MEMORABILIA & TOYS

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We will be adding several categories of Edsel-related items from memorabilia, toys, ads, and anything else Edsel-related.

If you have anything to add to this section, please email a JPG file scanned at 150 dpi to the IEC Website with a brief description of the item, your name, town/city, and state so we can start building the library.

The name of the car, Edsel, is also often cited as a further reason for its lack of popularity. Naming the vehicle after Edsel Ford was proposed early in its development. However, the Ford family strongly opposed its use. Henry Ford II declared that he did not want his father's good name spinning around on thousands of hubcaps. Ford also ran internal studies to decide on a name and even dispatched employees to stand outside movie theaters to poll audiences as to what their feelings were on several ideas. They reached no conclusions.

Ford retained the advertising firm Foote, Cone & Belding to come up with a name. When the agency issued its report, citing over 6,000 possibilities, Ford's Ernest Breech commented that they had been hired to develop one name, not 6,000. Early favorites for the name brand included Citation, Corsair, Pacer, and Ranger, which were ultimately chosen for the vehicle's series names.

David Wallace, manager of marketing research, and coworker Bob Young unofficially invited freethinker poet Marianne Moore for input and suggestions. Moore's unorthodox contributions (among them "Utopian Turtletop," "Pastelogram," "Turcotinga," "Resilient Bullet," "Andante con Moto" and "Mongoose Civique") were meant to stir creative thought and were not officially authorized or contractual in nature.

By the instruction of Ernest Breech, who was chairing a board meeting in the absence of Henry Ford II, the car was finally called "Edsel" in honor of Edsel Ford, former company president, and son of Henry Ford.