Editing Edsel (section)

==History==

===Background (1956–1957)===
Ford Motor Company became a [[public company|publicly traded corporation]] on January 17, 1956,<ref>{{cite news| url= http://www.autonews.com/article/20030616/SUB/306160730/henry-ford-never-wanted-his-company-to-go-public| title= Henry Ford never wanted his company to go public| first= Jim| last= Henry | website= autonews.com| date= 16 June 2003 | access-date= 30 August 2015}}</ref> and thus was no longer entirely owned by members of the [[Ford family]].  The company was now able to sell cars according to current market trends following the seller's market of the postwar years.<ref name="Warnock 1980"/> Ford's new management compared the company's roster of makes with that of [[General Motors Corporation|General Motors]] and [[Chrysler]],<ref name="Warnock 1980"/> and concluded that [[Lincoln (automobile)|Lincoln]] was competing not with [[Cadillac (automobile)|Cadillac]], but with [[Oldsmobile]], [[Buick]], and [[DeSoto (automobile)|DeSoto]].<ref name="Warnock 1980"/> Ford developed a plan to move Lincoln upmarket, with the [[Lincoln Motor Company#Continental Division (1956–1959)|Continental]] broken out as a separate make at the top of Ford's product line, and to add premium/intermediate vehicles to the intermediate slot vacated by Lincoln.<ref name="Warnock 1980"/>

Ford explained in 1958 that "The Edsel is new but it's actually the germination of an idea conceived by Edsel Ford who thought years ago that the company should have greater representation in the medium-price range. This idea was furthered by his son, Henry Ford II, in 1948 when another car was proposed to keep abreast of things in the automotive market."<ref>Blume, N.L. "Engineering the Edsel". ''SAE Transactions'' Vol. 66 (1958), 557.</ref>

Marketing research and development for the new intermediate line had begun in 1955 under the [[code name]] "E car",<ref name="Warnock 1980"/> which stood for "experimental car." Ford Motor Company eventually decided on the name "Edsel", in honor of [[Edsel Ford]], son of the company's founder, [[Henry Ford]] despite objections from Edsel's son [[Henry Ford II]].<ref name="Warnock 1980">{{cite book|last=Warnock|first=C. Gayle|title=The Edsel Affair|url=https://archive.org/details/edselaffairw00warn|url-access=registration|year=1980|publisher=Pro West}}</ref> The proposed vehicle marque represented the start-up of a new division of the firm, alongside that of Ford itself and the [[Lincoln (automobile)|Lincoln]]–[[Mercury (automobile)|Mercury]] division, whose cars at the time shared the same bodies.

Ford later claimed to have performed more than adequate, if not superior, product development and market research work in the planning and design of the new vehicle. Ford assured its investors, and the Detroit automotive press, that Edsels were not only superior products, as compared to their Oldsmobile/Buick/DeSoto competition, but the details of their styling and specifications were the result of a sophisticated market analysis and research and development effort, that would essentially guarantee their broad acceptance by the buying public when the cars were introduced.

{{quote box|align=right|width=16em|<poem>Its elegance,
its engines,
its exciting new features,
make other cars
seem ordinary</poem>|salign=right|— Edsel advertisement, 1957<ref name="life19571111">{{cite magazine | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tVYEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA90 | title=This is the Edsel (advertisement) | magazine=Life | date=1957-11-11 | access-date=February 22, 2013 | pages=90–91}}</ref>}}

In November 1956, the Edsel Division of Ford Motor Company was formed to establish a retail organization and dealer network, alongside Ford and Lincoln–Mercury. The Continental Division had ceased to exist several months earlier. With a network of 1,187 Edsel dealers, Ford Motor Company now had approximately 10,000 dealerships between its three divisions, bringing it closer in line with Chrysler, with 10,000 dealers across five brands, and General Motors, with 16,000 across six brands.

===E Day introduction===
Edsels were introduced amid considerable publicity on "E Day"—September 4, 1957. They were promoted by a top-rated television special, ''[[The Edsel Show]]'', on October 13, but the promotional effort was not enough to counter the adverse initial public reaction to the Edsel's styling and unconventional build.

After the launch date, Edsel was described as a "reborn [[LaSalle (automobile)|LaSalle]]", a General Motors brand that had disappeared in 1940.<ref>{{cite news| url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1957/09/05/121029879.pdf | work=[[The New York Times]] | title=Slowest Market of Year Declines; 1,260,000 Shares Traded—Average Drops 2.68 Points to 313.73 OILS, MOTORS RETREAT Steels, Metals, and {{sic|nolink=y|Aircrafts}} Also Weak—Coal Issues Are Under Pressure Experts Bemused Oils Beat Retreat | date=1957-09-05}}</ref> For months, Ford had been telling the industry press that it "knew", through its market research, that there would be great demand for the vehicles. Ford insisted that, in the Edsels, it had built exactly the "entirely new kind of car" that Ford had been leading the buying public to expect through its pre-introduction publicity campaign for the cars. In reality, Edsels shared their engineering and bodywork with other Ford models, and the similarities were apparent once the vehicles were viewed firsthand.