I continue to review the books I read on investing. Today it is a book by D. Brooks “Business Adventures. 12 Classic Wall Street Stories. The volume of the book is somewhat above average and amounts to almost 400 pages in Russian translation. In this case, it is quite easy to explain why I chose this book - it was recommended by W. Buffett to his friend B. Gates as the best investment book he had ever read. Both surnames are not new to my blog (especially the first one). About Buffett and his investment approach, I did a very large detailed one, in fact, squeezing an excellent book dedicated to Buffett into it; about Bill Gates, I used to and much less thoroughly. This time I will analyze the book not by selecting quotes, but by answering arbitrary questions posed by me.
What style is the book written in?
If I evaluate the perception of the book, then I have an ambivalent impression. On the one hand, it is written in a fairly simple language, although people from scratch will still come across a number of terms that are not fully understood. The peculiarity of the presentation, however, is that almost all the stories are chewed in the book with the smallest details - this can be an advantage for a specialist or an economist, but it clearly harms those who just want to get to the bottom of the matter without “digging” to the smallest detail. For example, in the chapter about the Xerox company, you can learn literally about all types of breakdowns of the first automatic machines - information that is probably interesting for a historian, but practically useless for an investor (and even for users of copiers) today. The book does not provide complex calculations, but the development of events is often associated with incredible detail of the negotiations and complex interactions of various groups and individuals. As a result, although the style itself looks acceptable and there are even funny lively details in the descriptions (like the location of one of the factories at railway, in which the abundance of transported grunting pigs interfered with work), the overall impression is blurred and I read many long chapters “diagonally” just to get to the heart of the matter. The last chapters, however, aroused more interest in me and were read without cuts.
How relevant is the book today?
The events in the book mainly describe the period of the first half of the 20th century, ending in the late 60s - therefore, at least half a century has passed since the latest event. And therefore, although general principles business management remained unchanged, and the stock market still continues to fluctuate (which, by the way, is a rather interesting first chapter), many things in the book are of only historical interest. In addition to the Xerox company mentioned above, which is de facto the history of the development of copiers in the world, the history of the US income tax is hardly relevant - however, for those interested in this topic, it is hardly possible to recommend more detailed and interesting material. The book was written under the current gold standard - so the last chapter on keeping the pound in a very narrow currency band, the exit from which is likened to a catastrophe, also requires an appropriate attitude - although such things as foreign exchange interventions have not disappeared anywhere. The short stock game, very interestingly described in the chapter on the Piggly-Wiggly company, can be partially applied today - however, over the past half century, American legislation has made it much more difficult for one player to gain an advantage over others. The latter in particular concerns insider trading - the first big precedent that ended in litigation after about 30 years of dormant law in practice is described in the chapter “Surfur Company Insiders”. Again, a great selection of material for those interested in insider history. The same applies to the chapter on trade secrets, when one of the employees of the firm that develops spacesuits decided to move to a competing company.
As a result, I would rate the "historicity" of the book at 7 out of 10. But this number is subjective for everyone - with more experience and understanding of the material, more historical data can be transferred to today's reality. For Buffett, the score will certainly be noticeably lower than mine.
Why does Buffett love this particular book?
I think my guess is not far from the truth. Unlike the vast majority of readers (Russian or American, and even partly Gates), Buffett was a contemporary of almost all the events described in the book, and he even caught a number of them as a fairly large player. So that is why he should understand and feel the described events much better than other readers. In addition - as noted above - the book is written clearly and at the same time is extremely detailed, which almost perfectly matches the qualities of Buffett. Known (even legendary) are his comprehensible analogies in his annual investor address - but less well known is how scrupulously he studied the reports of many companies, making a decision to invest in them. Alas, in the case of a Russian reader of thirty or forty years of age, we are talking about events in another country and at a time when he was not yet born. As a result, many Russian reviews about the book are expectedly cool, although almost everyone recognizes the interestingness of the selected information.
How/who can the book be useful?
The book does not provide an answer to the question of how to invest in the stock market - although in relation to individual companies the conclusion is well traced that the most careful preparation a major player in the release of new products can sometimes end in failure. At the same time, Xerox (after many difficulties, but with competent management) in a few years managed to enrich its shareholders in much the same way that Microsoft did 20 years later. But the book does not teach how to choose such companies - its task in the direction of the investor, if it is set, lies in the field of forming a broad view of current events and the manifestation of reasonable skepticism when making decisions. To a business manager, she rather speaks about the importance of competent management and development of the company, implementation and search for new approaches. Finally, for the historian or economist, it provides a well-chosen material that can hardly be found on Wikipedia.
Do you read this book?
Summing up what has been said above, the book can hardly be called popular reading, although it cannot equally be classified as abstruse or boring work. So the answer to the question depends on what you want to find in it - I hope I managed to give my short answer. I think the publication could be made more popular and exciting just by reducing its size by about half. For beginners in investing, the book is therefore unlikely to be suitable - in student graduation it is more of a third or even fourth year material, while freshmen are better off starting with something less detailed and closer to the practice of today. Both theory and practice of investing, reminiscent of today's, cannot be presented in the book in principle - in the world there are not only ETFs, but even index mutual funds, the first of which will appear only in 1975; there is no Internet and the ability to conclude remote contracts with brokers is very difficult, and the costs of investing are very high. But, as mentioned above, the book has other goals, and a practically minded investor should use other literature or quality sites.
(ratings: 1
, average: 4,00
out of 5)
Title: Business adventure. 12 Classic Wall Street Stories
Author: John Brooks
Year: 1959-1969
Genre: Foreign business literature, Popular about business, Management, recruitment, Securities, investments
About the book “Business Adventures. 12 Classic Wall Street Stories by John Brooks
They say that everything new is a well-forgotten old. Much in our world remains unchanged, it is only being modernized, adapting to changes in the time period and people, but the foundations of the foundations, nevertheless, remain unchanged. This applies to things as well as knowledge.
The system of commodity-money relations, which began to develop along with the history of mankind, dates back millennia. And, it would seem, today, when modern society has reached the peak of its development, the fundamentals of doing business should have reached their apogee and be absolutely perfect. However, it is not. According to the largest business tycoons and famous business analysts, the principles of business management do not change. Developed once, they turned out to be so optimal that they are still effectively used, only upgraded if necessary.
John Brooks presents to your attention a book that was written over forty years ago. Since then, it has been reprinted many times, but its basic principles have remained unchanged. "Business adventure. 12 Classic Wall Street Stories is one of the most popular business books in America. Her fans are Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. This book tells about the corporate and financial life of America almost fifty years ago. Brooks tells instructive stories from the life of Wall Street, which, oddly enough, are still relevant today.
The book "Business Adventures" tells about twelve classic stories of clever schemes and the unstable nature of the financial world. John Brooks doesn't just describe stories artistically, he covers the whole topic, exploring it as deeply as possible, including all the pitfalls. Each of his stories are real dramas and magnificent victories won thanks to moments of happy insights. Also, these stories are great examples of what kind of strategy the greatest companies choose during periods of terrible crisis and the highest financial success.
"Business Adventures" is a book addressed primarily to professionals who want to learn more about their professional field. And also it will be of interest to ordinary people who are interested in doing business in large corporations, the work of the stock exchange, taxes, marketing and stocks. In general, the book is universal and incredibly informative. Enjoy an exciting read.
On our site about books, you can download the site for free without registration or read the online book “Business Adventures. 12 Classic Wall Street Stories" by John Brooks in epub, fb2, txt, rtf, pdf formats for iPad, iPhone, Android and Kindle. The book will give you a lot of pleasant moments and a real pleasure to read. Buy full version you can have our partner. Also, here you will find the latest news from the literary world, learn the biography of your favorite authors. For novice writers, there is a separate section with useful tips and tricks, interesting articles, thanks to which you can try your hand at writing.
Quotes from the book “Business Adventures. 12 Classic Wall Street Stories by John Brooks
The road to hell is always paved with good intentions!
The advantage is this: the exchange provides a free flow of capital, allowing, for example, to quickly finance the development of industry. And here is the minus: it easily and simply frees unlucky, unreasonable and suggestible players from money.
