Thus, it is clear that one of the major reasons why the Edsel failed to sell or become as popular as Ford had anticipated was because it was really nothing new as compared to the dozens of models offered by Ford's competitors, such as GM and Desoto. In essence, the people in charge of sales at Ford did not have the foresight to understand that the American consumer had changed after the war years.
In his excellent study on the Edsel, Rob Daines provides several reasons which supports the idea that the Ford executives responsible for sales did not know what they were doing in relation to selling the Edsel to the American public. First of all, "the market for medium-sized cars" which stood at about 40% when the Edsel was introduced, "had dropped to 25% by 1957 because of the inroads made by imports and smaller American cars," such as the Rambler. Second, "the dealer network was unsatisfactory, for only 118 dealers had exclusive franchises for the Edsel, while the rest sold Edsels along with Mercury and Desoto models." Thus, in the minds of the dealers and with sales hard to find for the Edsel, "they were naturally more likely to push the well-known brand rather than a newcomer," meaning that the dealers already had a large consumer base for GM products and thought it was a waste of time to truly attempt to sell the Edsel models (134).
Also, the issue of quality control was poor, due to Edsel production at the Detroit factories being "squeezed into the end of each hour of Ford output," an indication that the Edsel product was somewhat of a rush job which resulted in mechanical problems. Obviously, this problem could have been partially solved if Ford had built separate manufacturing facilities especially designed for the Edsel. "There were no plants set up to produce the Edsel, so the Edsel division had to rely on Ford and Mercury employees" to build the...
Thus, "by squeezing in Edsels on the Ford and Mercury assembly lines," this proved to be disastrous "from a quality control perspective because many Ford and Mercury employees resented having to build another division's vehicles" (Ervin, Internet).
In addition, dealers and buyers quickly began to see the Edsel as being of inferior quality as compared to Fords and Mercury products, due in part to the rushed production on the assembly line. As a result, the Edsel model often showed up at dealerships with missing parts and brakes that were non-functional which only created "a reputation for mechanical problems." For example, the factories "occasionally ran out of parts and occasionally put the wrong parts on" and at times, cars would show up at the dealerships that were not completely put together" (Ervin, Internet).
Obviously, those that were in charge of marketing the Edsel to the general public lacked the foresight to see into the future. It seems that it would have been much better to design and build only one or two models of the Edsel instead of thirteen. Also, the $400,000,000 that Ford spent on designing, building and marketing the Edsel could have been better spent through intensive marketing research and by hiring young executives with innovative ideas about the future of the automobile industry.
Bibliography
Daines, Rob. Edsel: The Motor Industry's Titanic. Los Angeles: Yesteryear Books, 1994.
Edsel." Search.com. 2007. Internet. Retrieved at http://www.search.com/reference/
Edsel.
Ervin, Kathleen a. "Auto Biography: Failure Examines the History of the Edsel."
Failure Magazine. 2005. Internet. Retrieved at http://www.failuremag.com / arch_history_edsel.html.
