|
|
Wall Street History
https://www.gofundme.com/s3h2w8
|
09/21/2007
The Edsel
This month marks the 50th anniversary of the Edsel, one of the all-time product busts. What happened, and why the name?
With the post-World War II surge in consumerism, by 1950 there were 1 million families in the United States who could afford two cars. By 1960, this figure was expected to be 7 million.
General Motors at this time had emerged as the #1 automaker and as families outgrew their Chevy, or could afford a second, high-end vehicle, they moved up to a Pontiac, Buick, Oldsmobile, or Cadillac. For its part, Ford could offer its Mercury or Lincoln lines, which were perceived to be more on the luxury side. So Ford sought to fill the middle rung.
1955 was Ford’s most successful ever thanks to the introduction of the Thunderbird and Ford decided to set aside $250 million ($2 billion in today’s dollars) for what would become the Edsel and an entirely new division.
While the designers toyed with their models, the chosen advertising agency, Foote, Cone and Belding, was sifting through 18,000 possible names, which it then winnowed down to 16. Some of these were doozies like Utopian Turtletop (selected by a famous American poet of this era, Marianne Moore) and Elkherd.
More conventional offerings in the final cut were Phoenix, Altair, Citation, and Corsair, with the latter two being the top choices of the creative folks. But management went in a totally different direction the new car would be called the Edsel, after Henry Ford’s late son. Market research showed consumers associating Edsel with “diesel” and “weasel,” but no matter, Edsel it was.
It’s been said that the original design of the car was superb, but then Ford’s accountants demanded one cost-saving measure after another and most would agree the finished product was uuuu-gly.
Some said the vertical front grilled evoked female genitalia, though at the time GM was featuring cars with pointy bumper guards that distinctly resembled bras. Others said the grille looked like a bird’s beak.
Columnist George Will recently wrote of the Edsel misadventure:
“Remember the basketball coach who said of his team, ‘We’re short but we’re slow’? The Edsel was ugly but riddled with malfunctions. So many malfunctions that some people suspected sabotage at plants that had previously assembled Fords and Mercurys. Those two Ford divisions perhaps hoped the Edsel would bomb.”
The Edsel was formally launched on Sept. 4, 1957, and in the first weeks and months there were millions flocking to Ford’s showrooms, but few actual buyers. How few? Try 64,000 cars sold the first year. It didn’t help that the economy was entering a recession, and that a week before the introduction, the USSR announced it possessed a missile capable of dropping a bomb anywhere in the U.S. Then a month after the launch of the Edsel, the Soviets launched Sputnik, which shook America up further. Not a great time to be selling big ticket items, it turned out, especially ugly ones, and the Edsel went from wundercar to laughingstock. It lasted all of 26 months.
As George Will wrote:
“The short, unhappy life of that automobile is rich in lessons, and not only for America’s beleaguered automobile industry. The principal lesson is: Most Americans are not as silly as a few Americans suppose.”
But on a different topic, I was reading a Newsweek piece on the history of computers, and I see that the name Altair was an important one back in 1975. The ‘Altair 8800’ was the first personal computer, costing $495 assembled. 1975 was also the same year Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft.
Sources:
Martin S. Fridson, “It Was a Very Good Year” Steven Levy / Newsweek Rick Newman / U.S. News & World Report George Will / Washington Post
Wall Street History returns in two weeks.
Brian Trumbore
|
|
|