Its goal is to collect an unprecedented amount of money from an unprecedentedly complex society by the most honest of possible ways to stimulate the national economy and keep valuable businesses running. If it is used wisely and consciously, as was the case quite recently, then the income tax law will be no worse than the same laws in other countries of the world.
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When Bill Gates asked Warren Buffett for a recommendation good book about business, he gave him his copy of John Brooks' Business Adventures without a moment's hesitation. Written over 40 years ago, this book chronicles America's corporate and financial life half a century ago. Wall Street stories are dramatic, engaging, and strikingly relevant. Gates himself puts it this way:
“The principles of business management do not change, and the past can become the basis for the development of ideas in the field of management, ... and even if you have the best product or business plan, this still does not mean anything, but if you have a manager who can find new approaches to solving problems, the company will have a great future.”
12 classic stories are tales of ingenious shenanigans and the volatile nature of the financial world. Brooks does not stoop to simplistic explanations of success, he covers the topic broadly, exploring its depth, talks about real dramas and moments of happy insights. Each of these stories is an example of how an exemplary company behaves either in moments of great triumph or in moments of failure.
On our website you can download the book "Business Adventures. 12 Classic Stories of Wall Street" by John Brooks for free and without registration in fb2, rtf, epub, pdf, txt format, read the book online or buy the book in the online store.
Stock fluctuations
Little Crash of 1962
The Stock Exchange - a daytime adventure series for the rich - wouldn't be a stock market without its ups and downs. Any client-lounger who loves Wall Street folklore knows how the great J.P. Morgan Sr. wittily responded to a simpleton who dared to ask him: “How will the market behave?” "He will hesitate," Morgan replied dryly. True, the exchange has many other distinctive features, and among them are both advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is this: the exchange provides a free flow of capital, allowing, for example, to quickly finance the development of industry. And here is the minus: it easily and simply frees unlucky, unreasonable and suggestible players from money.
With the advent of the stock exchange, a model of special social behavior has developed - with characteristic rituals, language and a typical reaction to certain circumstances. What is most striking is the speed with which this stereotype was formed at the very moment when, in 1611, the first exchange appeared in the open air in Amsterdam. It is also surprising that it remains unchanged: it remained the same on the New York Stock Exchange in the 1960s. It just so happened that the first exchange turned out to be a retort in which previously unseen human reactions crystallized. Stock trading in the United States today is a mind-blowing big deal, with millions of miles of private telegraph lines, computers that can read and copy a Manhattan telephone directory in three minutes, and over 20,000,000 stockholders. How unlike a handful of seventeenth-century Dutch bargaining fiercely in the rain! However, in terms of behavior, it is the same as it is now, and it is not without reason that one can say that the New York Stock Exchange is a sociological test tube in which reactions take place that help the self-knowledge of the human race.
The behavior of the participants in the world's first Dutch exchange was described in detail in 1688 in the book A Confusion of Confusions. The author is a gambler named Joseph de la Vega. A few years ago, this opus was republished, translated into English, at the Harvard Business School. As for modern American investors and brokers - and their behavioral characteristics are becoming more noticeable in a crisis - they showed themselves in all their glory in the last week of May 1962, when the fluctuations in the stock market took on a very bizarre character. On Monday, May 28, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which has been tracked daily since 1897, fell 34.95 points at once, more than on any other day except October 28, 1929, when it fell by as much as 38.33 points. Trading volume on May 28, 1962 was 9,350,000 shares, the seventh largest daily turnover in the history of the New York Stock Exchange. On Tuesday, May 29, after a troubling morning in which most stocks fell well below their May 28 close, the market suddenly reversed direction and bounced up strongly. The Dow Jones index rose - although it was not a record increase - by as much as 27.03 points. A record (or near record) was set in trading volume: 14,750,000 shares were sold. This is indeed a daily record, except for the volume of trading on October 29, 1929, when the number of shares sold exceeded 16 million (later, in the late 1960s, volumes of 10, 12 and even 14 million shares became common; the 1929 record was broken April 1, 1968, and in the next few months, records fell and were set one after another). Then on May 31, after the Memorial Day holiday, the cycle ended; trading volume was 10,710,000 shares (fifth all-time), and the Dow rose 9.4 points, up slightly from the day the fever began.
The crisis ended in three days. Needless to say, the results of the autopsy were discussed much longer. As de la Vega remarked, the Amsterdam stock speculators were "very ingenious in inventing reasons" for the sudden drop in share prices. Naturally, it also took the wise men of Wall Street to explain why, in the midst of a very successful year, the market suddenly pecked its nose and almost went under. main reason were seen in President Kennedy's attacks in April on the captains of the steel industry who were intent on raising prices. However, in parallel, analysts drew a suggestive analogy between May 1962 and October 1929. Such a comparison was prompted by the approximate equality of the dynamics of prices and trading volume, not to mention the closeness of the numbers - 28 and 29 - which, of course, was pure coincidence, but caused ominous associations for many. True, everyone agreed that there were more differences than similarities. Regulations passed between 1929 and 1962 to limit the amount of credit given to purchase shares made it almost impossible for a player to lose all his money. In short, de la Vega's apt term for his beloved Amsterdam Stock Exchange in the 1680s - "gambling den" - was not well suited to the New York Stock Exchange between 1929 and 1962.
The crash of 1962 did not come all of a sudden: the alarms sounded, although they were noticed and correctly interpreted by very few observers. At the beginning of the year, the shares began to depreciate steadily. The fall accelerated, and the week preceding the crisis, that is, from May 21 to May 25, was the worst since June 1950. On the morning of Monday, May 28, brokers and dealers were clearly at a loss. Has the bottom been reached? Or will the fall continue? Opinions, as it became clear later, were divided. The service, which calculates the Dow Jones index and sends data to subscribers via teletype, showed some concerns that gripped it in the hour from the start of the mailings (9 hours) to the start of trading (10 hours). During this hour, the wide tape (Dow Jones data is printed on a vertically running tape 15.875 cm wide. The tape is called wide to distinguish it from the tape that prints specific stock prices - horizontally, 1.9 cm wide) showed that many of the securities that dealers traded over the weekend sending out requests for additional credit to customers lost heavily in value. From the data, it became clear that such a volume of transfer of assets into cash “has not been seen for many years”, and in addition, several encouraging reports followed - for example, that the Westinghouse company entered into a new contract with the Department of the Navy. But even de la Vega wrote that in the short term, “the news itself on the stock exchange is practically worthless.” The mood of investors is important.
With the mood, everything became clear literally in the first minutes after the opening of trading. At 10:11 a.m., the broadband reported: "Opening activity was mixed and very moderate." Encouraging information, because the word "mixed" meant that some securities rose and some fell in price. In addition, it is believed that a falling market is not so dangerous when it is dominated by moderate rather than violent activity. But complacency did not last long, because by 10:30 a.m. the narrow tape, on which prices and volumes of shares are fixed, began not only to lower prices, unwinding at the maximum possible speed - 500 characters per minute, but also to be late by as much as six minutes. This meant that the teletype could no longer keep up with the speed of transactions in the floor. Usually, when a transaction was made in the room at 11 Wall Street, the clerk wrote down the details on a piece of paper and sent it by pneumatic mail to a room on the fifth floor, where one of the secretary girls typed the details on a ticker to pass to the room. A delay of two or three minutes at the stock exchange is not considered late. Lateness - when more time elapses between sending a message by pneumatic mail and printing a quote on a teletypewriter ("The terms accepted on the exchange are chosen rather casually," de la Vega complained). In the early period, delays in the appearance of quotes on the tape were quite common, but they have become extremely rare since 1930, when tickers were installed that worked on the exchange in 1962. On October 24, 1929, when the teletype was 246 minutes behind, text on tape was printed at 285 characters per minute. Until May 1962, the biggest delay was the delay, never happened on a new car - 34 minutes.
Feverish activity in the hall grew, prices rolled down, but the situation did not yet seem desperate. The only thing that became clear by 11 o'clock was that the decline that began the previous week continued with moderate acceleration. But as the pace of trading grew, the tape was more and more late. By 10:55 a.m., the delay was 13 minutes; by 11 hours 14 minutes - 20; at 11:35 the delay was 28 minutes; at 11:58 the teletype was already 35 minutes late, and at 11:58 - 43 minutes (in order to somehow refresh the information on the tape, when the delay exceeds five minutes, trading is periodically suspended. the current prices of the leading stocks (the time required for this plus, of course, the delay time). By noon, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 9.86 points.
