The Edsel: Ford’s $2.9 Billion "Utopian Turtletop"
pplpod16 Feb

The Edsel: Ford’s $2.9 Billion "Utopian Turtletop"

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

It was supposed to be the "car of the future," but Ford’s Edsel became the definition of a commercial disaster. On this episode of pplpod, we look back at the 1957 "E Day" launch and how a vehicle that cost over $250 million to develop ended up losing the modern equivalent of $2.9 billion.

We break down exactly what went wrong, including:

• The "Horse Collar" Grille: How a vertical design intended to be elegant was mocked for looking like "an Oldsmobile sucking a lemon".

• The Wrong Car at the Wrong Time: How Ford launched a medium-priced car just as the 1957 recession hit and buyers turned toward economy vehicles.

• Confusing Pricing: Why the Edsel struggled to compete because its pricing structure overlapped confusingly with Ford’s own Mercury division.

• Quality Control Nightmares: From leaking trunks to the "Teletouch" push-button transmission that let drivers accidentally shift gears when trying to honk the horn.

• Utopian Turtletops: The bizarre internal search for a name, which included suggestions from poet Marianne Moore like "Mongoose Civique" and "Pastelogram" before executives settled on the name of Henry Ford's son.

Join us as we explore how company politics and Robert McNamara’s cost-cutting eventually killed the division in 1959, leaving behind a legacy that is still synonymous with failure today.

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