Doomed to Fail - Ep 27: Cruising through History: The Rise and Fall of the Edsel

Episode Date: July 3, 2023

This week we’re trying something NEW! Instead of one super long episode, we are giving you TWO episodes - one released Monday and the other released on Wednesday! Let us know what you think!We start off with Taylor telling the story of The Ford Edsel and all the terrific marketing and business mistakes that were made for this staggering loss for Ford. Firstly though, a plea to stop quoting Henry Ford for business things - we discuss that there is no ‘Great Man’ and nobody is perfect. However, we feel super comfortable drawing our first line at ‘if Hitler had a portrait of you hanging in his office and called you his ‘inspiration,’ we can do better’ (all that’s true). Here’s an inspirational quote for you >> “I got my start by giving myself a start.” - Madame C. J. Walker https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/ https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpodSome sources:Peace Ship - WikipediaCarl Benz - WikipediaThe Short-Lived and Expensive Tale of Ford's EdselHenry Ford and the Jews, the story Dearborn didn’t want told | Bridge MichiganBusiness Adventures Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortonthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. And we're recording. Okay. So I'll start by making the intro and then segue into what we're doing different. Okay. Welcome to Doom to Fail, the podcast where we explore two stories, one historic, one,

true crime about red flaggy relationships that should have ended and did not i'm for's joined here by taylor hi taylor hello how are you i'm good i'm sweaty like i said i literally just got home from yoga and i am gross but i needed to record this because it's getting late here i know i'm sweaty too we just drove home from las vegas to joshwood tree and shit it's hot it's like so hot right with the desert it's like you can't even get the car not hot and then the house has to get cool down and so yeah it's like it's consistently a hundred degrees like every day in austin now that's terrible it's awful it's awful it's been like a particularly bad week because luna hurt herself really badly she basically ripped one of her nails on her toe completely off

if you know anything about dogs dogs have a quick yeah luna's a dog and the quick and the quick and the nails of a dog is just full of like nerve endings and the blood vessels. She was she was just bleeding all over the house. Oh, poor baby. And because of that, you know, the activity we usually do is she go swimming in the pool because it's hot. It's too hot for her to be walking outside, right? But I can't have her in the pool because she'll get an infection. So yeah, so she's, she's not having a good time, but we'll get through it. Yeah, it'll work out. So do you want to share the exciting news? Um, which, which one? Email.

Oh, okay. All right, fine, fine. Okay, so we're going to tee things up here. But one thing that's going to be different that is worth calling out is we've decided on changing up the production schedule. So going forward, instead of both Taylor and I telling our stories at one episode released at once, one of us will tell our story. We'll release that on our regular schedule time on Monday. The other one will tell the story and we'll release that at the regular schedule time on Wednesday or Thursday.

I think it could be fun just because then you can you don't have to fast forward if you don't want to listen to one or the other you can choose then we can like re-release them a little bit shorter one story you can without having to try to find it in episode we're going to give it a shot there you go we'll see how people react to it awesome uh taylor is today my turn no it's mine you're going first okay yeah so i'll tell you what i'm drinking so i am it has nothing to do with anything i feel like i'm at this age where i got start being healthier. And so I'm drinking central market kombucha, macho lime, because it's good for your gut health. I don't, I feel like that's so, we could say that such a blanket thing to be like, it's good for your gut. It makes absolutely no sense. But fine. Also, I've been drinking kombucha mixed with vodka and you can't even taste the vodka. So it's not great, but it's good. So you're doing it for health reasons too, then. Yep, for my gut and my liver to make sure they're both working really hard. Bouncing each other out. Yeah, always, as always.

In real life, I'm drinking a Pacific Coke, because like I said, it's hot. I only had two beers. I'm drinking this one. Oh, God. And then, um, Anad Coke. But my drink that pertains to my story today of something that was doomed to fail is motor oil. I don't even know really what motor oil is, like oil that you put in your car.

