Everyone makes fun of the Edsel, but was it really a bad car?

[raccoon]

Anybody out there know?

[raccoon]

1. C'mon, yall, NOBODY'S family had one? nt

[pokerfan]

6. It was mostly a marketing failure

and overpriced for what it was.

[Arkham House]

2. It was a *great* car!

We didn't own one--but dad worked for Ford at the time, and we had one for a few weeks--and it was reliable, ran as smooth as silk, extremely comfortable...Dad never understood why it flopped, and no one at Ford could ever figure it out, either...

[Orsino]

3. To my eye, at least, it was butt-ugly.

That's the only reason I hear consistently given for its flop. The few accounts I hear agree that it was luxurious and reliable.

[CreekDog]

9. well, from the front it looked like uh

see, it looks like

i just can't...

[Crazy Dave]

4. It was just an average car and nobody wants an average car

Back in it's day, just like it is now, the critics didn't like it, it was called ugly, it was poorly marketed which made consumers think Ford wasn't really backing their own product and all that tainted it with people who think they had to buy only the car that everybody else had or wish they had.

[flvegan]

5. It was as good/poor as any of the other Ford marques, but

it was a design nightmare and the marketing was awful. Plus, Americans like prettier names than Edsel.

[abq e streeter]

7. My friend Rich had an Edsel Wagon in the 70's ( push button transmission!)

and we use to go tooling around town in it... great car, as far as I could tell just from riding around in it.

[LeftinOH]

8. Edsel never had its own manufacturing facility; the cars rolled off the same line

as contemporary Fords- and, for the three years they were produced, they were just as good (or as bad- whichever you choose) as the '58, '59, and '60 Fords. As for the 'extreme styling'.. The debut-year 1958 model was no more bizarre looking than most other 1958 models: The 1958 Oldsmobile is a nightmare in chrome; the '58 Mercury, the '58 Buick, and the '58 Lincoln -among others- are so ridiculous looking that they make the Edsel's styling look kind of tame. The name 'Edsel' itself didn't help matters, nor did a nationwide economic downturn. Also, Ford Motor Company had been promising something "all new" with their new Edsel Division, yet they came out with another huge lumbering vehicle.

[kwassa]

10. The Edsel was named after Edsel Ford, Henry Ford's son.

though Edsel never really got to run the company. It must have been named by Henry Ford II, also known as "Hank the Deuce" who was running the company at the time. The Deuce revived Ford after WW2 by buying up the Air Force management team, including Robert S. McNamara.