When Bill Gates asked Warren Buffett to recommend a good business book, he didn't hesitate to give him his copy of John Brooks' Business Adventures. Written over 40 years ago, this book chronicles America's corporate and financial life half a century ago. Wall Street stories are dramatic, engaging, and strikingly relevant. Gates himself says this about it: “The principles of business management do not change, and the past can become the basis for the development of ideas in the field of management, ... and even if you have the best product or business plan, it still does not mean anything, but if If you have a manager who is able to find new approaches to solving problems, then the company will have a great future.” 12 classic stories are tales of ingenious shenanigans and the volatile nature of the financial world. Brooks does not stoop to simplistic explanations of success, he covers the topic broadly, exploring its depth, talks about real dramas and moments of happy insights. Each of these stories is an example of how an exemplary company behaves either in moments of great triumph or in moments of failure.
* * *
The following excerpt from the book Business adventure. 12 Classic Wall Street Stories (John Brooks, 1959-1969) provided by our book partner - the company LitRes.
2. The fate of the Edsel
Fairy tale warning
Rise and flourish
In the US economic calendar, 1955 was the year of the automobile. Then American manufacturers sold 7,000,000 cars– 1,000,000 more than the average for previous years. In 1955, General Motors easily sold $325 million worth of common stock to private investors, and the car-driven stock market skyrocketed to such dizzying heights that a Congressional committee took an interest in its success. That year, Ford Motor Company decided to start designing and producing a new mid-range car, $2,400 to $4,000. Designed in the fashion of the day, the car was long, wide, low, richly adorned with chrome and ingenious gadgets. An engine of such power was installed on the car that a little more, and he could put the car into near-Earth orbit. Two years later, in September 1957, Ford Motor Company introduced this new car called Edsel. The world has not seen such a resounding advertisement for a new car since the release of the same company's Model A 30 years ago. The total cost of developing the car from design to the sale of the first sample amounted to over $ 250 million. As Business Week wrote (and no one denied this), it was the most expensive consumer product in the history of mankind. For a start, in the hope of getting back the money spent, Ford expected to sell 200,000 Edsels during the year.
Perhaps there is no person in the world who would not hear what happened in the end. Based on exact figures, it can be stated that in two years, two months and 15 days, Ford sold 109,466 Edsels, and hundreds, if not several thousand of them were bought by Ford plant management, dealers, salesmen, advertisers, assemblers and other employees of the company. who had a vested interest in the success of the new car. 109,466 cars is less than 1% of the total number of cars sold in the United States during this period, and on November 19, 1959, having lost, for some independent estimates, about $350 billion, the company ceased production of the Edsel.
How is this possible? How could a company with so much money and experience make such a huge mistake? Even before the Edsel was discontinued, the more literate members of the automotive community had an answer to this question so simple and seemingly reasonable that it is the one that, despite the existence of other reasonable answers, is considered correct. The Edsel, these people said, was designed, named, advertised, and marketed under the influence of slavish dependence on poll results. public opinion and research on customer motivation. The developers came to the conclusion that when the public is lured too prudently, she turns away and goes to a more rude, but sincere and attentive boyfriend. Faced with the understandable reticence of Ford Motor Company, which likes to document and publish its blunders no more than any other company, I decided to find out everything I could about the Edsel failure. Research made me convinced that we see only the tip of the iceberg.
First, although the "edsel" supposed to advertise and promote in every possible way based on the preferences expressed during the polls, the methods of charlatans selling snake potions have crept into advertising, more intuitive than scientific. car supposed name again on the basis of statistically verified preferences; however, science was discarded at the last moment and the car was given a name in honor of the father of the company's president - it was reminiscent of 19th-century brands and gave off drops of the Danish king or saddle oil. As for the design, it was developed without even trying to examine the survey data. The design was chosen by a method that has been used for years, based on the opinions of several committees within the company. Thus, the common explanation for the Edsel failure, on closer examination, turned out to be a myth in the colloquial sense of the word. However, facts can form a myth of a symbolic type - a story of failure in twentieth-century America.
The Edsel story began in the fall of 1948. Seven years remained before the final decision. Henry Ford II, president and boss of the company since the death of his grandfather, Henry I, in 1947 proposed to an administrative committee, which included executive vice president Ernest Breach, to conduct appropriate studies and consider the feasibility of launching a new and completely original mid-range car. The research is over. This was a common practice, for modest-income owners of Fords, Plymouths, and Chevrolets rushed to shed these low-caste symbols as soon as their annual income exceeded $5,000 and turned their eyes to mid-priced cars. From Ford's point of view, everything was fine, except for the fact that, for some unknown reason, the owners of Fords did not change their cars for Mercury, the only moderately expensive car of the Ford Motor Company, but for cars of other companies, such as like Oldsmobile, Buick and Pontiac (General Motors), and to a lesser extent Dodge and De Soto (Chrysler). Lewis Crusoe, then vice president of Ford Motor, was by no means exaggerating when he said, "We were increasingly becoming customers of General Motors."
In 1950, the Korean War broke out, and Ford had no choice but to actually become a client of General Motors: at that moment, there was no question of developing a new car. The executive committee of the company postponed the research recommended by the president, and for two years no one was engaged in the creation of a new machine. At the end of 1952, when it became clear that the war was drawing to a close, the company decided to return to this issue and pick up where it left off. The project was taken over by a group called the Advanced Goods Planning Committee. The committee assigned development to the Lincoln-Mercury department, headed by Richard Craffey. Craffy, former engineer and the sales consultant who began working for Ford in 1947 was a powerful, gloomy fellow with an invariably thoughtful look. The son of a compositor at a small country magazine in Minnesota had—although he didn't know it at the time—good reason to be confused. Fate decreed that this man, who was directly responsible for the Edsel, had to go through a story of fleeting glory, misadventures and the painful death of a new offspring.
After two years of work, in 1954 the Commodity Planning Committee submitted a six-volume progress report to the company's executive committee. Based on extensive statistics, the authors predicted the onset of the "American Millennium" in 1965. By that time, the members of the committee calculated, the gross national product would reach $535 billion, having increased by $135 billion in ten years (in fact, this part of the "millennium" came a little earlier; GDP crossed the threshold of $535 billion in 1962, and in 1965 reached $681 billion). billion). The number of personal cars in the country will exceed 70,000,000, that is, an increase of 20,000,000. Half of the families will have an annual income of more than $ 5,000, and more than 40% of cars sold will be in the middle price category or higher. The authors of the report paint a detailed picture of America in 1965 in the image and likeness of Detroit: banks are oozing money, roads are clogged with huge, mind-blowing, moderately expensive cars, and wealthy citizens are eager to acquire them in increasing quantities. The moral of the fable is clear. If Ford doesn't immediately create a mid-priced car - new, not redesigned - and make it popular, then the company will lose its chance to stay in the sun in the American car market.
On the other hand, Ford bosses were well aware of the enormous risk involved in introducing a new car to the market. For example, they knew that from the beginning of the automobile era, out of 2900 firms - among them the Black Crow (the Black Crow, 1905), the Average Man's Car (1906), the Beetle (the Bug-mobile, 1907), "Dan Patch" (Dan Patch, 1911) and "Lone Star" (the Lone Star, 1920) - only 20 survived. Ford also knew about the losses suffered by the automotive industry after World War II: Crosley ceased to exist , and Kaiser Motors, although still breathing in 1954, was dying (members of the Advanced Goods Planning Committee must have looked at each other somberly a year later, when Henry Kaiser wrote, saying goodbye to his offspring: “We expected the loss of 50 million thrown into the pond auto industry, but did not expect them to sink without causing even a slight ripple"). Ford executives also knew that none of the other members of the "Big Three" (meaning General Motors and Chrysler) dared to create new brands after GM's La Salle in 1927 and Chrysler's Plymouth in 1928. . Yes, and Ford himself has not tried to create a new middle-class car since 1938 - after the development of the Mercury.
