Father and Son
The 1940 Lincoln Continental is widely regarded as the most elegant automobile ever produced. Architect Frank Lloyd Wright considered it “the most beautiful car in the world” and he bought two of them. The long low hood, sweeping fenders, and rearward cabin were pioneering features that would become staples in the automotive industry for decades.
The Ford Motor Company purchased the Lincoln Motor Company in 1922, looking to increase their footprint in the luxury automobile market. While Model Ts were still the best-selling car in the world, Ford had little market share in higher end segments. Henry Ford had set out to make the most popular can in the world, and he succeeded. His son Edsel, wanted to make the best car in the world, and for that, he needed Lincoln.
Edsel’s product influence would not just be limited to Lincoln, however. Later Model Ts began to see curved surface, smoother lines, and most notably colors other than black. The Model A, introduced in 1927, was Edsel’s in color, style, and trim. It was Edsel who added hydraulic brakes to Ford cars and instigated the design of a six-cylinder engine. He pioneered safety glass in 1926 which became standard in all Fords. It was Edsel who recognized the untapped medium-priced market and launched the Mercury division in 1938.
Tragically Henry Ford would lose his only child, Edsel, to stomach cancer at the age of 49. Henry ordered all of the Ford Motor Company shut down to observe a moment of respectful silence the day his son was lain to rest.
Without Edsel to lead the Lincoln division, the brand began to drift sideways. By the mid 50s Lincolns were no longer seen as “the best cars in the world”, but as just another id range offering. Fords own research came to this conclusion. Their data suggested that rather than competing with Cadillac, Lincoln was competing against Oldsmobile, Buick, and DeSoto.
Ford executives quickly hatched a plan to aggressively market Lincoln and move the line upmarket to again compete with the likes of Cadillac. Moving the brand upmarket would also leave a hole in the mid-market segment that needed to be filled. To fill the void left by Lincoln, Ford hatched a plan to introduce a completely new line of vehicles. What better moniker to give that new division, than the man who first identified the segment. Edsel.
The project began in complete secrecy. Known internally as simply, project E. Ford invested over 10 years and $250,000,000 planning, researching and developing what would be its first brand new car in decades.
Ford ran studies to ensure the car had precisely the right “personality”. Research showed that Mercury buyers were young and hot rod inclined. Pontiac, Buick, and Oldsmobile appealed to middle aged people. The Edsel was meant to strike a happy medium. As one researched said, “the smart car for the young executive or professional family moving up”.
Every aspect of the car was carefully considered and researched from the engineering to the marketing. A 60-page manual was drafted just to detail the procedural steps involved with selecting an advertising agency. No stone was left unturned.
The researchers, marketers, engineers, and executives of Ford had done such exhaustive research on the middle market segment that they knew they had an absolute hit on their hands. Initial sales projections put the Edsel above any other car of the segment by a wide margin.
The initial launch day was dubbed E-Day, and the turnout was a wild success. Eager customers lined up at dealerships across the country to get glimpse of the new car. The initial weeks of sales were on par with projections. Then the wheels fell off. Sales nosedived and continued falling. Just three years after going on sale, the Edsel division was closed, after selling just 116,000 cars – one quarter of its first-year sales projection.
When the dust settled, the failure of Edsel was blamed on many things. A design that had been too common to stand out, yet to strange to be liked. Poor quality. Too many similarities to their Ford cousins. Overuse of chrome. The weird vertical grille. The list can go on. None of those however are the real culprit. Ford had done exhaustive amounts of research. The cars were exactly what mid-market car buyers wanted.
Ford knew everything there was to know about the mid-market car buyer. They had researched exhaustively what mid-market buyers liked. What they didn’t like. What they wanted. What they needed. They knew it all. They zeroed in so hard on defining the mid-market car buyer that they completely missed something else. The mid-market itself was drying up.
The US was entering an economic slump in the late 1950’s, and with that slump, went the mid and luxury car markets. They Edsel may have been the best mid-market car on the market, but it didn’t matter. The market was gone.
The story of Edsel should sound familiar. We have all done something similar. It is just another of our many human shortcomings. We get so focused on the singular problem, that we completely miss the oncoming storm.