I don't know what it does. I think that's basically it, yeah. And you know what it reminded of me of? Do you remember, like, 10 years ago when we Googled how to cut someone's brake lines and we found out that it wasn't as easy? as in movies make it sound yeah these manufacturers are getting really crafty with where they put their brake lines in the cars like can we just cut someone's break lines and the answer is not really so oh well now we know now we know now you don't have to google it so you're not in trouble

everyone else okay cool so i'm going to jump in i i'm going to get to my story in like five minutes but i have a preamble to my story preamble away here's how i got here so it's july it is not women's history month, but when it is women's history month, I always get mad at people for quoting Coco Chanel because she was a Nazi. I don't get mad at people. I just like tell them. I'm like, hey, it'd be cool if you didn't quote her because like, yes, she like did some business things, but also she bet on the Nazis. What do people quote her for? She has something like, I don't know, she has like business things like women say and like she's like a powerful, I don't even, I don't have an example. That's like I should have had one, but I don't. Yeah, but she could be a good

business person people can admire her for that and also think that she's a piece of shit for being a nazi yeah but you cannot quote her anymore because we have other people you can quote but you don't have to like anyone else let me continue my story first sorry i got to call you i don't think it i whatever no uh-uh no this is my whole point of this is like you can't i'm going to say in some cases you can't pick and choose like who you admire you know like we're going to tear down confederate general statues because they lost and they were shitty people. You know what I mean? But so Coco Chanel was a Nazi. Like that's full stop. So we can be like she was a good business woman, but also like, who cares? There's other business women. I actually do have a quote. I'll find it. I did this at in,

I did this recently. M.C. Walker is a woman who was a business woman. She was the first person in her family born out of slavery. She was a black woman. And she has quotes like, don't sit down and we have for opportunities get up and make them she was the first self-made women millionaire in american history and she got there by selling women's hair products to black women that is someone who i want to hear from okay i i can tell you feel passionately about this i'm not going to debate it there's just no reason to do it anymore like we don't need to hear from nazis anymore here's why here's my point of this you know else is a nazi henry ford yeah i heard i heard he does did have some sentiments that were so i am tired of seeing white men quote henry ford it happens a lot

like around and i whenever see it i just like want to throw up because i'm like he is a bad person and his quotes are not even that great like whether you think you can or can't you're right who cares that's stupid and so i'm going to tell you about henry ford first i know this is like okay so it's heavy and whatever you might disagree with me we don't have time to go talk about this forever but you know I've been reading a lot about presidents and first ladies and things like that. And like in the beginning, you know, they were, they had, they were enslavers. They did bad things. And so you have to stop and think about people as like there is no great, we can't look at

this person. You can't look at Washington and be like, he's a great man because Washington did things that were really bad and he did things that were good. So we can like try to figure out how we're going to, we have to decide for ourselves how we want to read that and how we want to look at that and how we're going to look at him. I read a really good, a couple of really good books about this that I can totally recommend how the word has passed is a really good one. It's a reckoning about slavery across America by Clint Smith.

We go to Thomas Jefferson's house. There's people there who don't know that Thomas Jefferson was like a huge slave owner. So you have to like have those things in your mind when you're thinking about them. Also like I know that you can't say that slavery was something that everybody did when the founding fathers were around. And I know that because John Adams doesn't have slaves. But I also know that John Adams laughed at his wife when she asked him to talk, think about women. when he was writing the Constitution. So nobody's perfect, except Abraham Lincoln.

This is like, this is two sentences that could be a book. But Abraham Lincoln initially thought that maybe once black people were freed, they would want to like go somewhere else and have their own country. So he like suggested it to a bunch of people, including Frederick Douglass. He's like, what if we sent you all to like South America? And they were like, no, we want to stay here. And he was like, oh, he changes mine. Because Abraham Lincoln is a very smart man.

I don't even know where I am in my notes. Anyway, but there's no great man. There's no perfect man. And one person who was absolutely not perfect as Henry Ford, he's the Elon Musk of his generation. And this is why, because he did a couple good things. He raised wage. Can I interject on that? Yeah. Can you explain to me why we now, not we, the progressive perspective on Elon Musk is that he's a bad person?

Because he single-handedly created green energy as a concept and popularized it to the point where the federal government has passed mandates trying to get the entire. country off fossil fuels and GM has I mean everybody's trying to catch up to Tesla because Tesla just like literally invented the market and I know he didn't invent the technology yeah I know he didn't invent the technology but it's it's like what we learned coming up in tech which is like the idea really doesn't matter it's the execution that matters and he execute on it yeah but now he turned Twitter into a right wing cesspool where people are allowed to be very very very racist and very very very sexist and very very very like anti-lgpt people like it's bad over there so i don't really i don't really i don't really i don't really i'm not i actually don't even have to put on my phone i don't

really check it at all he turned into a really really really bad place because he has like really bad ideas about humanity it's wild to me it's so wild to me because it's like it's like he literally just we will come off of fossil fuels and reduce the impact on climate change literally off the back of his contribution to society and now he's like a right wing hero. I don't, I don't understand it. I don't get it. But go ahead. I think single-handedly is super not true.

