From time to time, I have discussed the fortunes of marques, turning on the fog lights of automotive history. However, the thought of attempting a theory of automotive success only occurred to me recently, during an informal pow-wow with Arunkumar Francis, a Bengaluru-based concept automobile designer. He brought up the Edsel as a symbol of the challenges in automobile making and marketing, a car launched by Ford Motor Company in 1957 for the mid-priced segment.
Delving into the subject, I read Disaster in Dearborn: The Story of the Edsel by Thomas E Bonsall and watched a pre-launch documentary, The Edsel Story, on the car by the Ford, to understand the monumental failure of the car. It is monumental indeed, for Edsel is now a byword for failure, used to refer to any fiasco. The Edsel story, as well as the histories of other marques, now form the foundation of my theory of successful product design, development, and marketing.
It’s about getting four factors right. One, analytical intelligence: the laborious effort to understand what the market wants and developing processes to get all the deliverables out in the best way possible. Two, intuitive intelligence, the ability to make the right calls, despite being handicapped by a lack of sufficient information. It is about using the power of the “adaptive unconscious”, a term coined by Daniel Wagner and popularised by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking . In product development, these intelligences have to be working in tandem. Three, timing. Four, waiting till the tide turns.
Analytical intelligence
This was clearly at work in the Edsel project. The car was long in the planning. In the documentary I watched, Ford bigwigs dwell at length on the rationale behind it. From 1948, the company had wanted to introduce a medium-priced car. It had only Mercury in this segment, a factor encouraging Ford car owners to switch to General Motors (GM), while looking to graduate to the middle-price segment, where GM offered Buick, Oldsmobile and Pontiac. Technologically, the Edsel was no slouch. It had a powerful engine, and had features that were seen as emerging technologies in the 1950s: push-button teletouch transmission shifting system, a row of warning lights in the instrument cluster, child-proof rear-locking system, seat belts, and self-adjusting brakes.
Intuitive intelligence
Through the unique stories of Edsel and (above) Morris Minor
The greatest among automobile designers stick to certain decisions despite ridicule, because they feel intuitively right about it. There are two glowing examples.
In his book, Morris Minor – The Biography: Sixty Years of Britain’s Favourite Car , Martin Wainwright quotes Sir Alec Issigonis: “Lord Nuffield hated the Morris Minor as soon as he saw it.” Issigonis bore the derisive comment that the car resembled “a poached egg”, with stoicism.
In Citroen Traction Avant, Jon Pressnell talks about how automobile designer Andre Lefebvre did not allow a deeply critical remark by Louis Renault, a heavyweight in the industry, to dampen his enthusiasm for designing a car with a front-wheel drive. Pressnell writes that Renault rejected the idea. As we know from history, Andre Citroen warmed up to it and let Lefebvre introduce the technology in the Citroen Traction Avant.
Timing
The chief reason for the Edsel’s failure is its poor timing. Bonsall writes in his Disaster in Dearborn, that it was unavoidable misfortune. Bonsall says, “When the Edsel was planned, the medium-priced market was booming. By the time the Edsel was announced, however, the industry, in general, was reeling, and the medium-priced segment was hit worst of all.”
He further writes: “The 3 million cars sold in the medium-priced field in 1955 collapsed to barely 1.2 million by 1958, a drop of 60% in three years. Every mid-price competitor suffered. Among the General Motors trio that was the prime competition for the Edsel, Buick declined 64%, Pontiac declined 57% and Oldsmobile, showing the ‘best’ performance of the General Motors brands in that segment, declined a mere 48%.”
Waiting for a turn in tide
Ford Motor Company was probably not in a position to get the timing right, but industry watchers, including Bonsall, believe it could have waited for the tide to turn. That would have made all the difference. Ford stopped production of Edsel in 1960; and the middle-priced segment improved in the mid-1960s.