But the folks at Ford were determined to bullshit, so determined that they threw five times as much money into the auto industry's pond as Henry Kaiser. In April 1955, Henry Ford II, Breach, and other members of the executive committee formally approved the findings of the Advanced Goods Planning Committee and, in response to its proposals, established a new division, the Special Goods Division. Headed the department already familiar to us Kraffi. Thus, the company authorized the work of design engineers who, having guessed in advance which way the wind was blowing, had been working on a new project for several months. Since neither they nor Craffey had any idea what their offspring would be called, it was named - and literally everyone at Ford knew about it - "E-car", that is, an experimental car.
The person directly responsible for the design of the E-car - or, to use a nasty modern word, "styling" - was a Canadian named Roy Brown. He was not yet 40 years old. After studying industrial design at the Detroit Academy of Arts and before developing the E-car, he had a hand in the design of radios, motor boats, stained glassware, Cadillacs, Oldsmobiles, and Lincolns. Brown recalled the enthusiasm with which he accepted the offer to participate in a new project: “Our goal was to create vehicle, which would be unique to be immediately distinguished from 19 other models that were driving on the roads of America at that time. Brown wrote this in London while he was chief designer at the Ford Motor Company, Ltd., which makes trucks, tractors and small cars. He continued: “We came up with one trick - photographed from a distance all 19 brands of cars - and it became clear to us that from a distance of several hundred feet they were almost indistinguishable from each other, like peas. We decided to create a style that is both unique and recognizable.”
While the E-car was being born in blueprint form on the drawing boards of the design office, located along with the administrative divisions in Ford's fiefdom of Dearborn, on the outskirts of Detroit, the work proceeded under the melodramatic, if fruitless, secrecy that is inevitable in the automobile industry. If the keys suddenly fell into the hands of competitors, the locks on the bureau doors would be changed within a quarter of an hour. Security personnel were on duty around the clock in the corridor, and a telescope was installed on the window, aimed at elevated areas of the surrounding area, in order to immediately detect dug-in spies. All these precautions, no matter how sophisticated they seemed, were doomed to failure, because they did not protect against Trojan horse in Detroit, referring to a designer defector whose propensity for treason made it easier for competitors. Naturally, no one understood this better than Ford's rivals, but the cloak-and-dagger game is useful in the interest of additional publicity. Approximately twice a week, Craffey, with his head bowed and his hands in his pockets, visited the design office, conferred with Brown, gave advice and expressed wishes. Craffy was not one of those who evaluate the results of creativity immediately and in general. On the contrary, he delved into the development of design meticulously, in every possible detail. Meticulously discussed with Brown the shape of the wings, chrome decorations, type of handles, and so on and so forth. If Michelangelo added any solutions to the image of David, he kept them to himself; but Craffey's thinking was born of the computing age. He later estimated that he and his collaborators had made about 4,000 improvements to the design of the E-Car. He believed then that if in each case it was possible to find the right solution, then in the end you would get a stylistically flawless car - in any case, unique and recognizable at the same time. Craffey later admitted that he had a hard time coordinating the creative process with a system, mainly because many of the 4,000 decisions weren't made in the same way. "At first it is accepted common decision, then they begin to concretize it,” he said. – The modification process goes on continuously, others are layered on some changes, but in the end you have to stop at something, as it starts to run out of time. If not for the timing, the process would drag on indefinitely.”
The design of the "E-car" was completely ready by the summer of 1955, apart from minor tweaks. As a bewildered world learned two years later, the most unique solution was a yoke-shaped radiator, vertically cut into the center of the traditionally wide and low front, such a mixture of uniqueness and recognition. Everyone noticed it, although not everyone admired it. True, both Craffey and Brown neglected the recognizability in the design of the rear of the car, to which they attached wide horizontal fenders, which contrasted with the long "tail fins" that were then in vogue, as well as in the design of the gearbox. Gears were switched by buttons embedded in the steering wheel hub. In a public speech given shortly before the model car was shown to the public, Craffey made a couple of allusions to the style, which, in his words, is so "remarkable" that "the car can be immediately distinguished from the appearance of cars from other companies both in front and from the sides, and from behind. In the cabin, Craffey continued, “the apotheosis of the pushbutton era, but without the extravagances of Buck Rogers ,” is coming. And finally the day came when all the senior management of Ford in full force saw the car. The sight was almost apocalyptic. On August 15, 1955, in ceremonial silence, while Craffey, Brown, and their staff rubbed their hands nervously with excitement, the members of the Commodity Planning Committee, as well as Henry Ford II and Breech, critically squinted their eyes, waiting for the covers to fall and their a full-size model of a car made of technical plasticine with foil depicting duralumin and chrome will appear before the eyes. As eyewitnesses recall, the silence lasted for a whole minute, and then the audience rewarded the new car with thunderous applause. Nothing like this had happened at an internal company presentation since old Henry built the first self-propelled carriage on his knee in 1896.
Here is one of the most convincing and popular explanations for the failure of the Edsel: the car died because of the long time between the decision to manufacture it and the appearance on the market. A few years later, compact cars became popular, turning the old status ladder 180 degrees. And the Edsel was a giant step in the wrong direction. But in hindsight, everyone is strong, and in 1955, in the era of large machines, no one saw this. American ingenuity that gave rise to electric lighting, aircrafts, "Lizzie's Tin", the atomic bomb, and even a tax system that allows a person to exempt income from taxes by making a donation in charitable foundation until she found a way to release the car for sale shortly after the blueprints were made. The production of the desired steel profile, the preparation of the dealer network, the advertising campaign and the need for management permission for each next step, as well as other ritual dance steps that are considered necessary in Detroit as necessary as air, usually take at least two years. It is difficult to guess the tastes of future consumers even when planning small changes in the model for the year ahead; much harder to create a completely new car, such as "E-car". To release it, some completely new movements had to be added to the usual dance - for example, giving a new product a unique personality, choosing an appropriate name, not to mention asking the opinion of all-knowing oracles in an attempt to understand whether production is appropriate at all some car in the economic situation in a few years.
Scrupulously following the prescribed procedure, the special goods department called on the director of market planning, David Wallace, to think about how to give the new car a unique personality. And what to call it, of course. Wallace, a lean, wiry man with a resolute jaw and a pipe still in his mouth, was soft, slow, and thoughtful in speech and demeanor, reminiscent of a typical college professor—as if stamped. In fact, Wallace's career was not entirely scientific. Before joining Ford in 1955, he graduated from Westminster College in Pennsylvania. He survived the Great Depression as a construction worker in New York City, and then spent ten years in the market research department of Time magazine. But it's all about looks, and Wallace admitted that while working at the Ford plant, he consciously emphasized a professorial image that helped him deal with Dearborn's good-natured and rough practices. “Our department could even be called some kind of brain trust,” Wallace stated with undisguised satisfaction. He lived in Ann Arbor, absorbing the academic atmosphere of the University of Michigan, not without reason refused to move to Dearborn or Detroit - from there, from the unbearable atmosphere, he fled after work. It is difficult to say how successfully he promoted his vision of the E-car design, but he was quite successful in self-representation. “I don't think Dave was working for Ford for financial reasons,” said his former boss Craffy. “Dave has a highbrow, and it seems to me that he viewed the work as an intellectual challenge.” There is hardly a better proof of Wallace's ability to impress.
Wallace himself clearly and frankly stated the motives that he - along with his assistants - were guided by when creating the external appearance of the E-car. "We said to ourselves, 'Let's face it, there's not much difference between a cheap Chevy and an expensive Cadillac,'" he says. - Forget about any tinsel, and you will see that, in essence, they are one and the same. However, there is something in the mental organization of some people that makes them buy a Cadillac at all costs, despite its high cost, and perhaps precisely because of it. We came to the conclusion that cars are a kind of means of realizing a dream. There is some irrational factor in people that makes them choose this or that car. This factor is not related to the mechanism, but to the individuality of the machine, as the buyer understands it. Naturally, we wanted to endow the “E-car” with such an attraction for the majority. Our advantage over other mid-range car manufacturers was that we didn't have to change a pre-existing and boring model. We had to create what we wanted from scratch.”