He just happens to have a lot of white man confidence. Okay. We'll agree with me. Okay. Well, Elon Musk is a bad person and so is Henry Ford. Like, Henry Ford did not invent the car. That was Carl Benz. He did not invent the assembly line.

That was ransom e-olds. So yeah, like you're saying, like he executed on things other people invented. great but so he also did something really dumb in 1915 he bought a boat and called it the peace ship and tried to sail to europe with a bunch of journalists and and solve world war one and they were like no you're stupid and it was like that was like the celebrity singing imagined during covid essentially people were like embarrassed for him so right now anti-semitism in america is the highest it's been in decades according to the anti-defamation league So it's like very true that it's like a big problem right now.

Henry Ford wrote a book called The International Jew, which is a four-volume set of anti-Semitic books that he published through his newspaper, Born Independent. He, his book, you can still buy on Amazon and white supremacists quote it all the time and fucking love it. Like, they love it. Eventually, he was sued by Jewish groups around the country and he had to shut down the paper in the late 1920s. And he apologized by saying that he didn't know that that was happening in his newspaper. I'm literally looking at a copy of the newspaper that says the Ford International Weekly, the Dearborn Independent, the International Jew, colon, the world's problem. So like, don't tell me you didn't know. Like, that's true.

You do. In 1931, two years before he became Chancellor of Germany, Hitler was interviewed in a magazine in Detroit. and the reporter went to his Munich office and over Hitler's desk, he had a large portrait of Ford and said, I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration. That's not good. So I just want to like, so let's just like not quote him anymore. Because like once Hitler loves you, I don't think we should listen to your voice anymore.

Like, yes, you did things that were great. Yes, I'm glad you have a car. We have a Ford. I'm not mad at my art truck, but like, as a man, I don't think I'm done with it. I don't want to hear it anymore. I mean, the Candidies were also heavily into eugenics. Everyone's awful, but this one is particularly awful. And, like, I regard Henry Ford is my inspiration, quote, Adolf Hiller.

I will say the trucks are nice. The trucks are really good. That's very nice. I'm not mad at the truck, but I am, I am like, annoyed with the people. So I'm just going to make, that's my, that's my preamble to this. Sweet. So are we talking about Henry Ford today? No. We're talking about the biggest failure in car design history, the Edsel. Have you heard of the Edsel? Oh, really? So I have heard of Edsel. So whenever I got separated, so I had no home to live in, in L.A., there was a building I almost like rented in downtown. And it was the original HQ for the Etzel, like they're building. And they converted it.

to apartments. That can't be true because it's from Michigan. Okay, then I made that up. Hold on. What was that building? The Edsel Club. No, that's a club of Edsel's. Wait, gas company lofts. Is that what it was?

I don't know. I don't think it was Edsel. Okay. If I'm wrong, I'm going to edit this out, and nobody's ever going to know I was wrong. Okay. But I have heard of the Edsel. It was Edsel, Oldsmobile, Buick.

that was kind of the Ford, obviously. Right. Ford is made by Ford. Really? Yes. Packard. It was the Packard. Okay, okay. Fine.

That I give you. That's fine. In this book that I have, this is from a book called Business Adventures that I got during my, during my time in business school. It was originally published in 1959. And they do say, this is a quote from this book, there may be an Aboriginal somewhere in a remote rainforest who hasn't yet heard that things fail to turn out that.

way like good for the edsel so he's like everybody knows the edsel's bad it didn't work out um so here's what happened there's some red flags that'll call it right now about the production of this car there's the timing the relying on market research the name obviously the name edsel doesn't mean anything the way the car looked some specific things about it um the crappy make of the car wasn't always like put together all the way um and several really weird attempts to market it. So picture it. We're in 1955. We're in Detroit. We're in Michigan. Things are booming. People are starting to make money post-war. And people are starting to be like, I'm going to level up for my starter car. So Ford had a really great starter car, but people were leaving Ford to get a different

kind of car, like an Oldsmobile, a Buick, a Pontiac. Like that was more of like the next level up once you started like to make money. They weren't going to another Ford model. So Ford wanted to capture that market. The people who are involved, or Henry Ford the second. He's the grandson of Henry Ford. His father used to be, he's a president of Ford. His father used to be president, and his father's name is Edsel Ford. So Edsel Ford is Henry Ford's son.

