{"id":58941,"date":"2013-03-08T10:02:20","date_gmt":"2013-03-08T15:02:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thedetroitbureau.com\/?p=58941"},"modified":"2013-03-08T10:02:20","modified_gmt":"2013-03-08T15:02:20","slug":"edsel-designer-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/2013\/03\/edsel-designer-dies\/","title":{"rendered":"Edsel Designer Dies"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Roy Brown with one of his Edsels at a 2001 collector's meet. Image courtesy EdselNet, one of many sites dedicated to the once-maligned machine.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It became a symbol of failure, the name long remembered even by those who didn\u2019t remember the car itself. But not to Ray Brown Jr., the man who designed the disastrous Edsel and continued championing it until his death at 96.<\/p>\n

Brown was already a veteran designer at Ford when he was assigned to lead the team charged with coming up with an all-new sedan that would slot in-between the maker\u2019s main \u201cBlue Oval\u201d brand and the more upscale Lincoln.\u00a0 But what hit the streets in 1957 fell far short of general expectations and, after losing what would today work out to billions of dollars, Ford quickly pulled the plug on the Edsel \u2013 and sent Brown into temporary exile overseas.<\/p>\n

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Your Inside Source!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI\u2019m proud of the car,\u201d he said in an interview with Florida\u2019s Sun-Sentinel newspaper in a 1985 interview, insisting that, \u201cThere is not a bad line on the car.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, the Edsel received significant praise during early previews, a New York Times obituary of Brown acknowledging the paper had called the car \u201cradically different,\u2019 and described the styling as \u201cspectacular.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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An Edsel joins the annual Woodward Avenue Dream Cruise in Detroit.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What hit the street was not precisely what Brown had penned. The production car did maintain the distinctive horizontal headlamp and taillight design. And it featured a more elegant and streamlined look than some of the other products to hit the road in 1957.\u00a0 But the graceful new grille that was on the original prototype had been revised by committee, as one Ford old-timer once explained, in order to deliver more air to the engine. And the result was a signature design theme still derided as the \u201chorse collar.\u201d<\/p>\n

That generated plenty of criticism, both playful and crude, including one editorial cartoon comparing the design to an Oldsmobile sucking a lemon. Others likened the grille to a toilet seat. \u201cThere are people that have toilet-seat minds,\u201d Brown said in his interview with the Sun Sentinel.\u00a0 The brand itself came to be known as \u201cFord\u2019s Folly,\u201d and even the \u201cE-Bomb.\u201d<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t the reaction Ford had in mind. The maker had big expectations and launched a massive marketing campaign leading up to its introduction, even asking for suggestions for the car\u2019s name from well-known writers.\u00a0 It rejected some particularly quirky ones from poet Marianne Moore, who suggested both the Intelligent Whale and Utopian Turtletop.<\/p>\n

The Edsel introduced a variety of new and more upscale features, including the \u201cTeletouch\u201d bush-button shifter \u2013 something that is just making its return on cars like the Lincoln MKZ and the revived Dodge Dart \u2013 and a \u201crolling dome\u201d speedometer.<\/p>\n

But it didn\u2019t come cheap, at anywhere from $2,400 to $3,800, at a time when some mainstream sedans were offered for two-thirds the price.\u00a0 And the Edsel didn\u2019t quite have an easy fit in the Ford line-up, the new brand butting up against the mid-range Mercury that was then extremely popular.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis car was kind of aimed at a market that didn\u2019t really exist,\u201d said Matt Anderson, the curator of transportation at the Henry Ford, a museum near Ford Motor Co.\u2019s suburban Detroit headquarters, told the Times in its obituary.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t help, either, that the Edsel was sent up against extraordinarily tough competition, notably from the now-legendary \u201957 Chevrolet.<\/p>\n

Critics looked for a range of reasons to explain why the Edsel failed. They even blamed the addition of new safety gear, such as self-adjusting brakes and the first childproof rear door locks, as well the industry-first standard-equipment seatbelts — which triggered the long and erroneous belief in industry circles that \u201csafety doesn\u2019t sell.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then there was the name itself, which didn\u2019t evoke exciting holiday destinations or powerful animals, like so many other Detroit cars of that era. The Edsel was named for the only son of company founder Henry Ford. He had served as the automaker\u2019s president before dying young and unexpectedly in 1943.<\/p>\n

But whatever the reason, fail the Edsel did. Total sales came to barely 100,000 over the next two years, about half of the initial expectations. Ford struggled to save the new brand, in 1958 merging its free-standing dealer network in with Lincoln and Mercury.<\/p>\n

But by then, the name had already become synonymous with failure and the Edsel was pulled from production in 1959. A small number of cars were built with the 1960 model-year designation, and less than 3,000 were sold.<\/p>\n

Ironically, one model intended to join the Edsel line-up in 1953 was hastily rebranded, Ford not wanting to waste the money it spent to design and tool up for the car. Badged the Ford Comet, it became one of the hits of the 1960 model-year.<\/p>\n

Decades later, those estimated 10,000 Edsels that survive are considered highly collectible, the Edsel Owners Club of America claiming thousands of members. \u00a0The Edsel Pages, a website for collectors, suggests a high-quality 1958 Edsel Citation can go for as much as $55,000, and one of the few 1960 Edsel Rangers might command $63,000.<\/p>\n

When fans would mention such matters to him years later, Brown would reportedly respond, \u201cWhere were you in 1958?\u201d<\/p>\n

A number of its features, especially on the safety side, were eventually adopted by other manufacturers.<\/p>\n

Born in Hamilton Ontario on October 30, 1916, Roy Abbot Brown would survive the Edsel debacle. He was reassigned to Great Britain, Ford\u2019s European headquarters, and reestablished his credentials with the design of the hugely popular Ford Cortina. He eventually was brought back to the States and remained with Ford until 1974.<\/p>\n

Brown died in Michigan on February 24 at the age of 96.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It became a symbol of failure, the name long remembered even by those who didn\u2019t remember the car itself. But not to Ray Brown Jr., the man who designed the disastrous Edsel and continued championing it until his death at 96. This look back at the Edsel and its creator from TheDetroitBureau.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58942,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"make":[],"post-state":[],"category_old":[151],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58941"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58941"},{"taxonomy":"make","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/make?post=58941"},{"taxonomy":"post-state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post-state?post=58941"},{"taxonomy":"category_old","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/category_old?post=58941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}