Roy Brown Jr. must have known,…
…for all these long years, that his obituary would feature the fact that he was the designer of the Edsel.
My guess is that, at 96, he’d made his peace with that:
Roy Brown Jr., a car designer for Ford Motor whose signature creation, the supposedly futuristic but ultimately ill-fated Edsel, became a synonym for bold, bad ideas not long after it was introduced in 1957, died on Feb. 24 in Michigan. He was 96…
Even as the Edsel, his most notable work, fell far short of sales goals, lost hundreds of millions of dollars, became an enduring punch line and prompted an overseas transfer for its designer, Mr. Brown remained satisfied with it
“I’m proud of the car,” he told The Sun-Sentinel of Florida in 1985. “There is not a bad line on the car.”
Many initial assessments agreed.
“The Edsel will be radically different,” said an article in The New York Times previewing the new model in 1957.
I remember when the Edsel came out, although I was extremely young, and I’ve never been into cars and didn’t understand a bit about the furor and the controversy. But in retrospect it looks kind of snazzy (that’s the also-snazzy Roy Brown Jr., at 81, standing in front of his creation):
And speaking of “enduring punch lines,” there’s this scene in the very entertaining movie “Peggy Sue Got Married.” I can’t find an excerpt that shows only the scene I want, so I cut to it in this full-length version. Kathleen Turner plays a woman who goes back in time to her teenage years in the 50s, and is living with her family again. She looks older, but due to the magic of time-travel, they see her as her appropriately younger self:
RIP.
[NOTE: I clicked on Brown’s obituary because I mistakenly thought it referred to Oscar Brown, Jr., a favorite jazz musician of my youth. It turns out he died in 2005.]
I remember the Edsel well, I was a young man of about 12 when they came out. At that time, my father and uncle had an auto repair business, and thought that the Edsel was an ugly Mercury. I concur.
I have heard that the big problem with the Edsel was that Ford tried to build a 1977 Ford in 1957.
What a beautiful car. My father sold them and he liked them. I wish I had one today.
I know nothing about how good or bad a car it was, but I always thought the name itself, Edsel, spelled doom from the get-go.
And remember the trusty little Studebaker? Don’t think that fusty name was able to withstand the onslaught of “cool” either.
Ann: thanks for reminding me. I’d meant to add that in my post—I think the name was part of the problem. It was like a nerdy Elvis.
Still think it looks like a car sucking on a lemon.
Edsel was Henry Ford’s son. You shouldn’t name a car after a family member unless it’s your daughter Mercedes.
The good old days — when a man didn’t have to ask his wife for permission to buy a car.
One explanation I remember being given at the time was that the grill design evoked the image of female anatomy–not the symbol of masculinity that the male buyers of that era wanted.
Mr Brown still looked fit and trim at 81.
Don’t know if I would have liked the car back then, or not. Do like “Peggy Sue Got Married”.
Jim Nicholas:
Makes me wonder what kind of females those critics were hanging out with. Ones with lady parts like this?
I’ve never seen it as much either way — the car looks like lots of other cars of that era. It has a “cool retro” look now, but it looks like a freaking finned Caddy. Why was this a problem?
}}} I have heard that the big problem with the Edsel was that Ford tried to build a 1977 Ford in 1957.
I dunno what 70s universe YOU were living in, but there weren’t any cars like that in MY 70s universe… 😀
I’m not a car expert, and the Edsel doesn’t look all that different to me from other cars of that era.
I think the name might have been a factor. It sounds like “Ethel” which is not a name you’d associate with a hot stylish car (or woman, for that matter).
Let’s also look at fighter planes. One that was notorious for mediocrity was the Brewster F2A Buffalo.
It was introduced in the late 1930s and was pretty advanced for its time. But when WWII broke out, it was outclassed by the Japanese Zero and got a bad reputation. The Finns did well against the Russians with it, though.
The plane had problems, to be sure. For one thing, there were labor problems at the factory and there was some evidence of actual sabotage by the union workers. (The factory was located only a few miles from where I live now, which is partly why I am interested in it.) Nevertheless, it was a perfectly decent aircraft for its time.
But back to the name. Here are some names of famous fighter aircraft, which I can rattle off without looking them up:
Spitfire
Hurricane
Lightning
Thunderbolt
Mustang
Wildcat
Hellcat
Tigercat
Bearcat
Cougar
Phantom
And… Buffalo.
One of these things is not like the others.
If any of you are ever in Michigan, they do a car show in Ypsilanti called the “Orphan Car Show”. They’re American vehicles either not from the big 3 (Packard, AMC, etc.), or big 3 marques that no longer exist (Edsel, DeSoto, etc.) It’s the first weekend in June each year.
There are a number of Edsels each year, and they always draw the biggest crowds (the one Tucker that shows up is the exception).
Since I grew up in the ’70s, I get to see the Gremlin, Pacer, and Matador again. Good times…
What killed the Edsel, more than even the name, was the placement of Push Buttons in the middle of the steering wheel to control the automatic transmission.
For those unaware: that made it an obvious repair nightmare. Automatic transmissions were still a new thing. So much so that Aamco — the transmission franchise — was born. (Manual transmissions didn’t need ‘experts’ with trick tooling to repair.)
Every other car in the metallic universe ran away from that design feature. Push button transmission controls were moved to the left of the steering wheel of America Motors Ramblers, etc.
But, on the whole, the industry adopted the current lever-shift on the steering shaft that we all know and love for half a century.
There were other ‘complications’ in the dash, too. They all led prospective buyers to think:” I’ll have to have this crate serviced only by the dealership. I’d be lost fixing anything behind that dashboard.”
Today, unrepairable cars are the norm, particularly imports. Toyota et. al. make their real money on the ‘back end’ — all repair parts must come from their kuritsu. (manufacturing cartel)
The name was no help, either.
But, push-buttons galore — did it in. It was deemed a rolling typewriter. (Feminine.)
The original Edsel design actually looked better than what was built. That was because the bean-counters at Ford kept finding ways to wring costs out of the car, and pretty soon, a whole host of compromises had been made, leading to the “Mercury pushing a toilet seat” appearance, as one magazine described it. The emphasis on cost control also hurt build quality, where some advanced features for the day, like the aforementioned push-button transmission, were built on the cheap. That’s never a formula for reliability.
Rickl, a big reason the Finns were able to use the Brewster Buffalo successfully against the Soviets was because the main Red Air Force planes on the northern front were older, obsolescent designs, like the Polikarpov I-16, which had seen its best service in Spain during the civil war. Finnish pilots also tended to be more skilled than their Soviet adversaries, so they held their own even when the Russians fielded better aircraft.
The story behind the Edsel name: Yes, Edsel, was Henry Ford’s late son, a quiet man who was popular around the company, but never seemed to live up to his demanding father’s exceedingly high expectations. Henry was thought by many in Dearborn (and elsewhere in the auto industry) to have been largely responsible for Edsel’s early death, and naming Ford’s new flagship car after him was the Ford company’s way of saying “sorry” and “screw you, Henry”. Unfortunately, Henry got the last laugh on that one.