The Edsel

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• The Edsel's birth began in 1948 with Henry Ford II's direction to his Forward Product Planning Committee to begin research for production of a new medium priced car.
  
  
• The 25th Million Ford V-8 was produced as an Edsel E-475.
  
  
• Full scale production of the Edsel began in July 1957, Ford announced it would discontinue the Edsel in November 1959.
  
  
• "The Edsel Show", a 60 minute TV special was aired by CBS in October 1957 in place of the ever popular "Ed Sullivan Show", featuring such notables as Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, and Rosemary Clooney.
  
  
• September 4th is known to Edsel Fans as "E-Day", the official release date of the Edsel in 1957.

• Before the name Edsel was chosen, it was know simply as the "E" car

  
  
• Some names that were suggested for the "E" car in 1955 were: "Resilient Bullet", "Ford Silver Sword", "Mongoose Civique", "Varsity Stroke", "Pastelogram", "Andante con Moto", and "Utopian Turtletop"
  
  
• After considering almost 6,000 names, in the end the car was named after Edsel Ford, Henry Ford's only son.

"Back around 1995, sometime in September I'd say, maybe early October, I had the machine all washed and shined (this was before its PO-applied paint began to oxidize more rapidly than I could keep up with) and parked in the driveway to play with the power steering valve.

"It was about 2:30 on a nice sunny day. I had my head and shoulders under the car, just behind the front wheel, and I was messing around with the valve when my buddy (helping by watching) casually said, "Hey, you better get out of there. You're on fire." Of course that statement makes no sense when nobody is smoking, there's no ignition source in the area, no gas trickling out of anything.. so I thought he was making some kind of joke. I worked on for a few seconds, and he said, "I'm not joking! You're about to go up in smoke!" At that point I decided I'd better find out what was going on out there.. and simultaneously I felt a hot spot burning into my belly!

"I crawled out from under the car and looked down to see my T-shirt smoking, a small hole burned through it. What? We surveyed the scene.. and there it was: the 2:30 sun was focused by the shiny '58 wheelcover, the concave center making a perfect burn-spot at the point where I'd been lying near it!

"Spontaneous Edsel Human Combustion! If I'd had gas on my shirt, and nobody around to warn me, nobody could guess what hit me. Up in flames!

"After we picked ourselves up from laughing, we resolved to keep this a secret in case we needed to make a big insurance score one day.. we'd park the Edsel next to his Honda on a bed of dry leaves at 2:30, walk away, and claim the fire insurance later. Now it can be told, for the Edsel is gone and my buddy's new Honda was totaled by some girl anyway.

"This spring I happened to tell the story to a German buddy at my university. Naturally he refused to believe it, but as it happens I saved the best wheelcover when I sold the car. A bit after noon I retrieved it from my wall, shined the center, and lit his cigarette at a point about a foot in front of the dish. When the sun was free of cloud cover, in March, the cigarette was burning within 5 seconds. Edsel power!

"Now whenever I go camping or flying I take the wheelcover along in case a "survival situation" should develop. Anybody could start fires with survival matches or two sticks, but if I ever have to save myself in the wilderness, walk out, and become famous, my story would totally reverse the Edsel car image!"