They wanted something unique so the first car that featured retro styling from the 30's was the E car.  At a cost of $250,000,000 a new car was created, advertised, researched and began to take form under strict secrecy.  It was to have a vertical grill, high taillights for visibility from behind, rotunda 
speedometer, and the predecure to speed control and last but not least, the Tele-touch transmission which feature electrical shifting with the selector buttons in the center of the steering wheel  The latter would light up and a light on the dash a monitoring light when the car exceeded a set speed in green yellow and red.

The E car had a contest to come up with a name.  These names were as follows; ALTER, MONGOOSE, UTOPIAN, MONGOOSE, TURTLE TOP, ABBY, AGEAN, ZEBRA, CITATION, CORSAIR, COUGAR, PACER, RANGER AND SOME TWO HUNDRED MORE NAMES.  Finally out of frustration and keeping with the name E car the general manager of Ford shouted Edsel after Edsel Ford, the designer of the Continental and brought Ford back from bankruptcy in the late 40's. Also in the final names were Citation; Corsair; Pacer; and Ranger.  They were to be the four series of the make. Wagons were to be in a category of their own.

There were to be 15 models in the 4 series for 58.  3 in the wagons. Bermuda in 6 & 9 pax; the Villager in 6 & 9 pax and the Roundup; in 6 pax. The 59's had only 2 series plus the wagons. the 60's only 1 series plus the wagon. Ford had also developed a compact for 1960 but was canceled on 
November 19th, 1959 when all Edsel production stopped. The Edsel compact that was named the 
Edsel Comet had the Letters E-D-S-E-L removed. Parts for the first two years of Comet production had Edsel part numbers and no where on those cars did Mercury appear. The production figures were 
1958- 70,863 plus 8000 in Canada; 1959- 44,758; 1960- 2846.

  On September 4th, 1957 (model year 1958), the Edsel was introduced to the public among a very large hoopla.  The showrooms were flooded with people but no one seemed to buy. There were many reasons for the failure over the three years of production. 
1 Robert Mc Namara who had canceled the Edsel before Production even began.
2 A deep recession of 1958/59.
3 The styling of the front end and the perpendicular grille.
4 The famous tele-touch transmission that sold the cars originally was so prone to malfunctions it has a large part in killing sales later.
5 Labor problems within the production line being assigned more cars on the Mercury and Ford production lines.
6 All the hoopla didn't match the car.

Today, there is only some 1700 operational Edsels on the road in the US..

Steve Johnson