The first step in determining the specific appearance of the "E-car" was Wallace's decision to evaluate individual qualities already existing mid-range cars, as well as cheap cars, since by 1955 their prices had reached the average level. Wallace convinced the Bureau of Applied sociological research of Columbia University to survey 800 new car owners in Peoria and 800 new car owners in San Bernardino to find out how they rate the aesthetic and psychological merits of various brands of cars (in undertaking this commercial study, Columbia University insisted on its independence and won the right to publication of the results). “The idea was to understand how groups of city dwellers react to cars,” says Wallace. We didn't need a cut. We wanted to get information about personality factors. We have chosen Peoria as a typical city in the Midwest, where there is no influence of extraneous factors, such as, for example, a General Motors plant. San Bernardino was chosen because the West Coast market is very important to car manufacturers. In addition, the market there is completely different - people are more inclined to buy bright, catchy cars.
The questions proposed by the university experts covered almost every aspect of car use, with the exception of such things as cost, safety and durability. Wallace wanted to evaluate mainly the impression of different brands of cars. Who, in their opinion, is inclined to buy a Chevy or, say, a Buick? What age or gender? What social status? From the answers, Wallace was able to easily isolate the individual portrait of each brand. Ford cars seemed to the respondents fast, masculine, devoid of any social pretensions. They tend to be ridden by workers and ranchers and automotive mechanics. On the contrary, the Chevrolet seemed to respondents older, wiser and slower, not so masculine, more refined and suitable for priests. The image of the Buick was strongly associated with the image of a middle-aged woman; at least the Buick was smaller than a man—if it's okay to give cars a floor—but there was a bit of a devil in the Buick nonetheless, and his (her) happy lover could be a lawyer, a doctor, or a dance bandleader. As for the Mercury, it was seen as a fast, torquey car suitable for young aggressive drivers. Thus, despite more high price, this car was associated with people who had the same income as the average Ford owner, and therefore it is not surprising that Ford owners were in no hurry to change to Mercury. This strange contradiction between image and fact, coupled with the fact that in fact all four models were very similar and had almost the same power, only confirmed Wallace's assumption that the car enthusiast, like a young man seized with love ardor, is not able to estimate the object of his passion in how much. some rational manner.
Having completed the studies in Peoria and San Bernardino and summed up the results, the scientists were able to answer not only these, but also some other questions. They were related to cars of the middle price category only in the minds of the most sophisticated thinkers from sociology. “To be honest, we cheated a little,” Wallace said. “It was a pretty rough screening.” In the dry residue, the catch after analysis led scientists to the following conclusion:
After evaluating the data obtained among respondents with an annual income of 4 to 11 thousand dollars, we ... observe the following. A significant proportion of respondents [when asked about their ability to mix cocktails] answered that they can do it “to some extent” ... Apparently, they are not completely confident in their ability. It can be concluded that these respondents are in the learning stage. They know how to mix martinis or manhattans, but that's about the end of their cocktail repertoire.
Wallace, who dreamed of the ideal, beloved by all, "E-car", was delighted with such pearls, which poured down on Dearborn as if from a cornucopia. However, when it came time to make a final decision, he clearly understood that he had to discard any side husks like the ability to mix cocktails and return to the problem of the image of the car. And here, as it seemed to him, the main trap - in full accordance with what seemed to be the trend of the times - could be the temptation to make the car the embodiment of masculinity, youth and speed. Indeed, the following passage from the Columbia University report explicitly warned against such insanity:
We can assume that women who drive cars are more mobile than women who do not have cars, and in addition, they enjoy the fact that they can play a traditionally male role. But ... there is no doubt that, no matter how much women enjoy driving and no matter what social image they create, they want the car to look like a woman - perhaps practical and down to earth - but a woman.
In early 1956, Wallace compiled his department's data in a report to the management of the Special Goods Department. The report was titled "The Market and Individual Characteristics of the E-Car" and was replete with facts and statistics, interspersed with brief inserts in italics or capital letters, so that a busy manager could catch the point in a few seconds. The text began with philosophical reasoning, smoothly flowing into conclusions:
What happens when the owner sees his car in the image women, but himself the male? Does the discrepancy between the image of the car and the image of the owner affect the purchase plans? The answer is clearly in the affirmative. If there is a conflict between the properties of the owner and the image of the car, then the owner will most likely prefer a different brand. In other words, if the buyer's personality differs from his idea of the owner of such and such a car, then he will buy another car in which he will feel more comfortable.
It should be noted that the "conflict" in this sense can be of two kinds. If the car has a powerful and clear image, then, obviously, the owner, who has the opposite character, will have an internal conflict. But it can also occur if the image of the car is blurry and unclear. In this case, the owner is also at a loss, because he cannot identify himself with the machine.
The question, therefore, is how to navigate between the Scylla of the too-clear image of the automobile and the Charybdis of the weak image. The report contained an unequivocal answer to this question: "We should bet on the absence or weak expression of contradictions." In terms of the age category, "E-car" should not be either young or old, but approach the characteristics of the good old "oldsmobiles". As far as social affiliation was concerned, it was bluntly said that the car should occupy a step just below the Buick and the Oldsmobile. As for the delicate issue of gender, here it is necessary, without transgressing boundaries, to follow the example of the diverse and fluid, like Proteus, "Oldsmobile". In general, we get (keeping the Wallace style):
Most Preferred personal characteristic E-kara: A SMART CAR FOR YOUNG MANAGERS OR A CAR FOR A WORKING FAMILY MAKING A CAREER.
Smart car: a pledge of recognition of style and good taste of the owner from his surroundings.
Youthful: the image of the car corresponds to the tastes of brave, but responsible adventurers.
Executive or knowledgeable professional: millions of people claim this status regardless of their ability to achieve it.
Career: “E-car believes in you, son; we'll help you get through!"
However, before brave and responsible adventurers could believe in the E-car, it had to be given a name. Early on, Craffey suggested that the Ford family name the new car after Edsel Ford, the only son of old Henry, president of the Ford Motor Company from 1918 until his death in 1943, and the father of the third generation of the family, Henry II, Benson, and William Clay. The brothers told Craffey that his father would not have liked his name on millions of wheel covers. They suggested that the special goods department should look for a different name. The department began to fulfill the order with a zeal that was not inferior to the design one. In the late summer and early fall of 1955, Wallace hired workers from several public opinion centers to interview scores of passers-by on the streets of New York, Chicago, Willow Run, and Ann Arbor. 2000 names were proposed. The interviewers did not ask if the names "Mars", "Jupiter", "Pirate", "Ariel", "Arrow", "Dart" or "Ovation" are good, but asked what free associations certain words evoke. Having received the answer, they found out which word (words) were opposite in meaning, believing that on a subconscious level, the opposite is the same part of the name as the reverse is a full part of the coin along with the obverse. The department of special goods, having received the survey data, concluded: the results cannot be interpreted unambiguously. In the meantime, Craffy and the team engaged in another type of search. They periodically locked themselves in a dark room and, using a narrow beam of light, looked through the cards one after another. possible titles and then voiced their impressions. One of the participants spoke in favor of the name "phoenix", because it is a symbol of perseverance and power. Another liked "Altair" because the name of the star would be the first in any alphabetical list of car brands (as the anaconda tops the alphabetical lists of reptiles). Once, when everyone was already nodding off, someone suddenly started up, asked to stop laying out the cards and asked uncertainly if it seemed to him that the name “Buick” flashed a couple of cards back. Wallace, who played the role of impresario at the gatherings, nodded and smiled indulgently, puffing on his pipe.
