Final Parking Space: 1958 Edsel Citation 4-Door Hardtop
We’ve looked at a couple of controversial General Motors classics in this series so far (the Chevrolet Corvair and the Pontiac Fiero) but just a single Ford product that stirs up heated debate among enthusiasts (the Mustang II). Today we’re going to restore GM/Ford balance by taking a look at a discarded example of the most polarizing Ford Motor Company product ever built: the Edsel!
The Edsel brand was created after exhaustive market research and consultation with focus groups, with plenty of futuristic statistical analysis and—more significantly—office politics stirring the pot. Sadly, the car itself didn’t get put in front of consumer focus groups before its unveiling.
The general idea was that Dearborn needed a mid-priced brand to squeeze in between aspirational Mercury and wealth-flaunting Lincoln, in order for Ford to better compete with GM and its “Ladder of Success” model (in which a customer would get a Chevrolet as his first car, then climb the rungs of increasingly prestigious Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, and Cadillac as he became more successful).
After much heated debate, the new brand was named after Henry Ford’s eldest son. Edsel Ford was a creative visionary with good business sense who spent his life butting heads with his stubborn old man and died young while fighting to save the company from Henry the First’s obsession with building ever-cheaper Model Ts forever.
As we all know, the Edsel Division flopped hard. After much pre-launch hype before the “E-Day” launch in September of 1957, the seven Edsel models went on sale as 1958 models. The final Edsels were built as 1960 models.
Sales for the ’58s were solid at first, though the radical styling put off some potential buyers. A bigger problem was the fact that Edsel pricing had the new division competing directly against Mercury, whose Montclair and Monterey shared their platform with the Edsel Corsair and Citation. Meanwhile, the cheaper Edsel Ranger’s price tag was uncomfortably similar to that of the Ford Fairlane 500. To make matters worse, the very cheapest 1958 Lincoln was still priced well above the most expensive Edsel.
Then, wouldn’t you know, the Eisenhower Recession hit new-car sales hard in 1958 and 1959. American car shoppers began paying increasingly strong attention to list prices and fuel economy, and the flashy, thirsty Edsels sat on dealership lots while American Motors cashed in with Rambler sales and Volkswagen of America moved more Beetles than ever before. Even Renault prospered here with the Dauphine for a couple of years.
The Edsel Division got merged into Lincoln-Mercury (there was never any such thing as a “Ford Edsel”) while resources were poured into the compact car that became the 1960 Ford Falcon. Robert McNamara, future architect of the Vietnam War, became president of Ford in 1960, and Edsel zealots enthusiasts often cast him as the villain who killed the Edsel in favor of the Falcon.
Who or what really killed Edsel? It’s hard to get angry about the Falcon, which was a stunning sales success in its own right and whose chassis design underpinned everything from the 1964–73 Mustang to the 1980 Granada. The recession? Changing consumer tastes? Communist agents? In any case, I’m glad that I was able to find this first-year Citation to write about.
Look, it even has a Continental kit! I found this car at Colorado Auto & Parts, just south of Denver. It’s got more than 100 Detroit vehicles from the ’40s through the ’70s in its inventory right now, including another 1958 Edsel Citation.
The engine is a 410-cubic-inch MEL V-8, rated at 345 gross horsepower.
The base transmission was a column-shift three-speed manual, but this car has the optional automatic with pushbutton shifter on the steering wheel hub.
The Citation was at the top of the Edsel pyramid for 1958, so most buyers wouldn’t have tolerated a lowly manual transmission in one.
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A yellow Edsel recently sold on the Hagerty site. I have the original bill of sale for that vehicle. Wondering if the new owner would like to have it.
I wonder how many people remember the running joke about the Edsel grill. It was said to look like “a ‘56 Olds that had just sucked a lemon.”
I have also heard “looks like a Mercury pushing a toilet seat”
This particular Citation has been sitting and decaying at that junkyard for decades. Last time I was there it was in the ‘reserved section’ where you had to buy the whole car, not parts. At that time it was much more intact, for example the entire aftermarket continental kit was present. And not sure why, but I desperately wanted the continental kit and they emphatically wouldn’t sell any parts. I have since come to my senses.
If the Hagerty team wants a before/after picture idea I have a fully restored gold 4 dr Citation in the area.
I spent years trying to get into the “reserved” section at CAP, without success. They finally emptied it when they sold that lot, after auctioning off whatever they could. Whatever didn’t sell at auction is now in the regular U-Pull yard.
A major omission in your article was the contribution that disastrously poor quality control in the first year Edsels played in the poor sales later in the model years. Digging through Edsel discussions you can find many discussions of vehicles arriving at the dealer with parts mis-attached, thrown in the trunk, key components missing, trim line mismatches and assembly line mechanical assembly errors. Edsel never really recovered from the post E-Day quality fiascos.
You discuss well the target market pricing errors which reflect the generally poor pre-production planning executed in the rush to get the Edsel line to market.
you paid money..for this?
my daddy had one;
we didn’t make it home from the dealer;
that was six blocks;
he told me get out and walk the last four;
some of the best advice he ever gave me;
can’t recall ever seeing momma that angry before or since;
she REALLY didn’t like the front of it;
she did go and get his money back;
it was real quiet at home the rest of that summer;