water by getting its own version of the compact car (“DeSoto Valiant”?), another avenue could had been Dodge who get the compact car named….Dart (instead of the smaller full-size car in Plymouth territory) or another possibility is they move one of the Plymouth nameplates (Savoy, Plaza, Belvedere) for the new compact car if they didn’t chosed Valiant.
Then another “what if”, if the 1958 Falcon was so successeful, would Ford might try to go more early with the FWD Cardinal or the Mustang?
The 1958 Thunderbird was a hit. What if they had spun out Thunderbird as its own make with its own dealers in ’58, instead of Edsel? It actually was the most truly new car that year (in spite of Edsel’s claim), created the personal luxury segment, and had it nearly all to itself for five years. (Remember the Hawk.)
1955: Ford Thunderbird, the two-seater they really built.
1958: Thunderbird is its own make, at its own dealers, with two models: the four-seater 2nd-gen T-bird we know, and the two-seater, turned into a real sports car to compete with Corvette.
1961, 64: 3rd and 4th-gen four-seat T-Birds as really happened. The sports car dukes it out with the Vette and they both get faster and stronger.
1964: Thunderbird gets a third model, the Mustang we know (different name obviously), spun off from Ford’s Falcon.
1966-69: Thunderbird GT40s win LeMans four years running.
Going forward, Ford is the mainstream brand, Thunderbird means performance and personal luxury, Mercury is mid-range and Lincoln is luxury.
What if Ford had gone all in on unit bodies up and down the line. The Lincoln and TBird were very solid structures, certainly by 1961. If the big Ford and Mercury had gone to unitized construction (Chrysler did it for 1960) it might have been easier to make Mercury a better bridge between Ford and Lincoln. With a unique engine size (even if built off of a Ford or Lincoln engine) Mercury could have gotten a ten year head start on the eventual success that the Marquis became.
Agreed. Mercury’s development budget suffered badly from the Edsel. The 1961 Mercury was an obviously badge engineered Ford and sales crashed to half what they were in 1960. From then on, Ford got all the hits, Mercury got the hand-me-downs.
With its own unit body platform, Mercury division would have been much stronger in the sixties, and might even have fought off the LTD.
Why spend the money at all? Didn’t it come from Ford stock going public for the first time?
During the 1950s Ford spent money like a drunk sailor. For example, recall that the Continental Mark II was spun off as its own division — even though it was the costliest car made in America and didn’t even offer a four-door version. Ford never got close to amortizing the cost of that project, partly because they lost money on every car and partly because the plug was pulled after only two years.
Meanwhile, the Lincoln was given a brand-new body in 1956 that also lasted only two years. The 1958 Lincoln had a completely new unit-body platform that required substantial factory revisions.
Compare Ford’s efforts in the luxury car field with GM, where the Cadillac was restyled in a normal rotation and always shared significant components with the rest of GM’s brands. Even the top-end Cadillacs such as the Eldorado had a fair amount of interchangeability with mass-market Cadillacs.
The 1957 Imperial did have distinct sheetmetal and curved side glass but it still shared a far larger proportion of components with its lesser brothers than the 1958 Lincoln.
I haven’t seen any numbers, but I would bet that Ford lost a huge amount of money on the Lincoln and Continental. Might that amount have been in the same ballpark as the Edsel? Why not? The Edsel never had its own platform and completely unique sheetmetal.
There was a bit of that going on, how much of the 1958 GM cars was retained in 1959? (ps a genuine question!)
GM’s 1959’s used the same X frame chassis as their 58’s. However, the wheels appeared hidden under the ’59 bodies, This is why Pontiac developed their ‘wide track’ wheel width.
The engines and transmissions were largely carried over, too.
“For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: “It might have been!” – John Greenleaf Whittier
Engines. Ford should have spent their cash on developing engines. As much of a Ford fan that I am, I will readily admit that Ford has always cut a few corners (well, every corner possible) on their engine designs. Their first decent smallblock attempt wasn’t really good until it sat in the Mustang, their didn’t even try on the straight six, and big blocks didn’t get decent until the late 60’s either. And even on the decent ones there weren’t many proper corners. They did waste a lot of cash on another half-decent engine that coulda been great in the Edsel though, but it wasn’t quite enough.
The 1958 and up Ford big-blocks were durable engines. They weren’t very powerful in relation to their size, but they were virtually impossible to kill.
(Despite the hype, Chevrolet’s big-blocks weren’t all that great, from what I’ve read, at least not from a durability standpoint. And the 348 V-8 of the late 1950s wasn’t all that great in either durability or performance.)
Ford’s first overhead-valve I-6, which debuted in the early 1950s, was a very good engine, as was the “Big Six” of the 1960s. During the 1950s, both Chevrolet and Plymouth still used their old sixes that were developed prior to World War II.
The real Ford stinkers were the Y-block V-8s and the first Falcon I-6, and the latter’s problem was that it was too small for its mission, particularly when coupled with an automatic transmission. It’s interesting that Ford immediately introduced a larger Falcon engine for 1961.
GM had the troublesome Buick aluminum V-8, the Pontiac Tempest four-cylinder (which didn’t offer better economy than many sixes and small V-8s, while running rougher than most foreign four-cylinders) and the unimpressive Corvair engine. I’m not seeing where Ford was really any worse in the engine department than GM during those years.
GM had the small block V8. It came out in the ’55 Chevy, right as Ford was committing to Edsel.
I have wondered why they built Falcon’s 144 six so small. Was it derived from another engine or was it a clean sheet design? They stroked it to get the 170 six, right?
I would imagine that the 144 cid 6 was small because nobody had really perfected the template for a compact car. The foreign engines were smaller, and even the old Stude Champion had a 169 incher, so it is not surprising that Ford would go lower for a proper compact for bragging rights on fuel economy.
But, as it turns out, buyers of American compacts wanted at least some semblance of American power. The Valiant started at 170, I believe, although Chrysler may have been constrained by a need for the new 6 to be shared with the big cars. The Corvair engine was larger as well, but apparently lacked much room for growth.
I believe that both the 170 and the more common 200 were outgrowths of the 144, but I cannot tell you if it was bore or stroke or both.
What still amazes me is how Robert McNamara was willing to throw all the Edsel money down the drain, when he was supposedly so conservative about finances?
The Edsel wasn’t his idea, so if he killed it in the name of preventing even more losses down the road, he could score points with the Ford family, while saying, “It wasn’t my idea.”
McNamara may have been tight with a dollar, but he could be pretty cagey, too. He was also quite ambitious.
The fact that it flopped, and car sales in general fell off a cliff in 1958, scared everyone, and made his job easier.
McNamara threw a whole lot more down the drain in 1961-68. But that project started on his watch.
Ford hired a lady poet to come up with names for the eventual Edsel, ‘Utopian Turtletop’ and ‘Mongoose Civique’ were two of hundreds penned.