There's the chairman of the board, Ernest Breach. There's the designer named Roy Brown. There's the head of the Edsel Division, Richard Craffey. And there's also Robert McNamara. He works there during this time. Wait, is this a model of a car or is this like a brand? Like a Honda. It's a brand.

Okay, okay. Well, it's a line. There's a couple. I'll tell you the differences between them. It's a line of cars. Okay. So Robert McNamara also works there. Do you know who he is?

He was Secretary of State or Secretary of something? Defense. Defense. Yeah. During Vietnam and for Kennedy in the Cold War and Cuban Missile Park crisis. So he becomes president of Ford in like 1959 and then does that for a little bit and then goes to work in D.C.

So he just like captaincy around. They decide things to make a mid-level car. They call it the E-4 Experimental, which doesn't sound terrible. It sounds kind of cool in E-E car. It's very, very secretive. It's like Charlie and the chocolate factory in there. Like the locks and the doors are changed every day.

You don't know anyone who's working on it. Like it's very, very hush-hush. They are like, we're going to make the best car in the history of the world. We can't let anybody know. So they're just like building up this hype even before it even happened. Makes sense. They do a ton of market research and like a little bit too much. It's like a cautionary tale in market research.

because they ask people, you know, I mean, and maybe also they do with a lot now and they just didn't, hadn't done it yet, but they're like, how does it make you feel? Like, how does this word make you feel? How does looking at this Hubcat make you feel? What are your word associations if we give you all these ideas for names? Like, what do you want to have in a car?

What is your dream thing in a car? And they asked so many people that I think it's something that happens in like software development now where you're like, you can't do everything. Yeah. What was it actually Henry Ford, the one who said, if I ask people what to make, they'll say a carriage with more horses. Yeah, they'll say faster horse.

Yeah, faster horse. That's why you don't ask people that many questions. You just have to iterate on your own abolition. Yeah. Even though we don't quote any for Henry Ford or anything. That is a good quote though. That is a quote that is common every product management book that's out there. Well, then let's make a new one from someone who's not a Nazi.

Someone come out with a better quote. Me. I'll say something. I'll think about it. Not a Nazi. just work hard and have opportunities and do a good job. Tulip Miro, not a Nazi. Yeah, we get the part of the season there. Credible.

Do a ton of market research and then like they're looking at personas for the first time. You know, like things like that we do see all the time in software development, but you're like if you build what everybody wants is their dream car, you're going to make a mess. And that's kind of what happened. Homer did that in one of those Simpsons episodes. One thing that they, one tagline they had is the smart car for the, younger executive or professional family on its way up.

So, like, very wordy and like, sure, sure, sure. In the very beginning, they suggested the name Edsel. It's Henry Ford's son. Henry Ford the second is a president. And he's like, no, my dad would hate that. That's dumb. Everybody's like, this is a bad idea. We don't want to see our dad's name like on Hubcaps.

That's embarrassing. Like, they're just like, no. Like, we just don't like it. No one knows that word begins. Like, we don't want it. So they were like, okay, we're going to go and, you know, pick a better name for this car. They went to a marketing firm and they were like, give us a name.

And they sent back 6,000 names. And they were like, what? It's not helpful at all. Thanks for nothing, you know. And then they like pair that down. They did things like free association. Like, what does this make you think of? What does this make you think of?

What is the word look like backwards? Like they suggested drop, which is Ford backwards. You know, like, and things. So some of the names that like actually became car names and are part of the edsel like division, in the line, which I'll tell you about, but like some ideas were like Citation, Corsair, Pacer, Ranger, Roundup, Voyager, all those are pretty good. Regent, Clipper, Monty Carlo. Most of those are car names. Most of those are actual car names.

I know, but they didn't pick any of them. They also consulted a poet named Marianne Moore. They didn't pay her, but they were like, what ideas do you have? And here's a smattering of her banana's ideas. Utopian turtle top, resilient bullet, mongoosevic, Pestellogram Whatever What other What other things? Malesstrom

Berve Silver Sword Thunderbender Thunderbender Thunders Broke I do like I like

Thunderbender and I like Silver Sword It's called Varsity Stroke Yeah What the fuck was she on

Slam and Absinth Most likely Bisondale Ondante Codoto Anyway Terrible Ideas

They did not pick any of her ideas In 1956, they're already working on this car. They're like, we have to have a name for it. We can't continue to call it the E car forever. All three Ford brothers, all three grandsons of Henry Ford were out of town. And the board had a board meeting.