Card meetings proved as fruitless as street polls, and at this stage, Wallace decided to get out of a genius that is inaccessible to the ordinary earthly mind, entering into a correspondence with the poetess Marianne Moore. The correspondence was later published in The New York er and later in a book published by the Morgan Library. “We would like the name, through associations or other subconscious mental movements, to evoke an indescribable feeling of grace, fluidity, beauty and perfection.” In Miss Moore's letters, Wallace himself reached incredible heights of grace. If you're wondering which of the celestials of Dearborn was suddenly inspired by the idea of turning to Miss Moore for help, you'll be disappointed. The proposal was made not by a celestial, but by the wife of one of Wallace's young employees. Young lady she had recently graduated from Holyoke College, and Marianne Moore gave a lecture there one day. If the former Holyoke student's husband's bosses had gone further and adopted any of Miss Moore's suggested names - "Smart Bullet" (Intelligent Bullet), for example, or "Turtle Shield" (Utopian Turtletop), "Enameled Bullet" (Bullet Cloisonné) , "Pastelogram" (Pastelogram), "Urban mongoose" (Mongoose Civique) or "Andante con motto" (Andante con Moto) ("Associated with the motor?" Miss Moore was asked in connection with the last option), - it is not known, what an amazing fate would have awaited the E-car. But the chiefs did not accept any of the names proposed by the poetess. Rejecting her ideas along with their own, they called Foote, Cone & Belding, an advertising agency that would later take over the E-car ad. With Foote's characteristic Madison Avenue energy, Cone & Belding organized a competition among employees of their New York, London and Chicago affiliates, promising the winner a gift of a new car when it goes on sale. In just a few days, the office had a list of 18,000 names, including Piqué, Lightning, Benson, Henry, and Bustard (if in doubt, read the last word backwards). Suspecting—and not without reason—that the Special Products Department would find the list a bit unwieldy, the agency went to work and whittled it down to 6,000 items before submitting it to Ford. "It's done," the advertising agency's representative announced triumphantly, tossing a bulky folder on the table. “Six thousand titles in alphabetical order with cross-references.”
Craffy was nearly speechless. “But we don't need 6,000 titles, we only need one,” he said. - The only thing".
Meanwhile, the situation was becoming critical, as the factories began to stamp the details of the new car, and some of them were supposed to show off the name. On Thursday, Foote, Cone & Belding canceled all vacations at the agency and switched to emergency mode. Branches in New York and Chicago were asked to reduce the list from 6,000 to 10 on their own and complete the work before the end of the weekend. Before the deadline was up, the affiliates had submitted the lists to the Special Merchandise Department, and by an incredible coincidence—and the advertisers claimed it was indeed a coincidence—the four names on the two lists were the same: Corsair, Remembrance, Pacer, and Ranger. . This coincidence slipped through, despite meticulous checking of the lists. “The corsair reigned supreme,” says Wallace. “In addition to other arguments in its favor, this name performed admirably during street polls. Free associations with a corsair were very romantic - "pirate", "thug" and all that. As the opposite in meaning of the word, something equally attractive sounded - “princess”, for example. It was just what we needed."
Corsair or not corsair, but in the early spring of 1956, the E-car was still called the Edsel, although the public did not know about it until the fall. The landmark decision was made at a meeting of Ford executives, held in the absence of all three brothers. The meeting was chaired by Brich, who became chairman of the board in 1955. He behaved so unceremoniously that no one else thought about either corsairs or princesses. After listening to all the proposals, he said: “I don’t like any. Let's look at other options." Previously rejected options were considered, including the name "Edsel", although his sons were unequivocal about their father's possible attitude towards such a name. Breach stubbornly led his subordinates on the course he needed until they chose the Edsel. “That's what we'll call the car,” Breach summed up with calm determination. The E-car was supposed to be produced in four main versions, and Breech reassured his colleagues by saying that the four most popular names - "Corsair", "Remembrance", "Pacer" and "Ranger" - could be used as additional names for each of the four models. After this decision, they called Henry II, who at that time was resting in Nassau. He said that if this was the decision of the executive committee, he would obey it, provided that Benson and William Clay did not object. A few days later the brothers agreed.
A little later, Wallace wrote to Ms. Moore: “We have chosen a name… It lacks the touch of feeling, the joy and poignancy we were looking for. But in the chosen name there is dignity and meaning, dear to each of us. That name, Miss Moore, is Edsel. I hope you understand us."
It is easy to guess that the rumor about this decision caused a fit of despair among the supporters of the more metaphorical names proposed by Foote, Cone & Belding. None of the contestants won a new car. The desperation was intensified by the fact that the name "Edsel" did not pass through the competition at all. But the despondency of the contestants paled in comparison to the sense of hopelessness that gripped the employees of the special goods department. Some felt that naming the car after the former president of the company, who had given birth to its current president, smacked of a dynastic smell, alien to the American character. Others who, like Wallace, relied on the vagaries of the collective unconscious, were sure that "Edsel" was a catastrophically dissonant name. What free associations did it evoke? Pretzel, diesel. What is the meaning of this name? No. But the decision was made, and all that remained was to keep a good face on a bad game. Not all employees of the department of special goods experienced torment. For example, Craffey was among those who did not object to the adopted name, and later refused to acknowledge the correctness of those who argued that the misadventures and collapse of the Edsel began at the time of his christening.
Indeed, Craffey was so pleased with this turn of events that at 11:00 am on November 19, 1956, when Ford blessed the world with the news that the E-car had been named the Edsel, he accompanied the event with a few melodramatic gestures. As soon as 11 struck, telephone operators began answering callers with the words "Edsel Department listening" instead of "Specials Department"; all documentation was now placed on the tables and sent to the addressees under the heading "Department" Edsel "". Above the front of the department building was pompously raised a proud stainless steel inscription "EDSEL DEPARTMENT". Craffy himself, although he remained on the ground, also soared, albeit in a figurative sense of the word: he was awarded the august title of vice president of the company and general manager of the Edsel department.
From the administration's point of view, this spectacular leap from the old to the new was nothing more than a harmless red herring. In an atmosphere of the strictest secrecy, near-finished samples of the new car with the Edsel marking on the structural elements were already tested at the Dearborn test site. Brown and his staff were busy styling the next year's Edsel. Dealers - in preparation new network retail"edsela". Foote, Cone & Belding, freed from the painful burden of finding a suitable name, under the personal guidance of Fairfax Cone himself, the director of the company, began to develop a strategy for advertising a new car. In doing this, Cone relied on Wallace's instructions, which was the "edsel" personality formula that Wallace had come up with long before the name fad: "Smart Machine for Young Executives and Working Families Making Careers." Cone enthusiastically agreed with the concept, but made one amendment to it, replacing the words "young leaders" with the words "middle-income families", rightly judging that among potential buyers there are significantly more people with average incomes than young leaders and even those who themselves them imagine. Encouraged by the prospect of at least $10 million in revenue, Cone told reporters in several interviews exactly what kind of campaign he was planning to run advertising Edsel. Her tone will be calm and confident. If possible, it is better to avoid the word “new”: yes, it characterizes the car that was born, but does not reveal its properties. Advertising should approach the classic examples of the genre. “It will be terrible if advertising starts to compete with the car,” Cone explained to reporters. “We hope that no one will say: “Listen, did you see an advertisement for Edsel in yesterday’s newspaper?” we hope that hundreds of thousands of people will repeat again and again to each other: “Have you read anything about the Edsel?” or “Have you seen the car by any chance?” We must always grasp the difference between advertising and sales. From this it becomes obvious Cone's confidence in success. advertising campaign and the machine itself. Like a venerable chess grandmaster who does not doubt victory, he, making moves, simultaneously revealed his brilliant ideas.
Experts still speak with undisguised admiration of how masterfully the Edsel department attracted dealers and what a huge failure occurred as a result. Usually a reputable, well-known manufacturer on the market sells new model through dealers already cooperating with it, for whom at first the new car becomes a small addition to the main sales volume. But that was not the case with the Edsel. Craffey received instructions from the very top, according to which he had to call under the banner even dealers who had contracts with other manufacturers or with other divisions of the company - Ford and Lincoln-Mercury (dealers mobilized in this way were not required to break their previous contracts, but they the queue had to spare no effort for the successful sales of the new Ford car). By the day sales began (after a long and difficult search, it was decided that this would be September 4, 1957), 1,200 Edsel dealers were mobilized from sea to sea. These were not the first dealers that came across. Craffy made it clear to everyone that the Edsel department would only sign contracts with those who actually proved their ability to sell cars without resorting to dirty methods, bordering on criminal, which has recently created such a bad reputation for the automotive business. “We just need to get qualified dealers with quality service capabilities,” Craffy said at the time. - A customer who is poorly served when buying a famous brand will blame the dealer. If he buys an Edsel, he will blame the car.” A difficult task was set before 12 hundred dealers, because not a single dealer, regardless of qualification, can easily change the brand of the car he sells with the ease of a magician. The average dealer always has a hundred thousand dollars to spare, but in big cities the investment can be even higher. The dealer must hire salesmen, mechanics and administrators, buy tools, technical literature and numbers that cost $5,000 to set. Moreover, he has to pay in cash for the machines received from the factory.
