This 20-minute Ford Motor Company film from 1958 tells the Edsel story in fine detail.
Entire books have been published, scholarly papers written, graduate business school classes have been taught on the Edsel, mainly in the pursuit of one question: What in the heck were they thinking? How could the Ford Motor Company get it so wrong? Here at Mac’s Motor City Garage, we’re as fascinated by the Edsel as anyone. Using the search function and tag cloud on our home page, you can find loads of content on the Dearborn car maker’s historic flop. We’re not ashamed to admit it: We’re not just Edsel observers. We’re Edsel admirers. There, we said it. We’re drawn to the Edsel not just in spite of its failures, but because of them.
There’s plenty of original Ford Motor Company material on the Edsel, too, thanks to a flood of print, TV, and movie advertising the automaker produced for E-Day—September 4. 1957, the fateful day when the Edsel was introduced with tremendous fanfare to a largely indifferent public. The 17-minute film we’re sharing here was part of that campaign. Using a time-honored expository plot gimmick—a tongue-tied executive practicing the pitch on his secretary—the movie tells the Edsel product story in satisfying detail. Still, we can’t help but speculate that maybe this fictional Edsel executive was onto to something. Inadvertently, he seems to be pointing to an essential problem with the Edsel. Umm, why are we introducing this car, anyway? Video below.
If only they’d known that the buying public wasn’t ready for it. And introducing it at a time when everything got quelled by a recession, it was doomed to fail. It wasn’t a bad car at all. I knew people who owned them and had few problems…
Wrong time for a car of its type. De Soto was going under and Buick was slipping. Only Pontiac was doing well in the mid price cars. They say if GM had to relaunch Oldsmobile in 1958 it would fail too.
It really wasn’t that bad of a looking car…..except that horse collar grille…..what were they thinking? By the time they got the styling figured out in 1960, they pulled the plug. Too many missteps with gimmicks like the teletouch transmission controls had already soured the public. Another thing was there were too many variations and different models to launch a new make, if they had of kept it simple with one body in two and four door styles to start with, the money and time invested could on all the others could have been better spent on quality control, something the earlier cars supposedly lacked. I think it was a strange combination of many factors that doomed it from the start.