And the chairman was like, all these names are garbage. What happened to Edsel? I heard Edsel in the beginning. And they were like, yeah, well, we didn't even, we like rolled it out in the beginning. And the chairman was like, fuck it, just do it. Wait, isn't a Ford, isn't a Ford the chairman? Yeah. No, no, no.

The chairman of the board is, I said his name a second ago. somebody who's not in the family not in the family correct the chairman of the board is Ernest Breach he's the chairman so even though the Ford is the president but he's not there when they make the decision and he's like just fucking do it it's called the

Edsel so they call it that people are pissed because they said that whoever named it would get a free car and they weren't allowed to pick Edsel and then they picked Edsel so they were like that's not fair but whatever so like you said it's actually a line of cars so there's the Edsel

Ranger, which was the entry level model. It could come as two-door or four-door and also two-door or like hard top. It also, it was mostly like a convertible. The Edsel Pacer was a little bit above the Ranger, had some more features. The Edsel Corsair was the top of the line model, had the most luxurious amenities. And then the Edsel citation was the highest level within the lineup. Same thing. Like a lot of fancy things you could get added on to it. So now they want to unveil it and they've been doing all of these things like you know teasing people with it they do it piece by piece they do presentations to like dealerships and they show them like a hubcap and a wheel and a in a in a window but they don't show the whole thing because they want people to be like

talking about it they would have like when they started to eventually have the cars get delivered to dealerships they would like put it on the back of a truck but like put the sheet over it where it would like you could kind of see it you know like teasing it if you're driving by and they thought that people were going to, like, go crazy on the freeways, like, following these Ford trucks, but they did not. People were like, what? They would, one ad that they had, they have a couple ads that are hilarious, and they kind of remind me of things that, like, potentially Donald Trump would say, because one ad said, we are proud of the Edsel.

It's like, so funny. Like, if you have to say that, like, are you? It's like when you try to convince someone, I'm smart, damn it. You know, you're like, okay, cool. They also had a lot of dealerships, get rid of their current business. just to sell the Edsel, we ended up being bad for a lot of folks, you know, just to just to sell it. September 4th, 1957 was the launch and it was called E-Day, which feels like too soon. Because it would mean like just have a E-day. It wasn't bad.

It's a little bit too soon. Yeah. By the end of the day, three million people had seen them in dealerships. So people were like going to like go look at the Edsel. Not a lot of people were buying them. Three days later, the first Edsel was stolen. Guess where it was stolen? Detroit, Philly. Oh, well, that makes sense, too. They also did this thing on October 13th, 1957, and this is wild. They did an hour-long special on CBS, hosted by Bing Crosby, who was a shareholder in Ford. So it was like, to his advantage, hosted by Bing Crosby included Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney, Louis Armstrong, and also Bob Hope.

That's pretty impressive. I mean, they kind of still do that. So I still follow cars, like, pretty closely. And, like, yeah, when GM, so GM was the biggest brand that came out, like, I don't know, like three years ago. They turned over, like, a new female CEO who came out and said 80% of our vehicles and products are going to be electric. And so they would have these huge launches. Apple launch where, like, she'd be talking and had, like, a celebrity come out and sing. And then they drive the cars on, say, it's super dorky, super nerdy.

like i like even exactly the same when i what i've i've seen it because i'm just curious like okay so what's the direction where you're all going with this and it's good for just information purposes but it's super nerdy oh yeah and i think well they didn't like it was like a musical show so then and then they like had the car like in the middle of it you know and these people i mean are like the height of this type of like musical person yeah yeah and uh it was nominated for an emmy bit did not win but it was like the most successful thing of the whole line I would like to watch it some day I'm sure it's on YouTube I watched a little bit of it has like dancing and stuff so it seems super fun I don't know if I make you buy an Ansel but it seems fun so here's what

it actually looked like and some of the things that were like a little bit weird about it because people were like this is like obviously the 50s so like they want things to be futuristic but it's kind of on the tail end of 50s styling and we're like turning it's turning into the 60s but one thing that happened that they had like on the steering wheel like the the um like the shifting and all of that was on the steering wheel. Yeah. And you'd press the buttons, but it was like hard to do that because you had to look at them to like know where they were and you could accidentally hit like drive and it would go really

fast. So like people were doing that. And it was like hard to control. You know what I mean? And it also had like a ton of buttons on the inside. You know, like a button turns off. A button to turn it on. A button to do this.

