And the windshield looks like it comes off a ‘90s dustbuster minivan. 

I felt a great disturbance in the force, as if hundreds of bleached blonde spinsters had cried out in terror. 

Can I opt out of the automatic braking in exchange for a $200 discount on a  new car and a hold harmless waiver? 

Hey man, JNCOs are coming back hard.

Oh, certainly way cheaper. I mean, you can buy any number of new cars in China for well under $10,000. If all you have to do is build a metal box with seats and an engine, without any care at all as to how well it protects the people inside it from crashes, you can do it very cheaply indeed.

They can’t make a cheaper V8, because then people would buy them and Ford would get hit with way more CAFE fines.

My thinking is probably that it would be too close to the GT in performance, and might actually be more expensive to produce than an NA V8.

Someone needs to work out a freighter conversion plan, second hand values only have one direction to go. 

Ford’s in-house marketing department suggested “Edsel” in the first place, but the Ford family wasn’t enthusiastic about it (they didn’t want to risk posthumously tarnishing Edsel Ford’s legacy, in the event the brand failed), so they cast around for employee suggestions and turned to Marianne Moore for additional…

Supposedly, workers at Ford and Mercury assembly plants were resentful at having to assemble cars for Edsel, since Ford’s plants were still operated by the individual divisions instead of corporate, and so half-assed the quality control. Also, there were supply problems with Edsel-specific parts, so when the right…

Edsel’s brakes wouldn’t have been any worse (or really, any better) than other Fords of the time. Maybe a bit better, Edsel had self-adjusting drums as standard, don’t think that was really universal at the time. 

Edsel’s position in the market was really screwy. The original plan was to plug the price gap between the most expensive Ford and the least expensive Mercury (basically, going after Pontiac and Oldsmobile), which the Ford-based “Junior Series” models did (the Ranger and Pacer, plus the Roundup and Villager wagons).…

That was advertised as a safety feature, since it let you keep both hands on the wheel while shifting. Though, why you would really need to shift an automatic enough for that to matter is kind of lost on me. The Teletouch buttons were on a gyroscope and remained stationary, while the wheel rotated around them. 

International bodies do this kind of thing all the time. The same thing happens with the Olympics - at least put them someplace where the host can afford to absorb the massive financial losses than come with it.

I think blaming Edsel’s styling for the failure is over simplifying things, especially considering that 1958 was it’s most successful year, with the more normal looking ‘59 and ‘60 models selling far worse.

There were a lot of issues. You had the senior series models priced above Mercury, but the junior series priced…

The postwar version is more stylish. 

I want to see someone do this to an Austin Maxi. 

I still don’t understand why Mitsubishi and Chrysler had to kill their alliance, if they were any more compatible, they’d be in an eHarmony commercial. 

Yes, that’s definitely one of the major failings. Shouldn’t be impossible to correct, difficult, but not impossible. Just not much political will, some talk though. 

I remember these when they were brand new, yet, in my mind, I struggle to picture one without yellowed headlights, faded paint, and squeaking, creaking suspension. Maybe because they were all like that by about the 4-5 year mark.