Edsel

Edsel is a defunct brand of automobiles that was produced by the Ford Motor Company from the 1958 to 1960 model years. The namesake of Edsel Ford, the Edsel line was developed in an effort to give Ford a fourth brand to gain additional market share from Chrysler and General Motors. Established as an expansion of the Lincoln–Mercury Division (re-christened as the Mercury–Edsel–Lincoln Division), Edsel shared a price range with Mercury and its bodies with both Mercury and Ford. Competing against Buick, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Dodge, and DeSoto, Edsel was the first new brand introduced by an American automaker since the 1939 launch of Mercury and the 1956 launch of Continental; the latter was retired and merged into Lincoln during the 1957 model year. In the year leading up to its release, Ford invested in an advertising campaign, marketing Edsels as the cars of the future. While 1958 Edsels introduced multiple advanced features for the price segment, the launch of the model line became symbolic of commercial failure. Introduced in a recession that catastrophically affected sales of all medium-priced cars, Edsels were considered overhyped, low quality, and unattractive; a central part of their design featured a vertical grille (and its resemblance to a horse collar). Following a loss of over $250 million (equivalent to $2.72 billion in 2025 dollars) on development, manufacturing, and marketing on the model line, Ford quietly discontinued the Edsel brand in November 1959, shortly after the 1960 model line was introduced.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Edsel", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.