To do this. Do this. So it was like somebody in the market research was like, I love buttons. And it ended up being like too much. Seat belts were optional. just saying because they're optional and the outside of it i know you're looking at it it looks like a 50s car it's almost as long and as wide as cars ever get like that it's really it's kind of short wide long um the most distinct feature is the grill in the front so they had like another part of the

research group that was like we wanted to look like a classic like 1920s car so they made that like oval grill on the front this is etzel but it looks like a egg and also potentially potentially like a vagina. I can see it. Yeah. It almost is very similar to like a Maserati or not a Maserati. Alpha Romeo. Their grill is kind of like the centerpiece of their design philosophy and it's very similar to that.

I feel like it's like a peachy cruiser where it's like, this is going to be so cool looking. And you're like, no, it didn't turn out cool looking. You know, we tried to look be nostalgic about the way cars used to look, but it didn't work. You know what's funny is my parents' first car when we moved to America. 1998 or 1988 Honda Civic and it was an option to get seatbelts for anybody but the driver and it was an option to have a side view mirror on the pastoral side and so my parents didn't pay for that is that only the driver had seatbelt oh my god that's so funny I rely a lot on my mirrors as well yeah yeah that's really funny there was a lot of chrome obviously like you know you see that as a 50s car of course there's chrome the thing that I think is the most fun is in the back the uh there's like a like a like a wing the container of the back and then there's the blinkers and the blinkers are like little triangles and they point in so they look kind of cool but the arrow is the wrong way yeah exactly so when you're turning left the arrow is blinking right even it's on the left side of the car and it's like very confusing

mini cooper's do that now really literally do that now yeah so funny so it's like you know like I said you take everyone's dream car and you get a mess you know Ford also didn't make a plant specifically for the Edsel and the Edsel models. So people had to stop making the cars that were on the line. They would like stop the line and then make a few Edsel's, but they wouldn't always have the right stuff. So they would send them dealerships like incomplete. Like, hey, you guys put this on.

Like, you guys finish this or whatever. So things were like fall off the car and like it just like wasn't ready. Which like they tried to say like, you know, that happens with a brand new car. Like things aren't perfect on day one. But they like really were like, this is going to be perfect on day one. You know?

And then it wasn't. So that people saw that and were like really disappointed. They did a lot of weird things. at dealerships they would do like a raffle for someone to like win a car if they like took a test drive at one point every single test drive you got a free mini edsel like a mini car for like your kids like not to drive i didn't like a toy right they also had one where every time you every person to bought an etzel got a literal pony what because somebody was like it's so irresponsible they sent to four sent ponies to thousands of dealerships around america and the dealers dealers were

pissed because they're like, I have to take care of a fucking pony. That's so irresponsible. So they had to like feed them and build a pony corral and like do all these things. And eventually they were like so mad that Ford had them all taken back and took them back to Detroit and Lord knows they must be glue by now.

The interesting thing about those was that usually it's up to the dealer to sell the car. So when you go to a dealership and there's like free coffee and hot dogs and like you get a deal like that's all the dealer trying to get you to sell the car. But this was like literally Ford being like we need to do something. We are not selling enough of these. They needed to sell 200,000

Edsels a year to make it profitable. And in 1958, they sold 34,481. Jeez. Yeah, that's not good. Not even close. Eventually, Edsel was merged with Mercury and Lincoln for a division called the M-E-L division, but it was, the Edsel didn't last past like 1960. Eventually, they had a net loss of $350 million, which is about $3.5 billion. today um and if the the book the business adventures book if in 1955 if they decided not to do it at all and they just gave away 100,000 10 wait 110,810 mercuries they would have lost less money you know like they're just on that so there's a couple quotes that I have have in the book that are like who's to blame one person oh crafty who was like the in charge of

the department said that this is it said the etzel is a success. This is a new idea. It's a you idea. On the American road, the Edsel is a success, which sounds like, you know, who you're trying to convince me or you. Yeah, no kidding. Another guy said, Doyle, who I think is one of the other people who was like it involved, but he said it was a buyer's strike quote. People weren't met in the mood for the Edsel. Why not is a mystery to me. What they'd been buying for several years encouraged the industry to build exactly this kind of car. We gave it to them and they wouldn't take it. Well, they shouldn't have acted like that.

You can't just wake up somebody one day and say, that's enough. You've been running in the wrong direction. Anyway, why did they do it? Golly, how the industry worked and worked over the years, getting rid of gear shifting, providing interior comfort, providing plus performance for use in emergencies. And now the public wants these little Beatles.

