966F WHEEL LOADER

There is a place where the Edsels rest. A collector of sorts has collected these cars over the years. He's stripped what he wants off of them, and now they lay in a row, reminder of what cars used to be.

The Edsel was a brand of car of the Ford Motor Company during the 1958, 1959, and 1960 model years. It was in the early 50's when the Ford Motor Company became a publicly traded corporation that was no longer entirely owned by members of the Ford Company. That meant that they were able to sell cars according to the then-current market trends following the sellers' market of the postwar years. They showed that the Ford roster compared with the makes of General Motors, and that Lincoln competed not with Cadillac, but with Oldsmobile. They decided to move Lincoln upmarket. This move meant that they needed to add another make to the intermediate slot vacated by Lincoln. In 1955, research and development had begun work on the "E-car", which stood for "experimental car". This was the new division that was to run alongside the Ford and Lincoln-Mercury division.

The Edsel was introduced amidst considerable publicity on "E Day", September 4th, 1957. It was promoted by a top-rated television show, The Edsel Show, on October 13th, but it was not enough to counter the adverse public reaction to the car's styling and conventional build. Ford had been circulating rumors that led people to expect an entirely new kind of car, but in reality, it shared its bodywork with other Ford models.

It was sold through a new Ford division, which existed from November 1956 until January 1958, after which Edsels were made by the Mercury-Edsel-Lincoln division (referred to as M-E-L. In 1958, its first year, it sold 63,110 Edsels in the U.S., with another 4,935 sold in Canada. Even though it was below expectations, it is still the second-largest car launch for a brand, to date. You probably recognize some of the base names: Citation, Corsair, Pacer, Ranger, Bermuda, Villager... some of these names are still used today, with other models in Ford.

Ford announced the end of the Edsel program on Thursday, November 19th, 1959. On November 20th, the UPI (United Press International) wire service reported that the book values for used Edsels had decreased by as much as $400 (approximately $3200 in 2009] (based on condition and age), following the Ford press release.

Today, the word "Edsel" has become synonymous with failure. There is no single reason why the Edsel failed. Consumer Reports cited poor workmanship, while popular culture often faults the car's styling. Marketing experts hold the Edsel up as a supreme example of corporate America's failure to understand American people. Business analysts cite the weak internal support for the product inside Ford's executive offices. According to author and Edsel scholar Jan Deutsch, the Edsel was "the wrong car at the wrong time". One must realize the onset of the recession in late 1957. The car was entering into a shrinking marketplace.

The name of the car, Edsel, is also often cited as a further reason for its unpopularity. Naming the vehicle after Edsel Ford was proposed early in its development. However, the Ford family strongly opposed its use; Henry Ford II stated that he didn't want his father's good name spinning around on thousands of hubcaps. Ford also ran internal studies to decide on a name and even dispatched employees to stand outside movie theaters to poll audiences as to what their feelings were on several ideas. They reached no conclusions.

Ford hired the advertising firm Foote, Cone and Belding to come up with a name. However, when the advertising agency issued its report, citing over 6,000 possibilities, Ford's Ernest Breech commented that they had been hired to develop a name, not 6,000. Early favorites for the name brand included Citation, Corsair, Pacer, and Ranger, which were ultimately chosen for the vehicle's series names.

David Wallace, manager of marketing research, and coworker Bob Young unofficially invited poet Marianne Moore for input and suggestions. Moore's unorthodox contributions (among them "Utopian Turtletop", "Pastelogram", and "Mongoose Civique") were meant to stir creative thought and were not officially authorized or contractual in nature.

At the behest of Ernest Breech, who was chairing a meeting in the absence of Henry Ford II, the car was finally called "Edsel" in honor of Edsel Ford, former company president and son of Henry Ford. Marketing surveys later found the name was thought to sound like the name of a tractor (Edson) and therefore was unpopular with the public. Moreover, several consumer studies showed that people associated the name "Edsel" with "weasel" and "dead cell" (dead battery), drawing further unattractive comparisons.

The cable sheaves below my steering pedestal, now with attached steering cables.