Mobilizing forces to sell the Edsel was JC (Larry) Doyle, second only to Craffy himself in the department, the manager of sales and marketing. This veteran worked for Ford for 40 years, starting as an office courier in Kansas City. He devoted all his free time from work to trade and became a seasoned specialist in his field. On the one hand, he gave the impression of a kind and thoughtful person, which distinguished him from the army of carefree and impudent salesmen who flooded car showrooms. On the other hand, he was old-fashioned and showed a healthy skepticism about the analysis of the gender and status of cars. Ironically characterizing these aspirations, he used to say: "When I play billiards, I always stand on the floor with one foot." Still, he knew how cars were sold, which was all the Edsel department needed. Recalling how he and his staff succeeded in the fantastic task of persuading solid and solid people who had achieved success in one of the most difficult branches of trade to break their old lucrative contracts in favor of a new and risky one, Doyle recalled: “When in early 1957 we received the first few Edsels, then they delivered a couple of pieces in our five regional salons. Needless to say, we carefully locked them up and lowered the blinds. Dealers of other brands were eager to see the new car, if only out of curiosity, and this gave us the right leverage. We announced that we would show the car only to those who would join us, and then we sent managers to the surrounding cities to contact local leading dealers on the spot. If we couldn't get through to Dealer #1, we went to Dealer #2. Somehow, we managed to make sure that no one could see the Edsel without first listening to an hour-long lecture on its merits. This method worked great." She really worked. By the middle of the summer of 1957, it became clear that by the day sales began, the Edsel was provided with many excellent dealers (although it was not possible to reach the desired number of 1200, a couple of dozen were not enough). Indeed, many dealers who sold other brands were so confident in the success of the Edsel or were so enamored with the singing of Doyle's sirens that they decided to sign a contract with Ford at a glance at the car. Doyle's people insisted on taking a closer look at the car, while extolling its merits, but the would-be dealers brushed aside these warnings and demanded a contract without delay. In hindsight, it is clear that Doyle's people could give lessons to the notorious Pied Piper from the old German fairy tale .
Now that the Edsel was a concern for more than the people of Dearborn, Ford had to move on—there was no turning back. “Before Doyle came into play, the whole program could be wound up at any time by the decision of senior management, but when dealers began to sign real contracts, the delivery of cars became a matter of honor,” Craffey explained the situation. Problems were solved with dizzying speed. In early June 1957, the company announced that of the $250 million it had spent on the Edsel, $150 million had gone into pre-production, including retooling the Ford and Mercury factories to meet the demands of the new car; 50 million spent on tools and equipment; 50 million for advertising and promotion. Also in June, a copy of the Edsel, destined to become the star of a television commercial, was transported under the cover of secrecy in a closed van to Hollywood, where, in a locked sound box, under heavy guard, it was shown in front of the cameras to several carefully selected actors, who swore that not a single careless word will fall from their lips until the day of the official start of sales. For this delicate filming operation, the Edsel department, with a fair amount of insight, hired Cascade Pictures, which worked for the Atomic Energy Commission (A.E.C.), and, as far as is known, there was not even an accidental leak of information. “We took the same precautions we took with AEC,” a stern Cascade spokesman later said. Within a few weeks, the Edsel division's paid staff reached 1,800, and about 15,000 new jobs were created in the refurbished facilities. On July 15, the first Edsels began rolling off assembly lines in Somerville, Mave, Louisville, and San Jose. On the same day, Doyle recorded another feat: Charles Kreisler, a Manhattan dealer who was considered one of the best representatives of this shop and worked for Oldsmobile before being lured away by the Ford siren from Dearborn, signed the contract for the sale of Edsels. On July 22, the first Edsel advertisement appeared in Life. Black and white photography the car was placed on the U-turn. The car sped along the highway at such a speed that its contours looked blurry. “Recently, some mysterious cars appeared on the roads,” read the explanatory text. The ad went on to say that this was what the Edsel looked like during a road test. The advertising text ended on a bravura note: "Edsel is in a hurry to get you." Two weeks later, Life ran another ad for a white-covered car parked at the entrance to Ford's design center. This time with the following headline: "A resident of your city recently made a decision that will change his whole life." It was further said that a certain person decided to become an Edsel dealer.
During the difficult summer of 1957, Gail Warnock, director of public relations, became the head man in the Edsel department. His task was not so much to arouse public interest in the car - a legion of other people did this not without success - but to keep this interest in a state of heat that could prompt the purchase of a new car or on the very first day of sales - the company talked about the Day "Edsela", - or immediately after. Warnock, a dapper, tidy, affable Indiana-born man with a tiny mustache, had previously worked as a fairground advertiser, and so the ineradicable spirit of the fairground barker was present in the work of the modern public relations officer, honeyed and sweet by definition. Recalling the call to Dearborn, Warnock says, "Dick Craffey tempted me in the fall of 1955 with the words, 'I want you to program the entire A-car campaign from today to when it goes on sale.' I replied, "To be honest, Dick, I don't understand what you mean by 'program'." He replied that I should look into the future, catch the tip and spin the entire tape back. For me it was something new. I was accustomed to taking advantage of the opportunities that opened up here and now, but very soon I was convinced that Dick was right. Creating an advertisement for "E-car" is not difficult. In early 1956, when the car was still called the "E-car," Craffey briefly mentioned it in a speech in Portland. We made a small leak in the local press, but the wire agencies did their job, and the news spread throughout the country. Newspaper clippings came to us by the kilo. It was then that I realized what a headache we would soon face. The public is seized with a hysterical desire to see a new car, a dream car, the equal of which the world has not yet seen. I said to Craffy, “When they see that this car, like the others, has four wheels and one motor, they will most likely be very disappointed.”
Everyone agreed that the surest way to maintain a balance between overexposure and reticence was to say nothing about the car as a whole, but from time to time to reveal its most seductive features - that is, to arrange a kind of car striptease (out of shame, Warnock himself could not use this phrase , but was very pleased to see her in the New York Times). This line of behavior sometimes broke - sometimes by accident, sometimes deliberately. The first time was in the summer, shortly before the day of the car's unveiling, when reporters literally laid siege to Craffey, persuading him to authorize Warnock to show them the car on a "see it and forget it" basis. Then, when the new cars were delivered to the salons on vans, it was covered with a tarpaulin so that it, fluttering in the wind, slightly opened different parts of the car, further piqued the interest. The speeches were relentless. In this field, the four departments in particular excelled - Craffey, Doyle, Emmet Judge (director of sales and production planning) and Robert Copeland, assistant general manager of sales, responsible for advertising, promotion and training of personnel. The four of them moved around the country at such a speed that Warnock, to keep his finger on the pulse, marked their movements with colored flags on a map hanging in his office: “So, Craffy is going from Atlanta to New Orleans, and Doyle is going from Cansil Bluffs in Salt Lake City. Thus began Warnock's morning in Dearborn. He slowly finished his second cup of coffee and rearranged pins with flags on the map.
Although Craffey's audience that summer consisted predominantly of bankers and financial companies who, he hoped, would lend money to the Edsel dealers, his speeches were very restrained and sober; he spoke very cautiously about the prospects for a new car. This prudence was not unfounded, for the general economic situation of the country forced even more optimists to think about it than Craffey. In July 1957, the stock market began to fall, marking what is now remembered as the 1958 recession. Then, in early August, there was a decrease in sales of cars of the middle price category, released in 1957. The overall situation was deteriorating so rapidly that at the end of the month, Automotive News reported that the warehouses of dealers of all automobile companies had accumulated a record number of unsold new cars in history. If Craffey had a desire to return to Dearborn for consolation during his trips, then he was forced to put these thoughts out of his head, for in August the Mercury, a horse from the same stable, bucked. Mercury launched a 30-day, $1 million advertising campaign aimed at buyers concerned about affordability. This meant that the newcomer would have a hard time: there was a clear hint that the 1957 Mercury, sold at a discount by most dealers, was cheaper than a new Edsel. At the same time, sales of the Rambler, America's only subcompact, were creeping up ominously. In the face of gloomy omens, Craffey began to end his speeches with a hackneyed anecdote about the president of an unsuccessful dog food company telling his directors, "Gentlemen, let's face it: dogs don't like our product." “As far as we can tell,” he added on one occasion with delightful clarity, “a lot depends on whether people like our car or not.”
