Title: Edsel | Autopedia | Fandom
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History
Background
Launch
End
Edsel and its failures
"The aim was right, but the target moved"
The wrong car at the wrong time
Edsel, a difficult name to place
Too big when small was in
Design controversies
The role of Robert McNamara
The Edsel Comet
Popular culture
See also
References
See Also
Ford Motor Company
External links

Content: The wrong car at the wrong time
One of the external forces working against the Edsel that Ford had no control over was the onset of the recession in late 1957. When the Edsel was in its planning stages in the early and mid 1950s, the American economy was robust and growing. However in the years that spanned the planning to its introduction an economic recession hit, and American consumers not only shifted their idea of what an ideal car should be; in prior economic downturns, buyers flocked to the lower price marques like Plymouth, Chevrolet and Ford. But in 1958 even these cars were perceived by some as unnecessarily large and while the compact Rambler saw itself shoot to the third best selling make, none of the Big Three had anything compact to sell except their European cars built for Vauxhall, Simca, and Opel. The compacts introduced by the Big-Three in 1960 were the direct result of the Recession of 1958. Compounding Edsel's problems was that the car had to appeal to buyers of other well established nameplates from the Big Three such as Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Dodge, DeSoto and even its internal sister division Mercury, itself never a stellar sales success. Even if the 1958 recession hadn't hit when it did, t