I don't get it. I mean, I could understand the center of like, we tried to give you all this. You know, one thing that this reminds you of is, remember what this? I mean, we were really small kids when the segue was coming out. but remember the guy who invented it was like this revolutionary inventor who like created all this like medical devices he was like this thing is going to literally change the way the world works

and so by the time he released the segue we were all like picturing flying cars and this dorky stupid scooter comes out it's like what the hell is it's like you build up this anticipation it's almost a possible to live up to it totally he was like yeah the second guy I remember this is going to take everything you're like how do I carry my groceries what are you doing And the best part was like the founder of it, like, rode it off a cliff and died. I know. Oh, my God. I am.

I did do a segue tour of Chicago with my Aunt Luan. And it was so fun. But would you ever like, you as a human, would you spend $8,000? Okay, there you go. Of course not. But yeah, just like you're saying, it's timing. It was time for smaller cars. Like, it was, they moved on.

Like, they didn't want these, like, big boat cars anymore. And it really wasn't anything special after all, you know, like, whatever. So eventually in 1959, they stopped the production. The last Edsels were the 1960 version of them. Ford, as you may notice, is fine as a company. They were fine. The shares went up. They still had other money. They still had other things going on. People who got screwed were the dealers. And thousands of regular people who worked in the factories got laid off because they weren't making that car anymore. But the shareholders were fine and they moved on. Yeah. continue to my cars but it was just like an experiment in cars that was wildly unsuccessful so that's another thing that Tesla did that was actually really really revolutionary to the industry was because there were rules uh legally regulatoryly that required for you to have a dealership to sell vehicles so you can never buy direct you had to run through a middle man and i mean you bought

cars from dealerships i bought cars from dealerships i'm sure a lot of listeners have as well it is never a good experience like almost universally never there's you got to talk to the finance guy who's going to tell you how you got to do this then the guy comes in and tries to sell you some guard material for the grill it's just like it's a horrible horrible experience and i mean my my theory on this is that direct from manufacturer online ordering of cars that's going to be like the thing and then because it's just a bad experience so totally and it's partially for that reason too is because they also get shafted. So they shaft the customer because the manufacturer shafts them by sending them 1,000 horses.

It's awful. Or because they'll send them like seven versions of a car that 50,000 people want and they'll deliberately underproduce them, then overcharged. It's a mess. It's a horrible, whole mess. So hopefully that entire business model goes away. Mm-hmm. Totally.

I hear it. I also think, I think that this is the reason why they changed car production. to share major components with each other. Totally makes sense because it, they had to like stop the line to make the edsel, which was like part of the- So expensive. It's got to be so expensive.

And also you gotta like create all the individual components. It's like, Lincoln's are just rebranded Ford's and Lexus are rebranded Toyota. It's just way cheaper, just like change the brands and some of the materials and it is to redesign the entire thing. And Ford is the one pretending to have invented the assembly line this whole freaking time.

I thought Ford did the assembly line. He is the first video to use it, but I told you who invented it at the beginning of this episode. You did. And I, I, well, let me look at this real quick. Ransom. Ransom E. Olds, which is a great name, Ransom. Is he the guy who created Oldsmobile? I don't know. It's my not. The solemn portion of the end podcast. Yes, he was. Yes, he was.

Ransom, Eli Olds was a pioneer of the American automotive industry, after whom the Oldsmobile and REO brands were named. He claimed to have built the first steam cars early. is 1887 and the first gasoline-powered car in 1896. Sweet. We're on June 3rd, Gemini, just like me. Yeah, so if you learned anything from this, please just don't quote Henry Ford. Like, I know it's, it's, it's, I don't know,

it seems like it would be a good idea because he, like it said, some, like, fun little snippets, but did he really even write those things? I don't know. Yeah, we can, I think, like, again, I think you can hold two ideas. be true simultaneously you can but then also like like gondy also fucked a bunch of like 12 year olds and that's what i'm saying like there is no great and okay definitely cheated on kreta a lot like totally all i'm saying you think there's no great man there's no like one person who is perfect besides abraham again because he changed his mind and he is is awesome so actually i'm gonna

