Fifty Years Ago - The Edsel

I caught this in today's Washington Post. Not sure I have ever seen an Edsel but have heard about them all my life. I got to admit that I did not have time enough today to read it all but I regret that work must come first. The article is a hoot:

...Instantly, a gazillion hours of expensive and absurd motivational research went up in smoke.

Why did Breech want to name the car Edsel?

"He was brown-nosing Mr. Ford," says C. Gayle Warnock, now 91, who was the Edsel's public relations director. Warnock is also the author of the 1980 book "The Edsel Affair" and a forthcoming sequel, "The Rest of the Edsel Affair."

And it does have an Indiana connection:

When Warnock heard about Breech's decision, he banged out a one-sentence memo to Krafve: "We have just lost 200,000 sales."

"I knew nobody would like that name," he explains on the phone from his home in Sweetser, Ind. "When they did interviews [about names] and asked about Edsel, people always said, 'Did you say pretzel?' "

The Flop Heard Round the World That Name. That Grille. Ford Had High Expectations, but When the Edsel Debuted in 1957, It Became America's Most-Hyped Failure.