ESCAPE ROADS: 1958 Edsel Pacer: Not What You Think

The Edsel was undoubtedly a better idea when it was conceived in 1955, amid record auto sales led by a boom in the medium-price field, than in the fall of 1957, when it debuted (as a ‘58 model) against a recession combined with a backlash against flashy mid-priced cars.

Its odd looks didn’t help. Designer Roy Brown’s original concept called for a sharp, vertical blade dividing an otherwise grilleless front end, with air intakes below the bumper, but concerns about cooling opened the blade into an air-sucking ovoid subject to all manner of psychosexual misinterpretation. Out back, Brown got what he wanted: a contrastingly horizontal theme with taillights high for safety.

At first, there were four Edsels: the Ford-bodied, 118-inch-wheelbase Ranger and Pacer, aimed squarely at Dodge and Pontiac; and the Mercury-bodied, 124-inch Corsair and Citation, priced well into Buick and Chrysler turf.

Inside, the ‘58 Edsels had a rotating-drum speedometer that even fans liken to an inverted soup bowl. Options included a tiny tach and a gaugelike dial to control the heat. Standard on the bigger Edsels and optional on the smaller ones was an automatic transmission shifted electrically by five “Tele-Touch” buttons in the steering wheel’s floating hub.

By December 1957, flat sales made it clear that the Edsel had flopped. The marque spent its remaining time retreating from the design excesses of the original. The ‘59 looked neater, with bright chrome bars lending solidity to an oval grille that more closely approached Brown’s concept. Instruments were now conventional. Only two models remained, the Ranger and the Corsair, both on a Ford platform stretched to 120 inches.

James and Carolyn Popp found our photo car–a ‘58 Pacer convertible (at right above)–in 1992 in a barn in the upper Midwest. A two-year restoration produced a stunningly immaculate showpiece. We took our test drive in the Popps’ less meticulously detailed ‘59 Corsair drop-top (at center above).

An Edsel drives very much like a late-’50s Ford, which is mostly good. The modern radial tires on the Popps’ Corsair enhance its cornering grip. Hustling on a twisty road, the Edsel leans and sways in ways that certainly would have overtaxed historically correct bias-plies. But its manual steering is sharp and communicative (if brutally heavy while parking), and the mighty torque (400 lb-ft) and aggressively raspy exhaust of its 303-hp, 361-cid V8 provide endless entertainment. Contemporary testers clocked 0-to-60-mph runs of 10.2 seconds. We found the Edsel athletic, if not sporty, with a ride that was comfortable but not soft.

By the 1960 model year, the Edsel’s retreat had turned into a rout, its vertical-oval trademark reduced to a mere emblem at the center of a Pontiac-like split-horizontal grille (see the ‘60 Ranger, at left above). It was all over by mid-November 1959, after the production of 110,847 Edsels and the reported loss of $250 million.

DOLLARS & SENSE

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