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Car of the Day : May 26, 2013; Siku '58 Edsel Citation
Topic Started: May 26 2013, 10:11 PM (503 Views)
craftymore
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Support your local demo derby.

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Today's car is from pjedsel's collection and is the Siku 1958 Edsel Citation.

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Wikipedia.com
 
The Edsel was an automobile marque that was planned, developed, and manufactured by the Ford Motor Company during the 1958, 1959, and 1960 model years. With the Edsel, Ford had expected to make significant inroads into the market share of both General Motors and Chrysler and close the gap between itself and GM in the domestic American automotive market. But contrary to Ford's internal plans and projections, the Edsel never gained popularity with contemporary American car buyers and sold poorly. The Ford Motor Company lost millions of dollars on the Edsel's development, manufacturing and marketing.


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In the early 1950s, the Ford Motor Company became a publicly traded corporation that was no longer entirely owned by members of the Ford family. The company was now able to sell cars according to current market trends following the sellers' market of the postwar years. Ford's new management compared the company's roster of makes with that of General Motors, and concluded that Lincoln was competing not with Cadillac, but with Oldsmobile and Buick. Since Ford had surplus capital on hand from the success of the Ford Thunderbird, the Company developed a plan to move Lincoln upmarket, with the Continental broken out as a separate make at the top of Ford's product line, and to add a premium/intermediate vehicle to the intermediate slot vacated by Lincoln.

Marketing research and development for the new intermediate line had begun in 1955 under the code name "E car", which stood for "experimental car." Ford Motor Company eventually decided on the name "Edsel", in honor of Edsel B. Ford, son of the company's founder, Henry Ford (despite objections from Henry Ford II. The proposed vehicle marque would represent the stand-up of a new division of the firm alongside that of Ford itself and the Lincoln-Mercury division, whose cars at the time shared the same bodies.

Ford later claimed to have performed more than adequate, if not superior, product development and market research work in the planning and design of the new vehicle. Particularly Ford assured its investors, and the Detroit automotive press, that the Edsel was not only a superior product (as compared to its Oldsmobile/Buick competition), but the details of its styling and specifications were the result of a sophisticated market analysis and research and development effort that would essentially guarantee its broad acceptance by the buying public when the car was introduced.

The Edsel was introduced amid considerable publicity on "E Day"—September 4, 1957. It was also promoted by a top-rated television special, The Edsel Show, on October 13, but the promotional effort was not enough to counter the adverse initial public reaction to the car's styling and conventional build. For months, Ford had been telling the industry press that it "knew" (through its market research) that there would be great demand for the vehicle. Ford also insisted that, in the Edsel, it had built exactly the "entirely new kind of car" that Ford had been leading the buying public to expect through its pre-introduction publicity campaign for the car. In reality, however, the Edsel shared its engineering and bodywork with other Ford models, and the apparent similarities were glaring from the perspective of a new car buyer from the moment he (or more rarely, she) viewed the vehicle in person and up close in a new car showroom.

The Edsel was to be sold through a newly formed division of the Ford Motor Company, as a companion to the Ford Division, Mercury Division, Lincoln Division and (newly formed but also short-lived) Continental Division. Each division had its own retail organization and dealer network. The free-standing Edsel Division existed from November 1956 until January 1958, after which Edsel sales and marketing operations were integrated into the Mercury-Edsel-Lincoln division (referred to as M-E-L). Initially Edsel was sold through a new network of approximately 1,187 dealers.

This briefly brought the total number of dealers of all Ford products to 10,000. Ford saw this as a way to come closer to parity with Chrysler, which had 10,000 dealers, and General Motors, which had 16,000. As soon as it became apparent that the Edsels were not selling, many of these dealers added Lincoln-Mercury, Ford of Britain, or Ford of Germany franchises to their dealerships with the encouragement of Ford Motor Company. Some dealers, however, closed.


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John's comments : This Edsel model from Siku is from the 1960's and is made of molded plastic. It is one of a number of American cars that Siku made in molded plastic and diecast in the '60's. This was an early "holy grail" for me and became a part of my collection thanks to a collector in Europe back in the mid 1970's. I was able to get this nice Edsel piece as well as the two 1/86th scale Anguplas Edsel models that were made in Spain. There was a time when I thought these would probably be the only small scale Edsel's in my collection since it was not one of the more popular cars.

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Edited by craftymore, May 28 2013, 10:29 PM.
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juantoo3
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

:surprise: :drool: ooooooh....
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Sak
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Ezekiel 25:17
John's posted this one before. It's a genuine gem.
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Guntownal
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Minivan
I've had one of these for awhile and just got another one in a lot I won.
Its missing 3 wheels but is in real nice condition...its also a different shade of blue.
This was made by Siku from '59-'63 in green and 3 different shades of blue.
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Swifty
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The Mustang II is a Mustang too!
:drool:

What model Edsel is this? Doesn't look to be a Citation... so Ranger? Pacer?
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pjedsel
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Muscle Car
Swifty
May 27 2013, 09:26 PM
:drool:

What model Edsel is this? Doesn't look to be a Citation... so Ranger? Pacer?
The various Edsel sites and other related literature have always listed the Siku Edsel as a Citation.
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ivantt
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New casting? Quick! Take it apart!
Far off enough to look like a artist's rendition for an auto advert, with stretched body, etc. Almost looks like a 1940's concept in this form. Quirky enough to be added to any collection. A true novelty.
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Swifty
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The Mustang II is a Mustang too!
pjedsel
May 27 2013, 11:34 PM
Swifty
May 27 2013, 09:26 PM
:drool:

What model Edsel is this? Doesn't look to be a Citation... so Ranger? Pacer?
The various Edsel sites and other related literature have always listed the Siku Edsel as a Citation.
I stand corrected!
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