This Is The Edsel The Most Beautiful Thing That Ever Happened To Horsepower! - Classic Cars On The Banks of Sibley Lake - Natchitoches

Most automobile buffs know that the Ford Edsel was one of the biggest flops in the history of the horseless carriage. There are many reasons why cars like the Edsel fail to capture the hearts of the American public but in the case of this relic from the late 50s it came down to one simple fact, the car was ugly. 

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Well, maybe ugly was a bit strong but in a time when cars were starting to look a little more sporty the Edsel was a bit of a dinosaur with a huge front grill.

The Edsel was named after Henry Ford’s son, no small honor, and it had its own division of the company devoted to its creation. As TIME reported in 1957 when the car debuted, the company had spent 10 years and $250 million on planning one of its first brand-new cars in decades.

As it turned out, the Edsel was a classic case of the wrong car for the wrong market at the wrong time. It was also a prime example of the limitations of market research, with its “depth interviews” and “motivational” mumbo-jumbo. On the research, Ford had an airtight case for a new medium-priced car to compete with Chrysler’s Dodge and DeSoto, General Motors’ Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick. Studies showed that by 1965 half of all U.S. families would be in the $5,000-and-up bracket, would be buying more cars in the medium-priced field, which already had 60% of the market. Edsel could sell up to 400,000 cars a year.

The flaw in all the research was that by 1957, when Edsel appeared, the bloom was gone from the medium-priced field, and a new boom was starting in the compact field, an area the Edsel research had overlooked completely. - Source

That being said, imagine my surprise when I found an Edsel sitting alongside another classic car just outside what appeared to be a closed bar / restaurant on the shores of Sibley Lake outside Louisiana. Both cars seemed to be in fair shape but in definite need of some repairs and TLC. I can see some collector scooping these two up and taking the time to restore them to their past glory. For now they sit, possibly abandoned, waiting for the right car enthusiast to take the time to get them back out on the open road.   

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