i don't have the facts on me so i'm not going to push back right now but i do recall reading that slavery actually wasn't the reason why he pushed so hard during the civil war it had to do with something else that was i can't remember the exact reasoning behind it i do remember the movie lincoln does touch on it had something to do with uniting the republican party and i don't remember what exactly it's super nuanced i'm not going to get into it wasn't the number one thing but it was like in there and ended it being the same that he did i'm not going to get into like the civil war like the entire civil war right now but like all i'm saying is like you know i take it in the spirit of like people are a byproduct of the times that they're in and it's easy

when you're in modern times to look at past behavior and say well I wouldn't have been that way but you don't know like maybe the things that I'm doing right now the fact that you know maybe in like maybe like 500 years dogs can vote dogs can you know own property and here I am owning a dog and playing in a crate you don't know what the future holds well i also said at the beginning of this that john adams and not own slaves so it wasn't like everybody was doing it that's true that's true i get it i get it i do think context is important though i do too like obama and this is my context exactly and he changed his mind and this is my context for not quoting henry ford anymore is that hitler liked him i know i did read that actually when

you were talking i did go back and look up henry for and it was like she had like about full-sized picture of Henry Ford in his office, but he really loved him. Yes. I'm on the record and say this bad. I hope somebody at some point loves me as much as Hitler loved Henry Ford. Thank you. That's it. That's all I wanted you to get out of this story is exactly that. And then do with it what you will. So since we're splitting the podcast up, This is kind of our conclusion. I know. So I think I have two listener emails.

So I'll do one today. This is our first email. I was so freaking excited. And far as I like jumped up and like I was reading it in bed and I jumped up and like randomized and I was like, we got an email. Oh my God. I definitely got to text at like midnight. I was so excited.

But Kiara from Maryland, she's from Maryland. And she was so fun. She wrote an email. And she said, Dune Befail podcast. That's that dot. First email, question mark, because she's been listening and knows that we've been like dying for an email from a stranger.

So thank you so much. She had a couple great suggestions for some episodes that I forwarded along to you far. I think they fall into the true crime. So we'll definitely look for those later. I did. So I actually researched, I researched both of them quite a bit. And it just, I didn't use, I might use it as a topic later on, but the only reason I didn't use it as a topic.

now is because there's just not much material out there to actually research for it. And one of them is unsolved entirely. So there's, um, it would basically be liable if I reach conclusions on what happened. But we'll keep looking at it and please put us ideas and just thank you so much. It's so exciting. We feel, we feel very excited. I wrote back immediately and said, this is our first email in all caps. So she knows how excited we are.

Yeah. And guys, like we are, our listenership, our downloads and all that stuff is really like, like taken off really in the past like last episode or two the one thing I would we would love I think generally speaking is if you have a friend who's even has any remote interest in this topic just ask them to download and maybe check out one of the smaller episodes that we have so we're going to cut these out we're going to cut these segments in the half episodes and they'll be easier to digest easier to listen to on a quick drive or whatever but we really really appreciate it if you're able to kind of get one or two folks in your life to to listen

as well. It'll be fantastic. Yeah. Oh, my God, please. And we're on all the socials at Dune to Fail Pod. So Twitter, reluctantly, Instagram, Facebook also reluctant. Okay, wait, hold on. Did you hear that Elon Musk and Marcus Zuckerberg and have a cage match, a cage match? There's zero chance that's happening. Yeah, I heard that. And I'm like, how many board members are just pulling their hair out? Like, you guys are the CEOs of like $3 trillion worth of business. You can't do this. It would be fun though. I got my money on Zuck.

Yeah, I think so too. Yeah, he's got youth and variance. I think when it comes, when the rubber hits the road, I think he's going to go in low and dirty and Elon couldn't handle it. Although Elon looks huge. Elon looks like he's like a 250 pound. But I think it's all like not, I don't know. Did you see there was one thing that my brother sent me and it was like a woman being like, I don't see Elon in the submersible going through the Titanic. I think he's a chicken.

so funny because that's something he responded to anyway I did I did read that there are other billionaires who literally have submersibles I can go down there because when they were trying to bring back the ocean gate one one of these billionaires I forgot he owns he like he like created some company and sold like it's a company we would all know the brand and he's like oh oh you need to go how far you got to go 12,000 I got my smirsel we're going to do 12,000 5 I'm like what how do you all have these things like There's so many, there's like a bunch of billionaires that we've never heard of because they don't have cage matches with Mark Zuckerberg.

They're just busy. Cowards. Cowards. Chikins. So we thank you. Please do join us on all the socials. We'll go ahead and cut this off here. And in a few days.

In three days, you can join us again. All right. Okay. Bye. Thank you.