Why was the edsel a lemon

To Read the Full Story. Subscribe Sign In. Continue reading your article with a WSJ membership. Resume Subscription We are delighted that you'd like to resume your subscription. Please click confirm to resume now. At least 6, potential names for the new car were bandied about, with four favorites: Citation, Corsair, Ranger and Pacer.

Pacer was an American Motors Corp. So was Warnock, who vehemently fought it. Breech, a former General Motors executive, made the final choice when the Ford brothers were away. Warnock predicted the name would cost , sales; he proved to be several million short. Edsel made its showroom debut Sept. Within weeks, there were signs of doom. Death came quickly in automotive annals, on Nov.

The projection of sales a day from 1, dealerships was far too high; actual sales were down to , when Ford dropped the curtain. A total of , Edsels were produced. A variety of reasons for failure were easily apparent. Timing was a key factor. But by late , that market segment was in the beginning of a severe slump that beset all auto sales in That is the poorest of the post World War II years. GM, in , had a second-quarter per-share profit equal to that in all of The Edsel was just another sedan on the basic Ford chassis.

Well, maybe not just another sedan. The classic barfly standard that everyone is good looking at closing time isn't true in this case. The Edsel was butt-ugly, period. A half century later, it's still butt-ugly. Almost immediately after E-day, the superhype that had generated so much anticipation boomeranged on Ford. In the annals of automobile history there are few sagas so fraught with failure as the Edsel. In the s, the closest that Ford came to a medium-priced car was its Mercury.

Problem was, when it came time for Ford owners to upgrade, they sidestepped the Mercury and hopped up to a GM car like an Oldsmobile, Pontiac or Buick, and to a lesser extent a Chrysler product. This ultimately involved training schools for sales and service personnel — even the most experienced journeymen found themselves required to participate and learn how Ford wanted their new line sold and serviced. First issue of the Edsel "Service Beacon" provided to service departments to keep them updated on product issues and how to deal with them.

The following are some examples of what was produced, and demonstrates how extensive the project really was.