But the other members of the team were not impressed by Craffy's gloominess. Probably the most unreceptive was Judge. Fulfilling the mission of an itinerant preacher, he specialized in the common population and civil organizations. Unflinching in the face of the demands of car striptease, Judge enlivened his performances with such a huge amount of animated graphics, cartoons, diagrams and images of new car parts - all on a big movie screen - that listeners usually had time to drive home before they realized that they never saw the car itself. Judge paced the hall tirelessly during the performance and changed images on the screen with kaleidoscopic speed, which was made possible thanks to a team of electricians: before the performances, they entangled the hall with wires, covered the floor with switches, and Judge turned on the equipment with his feet as needed. Each presentation by Judge cost the department $5,000, which included the cost of the technical staff who arrived on site the day before Judge's arrival. At the last moment, Judge himself arrived in the city on a special plane. He went to the hall, the action began. “One of the greatest strengths of the entire Edsel project is its philosophy of production and sales,” perhaps Judge began with this, pressing the buttons laid out on the floor. “Everyone who has been involved in his achievements is proud and looking forward to the successful start of the new car sales season this fall ... There will never be a repeat of such a grandiose, majestic and high-meaning program like this one ... This is how the car that will appear in front of by the Americans on September 4, 1957 ... - at this point, Judge showed the public an image of a steering wheel or rear wing. “This is a unique car in every respect, but at the same time it has elements of conservatism that make it even more attractive ... The individual and original character of the hood is organically combined with truly sculptural forms of the side parts ...” And so on and so forth. Judge was generous with metaphors such as "plastic relief of metal", "spectacular character" and "graceful, flowing line". What followed was a deafening ending. “We are proud of the Edsel! he shouted, continuing to press his feet on the buttons. “When this car is presented to the public in the fall, it will take its rightful place on the roads of America, bringing glory and greatness to Ford. This is our Edsel!”
The striptease culminated in a three-day preview of the Edsel, which was open from forward prow to rocket stern. The presentation was organized in Detroit and Dearborn and took place on August 26, 27 and 28 in the presence of 250 journalists from around the country. Unlike traditional car rallies, journalists were invited to this one along with their wives, and many accepted the invitation. Even before the event was over, it became clear that it had cost Ford $90,000. Despite the grandiosity of the event, its mediocrity disappointed Warnock. He offered three places to hold it, but all the proposals were rejected by the management, although it seemed to Warnock himself that this way it would be possible to create a more unusual atmosphere. Warnock offered to host the show either on a steamboat on the Detroit River ("unfortunate symbolism") in Edsel, Kentucky ("difficult to get there by car") and Haiti (no reason given for the refusal). The hobbled Warnock could do nothing better for the reporters than to put on a show at the Sheraton Cadillac Hotel. The event started on Sunday 25 August. On Monday, it was planned to familiarize journalists with the long-awaited oral and printed information about the whole Edsel family - 18 variants of four main modifications: "corsair", "memory", "pacer" and "ranger", which differed from each other mainly in size, power and finish. The next morning, in the rotunda of the center, the models themselves were shown to reporters, and Henry II said a few heartfelt words about his father. “They didn’t invite wives to this show,” recalled one of the employees of Foot and Cone’s advertising agency, who helped organize the event. – Too dry and business event for women. Everything went just fine. Even the most hardened newspapermen were seized with excitement ”(the meaning of the articles of most excited newspapermen was that the Edsel seemed to them a good car, but not as much as it was advertised).
In the afternoon, the reporters were driven to the test site, where stunt drivers showed what the Edsel was capable of. This show was supposed to impress, but in reality it was also terrifying, and for many it seemed a little unbridled. Warnock was forbidden all this time to talk about horsepower and speed, as the captains of the automobile industry agreed: from now on, they will still produce cars, and not time bombs. He decided to demonstrate the survivability and capabilities of the Edsel not in words, but in deeds. For this, he hired a team of professional stuntmen. They drove through half-meter obstacles on two wheels, jumped from high jumps on all four wheels, drew intricate patterns on the ground, collided at a speed of over 100 kilometers per hour and laid turns at speeds under 80. For fun, a car clown performed at the same time, skillfully parodying the ride masters. All the while, Neil Blume, head of engineering at the Edsel department, was commenting over the loudspeaker about the "capabilities, safety, strength, maneuverability and convenience of new machines", avoiding the words "speed" and "horsepower" as he avoids the waves of the sea. big sandbox. At one point, when one of the Edsels nearly flipped over after jumping off a high diving board, Craffey turned white as a sheet. He later admitted that he did not expect such audacity from the stuntmen. At that moment, he was concerned about the reputation of the Edsel and the lives of the drivers. Warnock, noticing the chief's displeasure, approached him and asked him how the show was. Craffy replied curtly that he would say so when the show was over and everyone was safe and sound. But the rest, it seems, had fun and amused themselves from the bottom of their hearts. One of the employees of the Futa advertising agency said: “You look at the green Michigan hills, and there the glorious Edsels do something unimaginable. It's fine. Sounds like a Rockettes concert. The spectacle inspired everyone."
Warnock, however, rose even higher. Stunt performances, like model shows, were not for tender wives, but Warnock decided that they would enjoy the fashion show as much as their husbands would enjoy the auto-rodeo. He had no reason to be excited. The beautiful and talented star of the show, presented by the department's stylist Brown as a Parisian couturier, turned out to be, as it turned out at the end, just an actress, about which Warnock did not consider it necessary to warn Brown in advance. Relations between them after that deteriorated greatly, but the wives were able to add material to their husbands for a couple of paragraphs.
In the evening in the design center, stylized for this occasion under night club- with fountains dancing to the music of the Ray McKinley Ensemble - a gala concert took place. On the instruments of the musicians, the letters GM burned in gold in memory of the founder of the orchestra, Glenn Miller, which completely ruined Warnock's mood. The following morning, at the company's final press conference, Breach described the Edsel as follows: "This is a strong and healthy baby, and we, like all new parents, are ready to burst with pride." Then 71 journalists were given a new car and they went home, not to put the car in their garages, but to deliver it to local dealers. Let's leave the floor to Warnock to describe the final touch: “Several unfortunate incidents have occurred. One guy did not fit into the turn and crashed into the wall. The Edsel had nothing to do with it. At another car, the oil pan fell off, the engine, of course, cooled down and stalled. This can happen to the best cars. Luckily, the driver was passing through a town with the splendid name of Paradise—it seems to be in Kansas—that smoothed out the unpleasant impression of the incident a little. The nearest dealer gave the journalist a new Edsel, and the guy drove home, overcoming the Pikes Peak mountain along the way. Another driver crashed into a lowered barrier due to brake failure. This is bad. It's funny, but what we feared most - that other drivers would be so eager to look at the Edsel that they would force it out of the road - happened only once, on a main highway in Pennsylvania. One of our journalists was rolling carelessly down the road when the driver of the Plymouth gape scratched his side. The damage was minor."
In late 1959, after the Edsel ceased production, Business Week wrote that at a big preview, an executive told a reporter, “If we hadn’t been bogged down in this car, we wouldn’t be in it now.” release". The management of the magazine denied for two years that they had made a sensational statement, and all the former high-ranking participants in the epic (including Craffy, despite the dog food anecdote) firmly stood by the fact that up to the day of the presentation and even for some time after, they hoped for the success of the new machine. . So the quote from Business Week can be considered an unreliable and suspicious archaeological find. In fact, in the period between the presentation to journalists and Edsel Day, everyone involved in the action indulged in crazy optimism. "Goodbye, Oldsmobile!" said an ad in the Detroit Free Press about an agency that had switched from an Oldsmobile to an Edsel. One dealer in Portland said he had already sold two Edsels. Warnock was looking for a company in Japan to order fireworks from which rockets would burst out inflatable Edsel models made of rice paper measuring 2.74 meters in size when they exploded. Warnock was willing to pay nine dollars for each rocket and wanted to order $5,000. He wanted to fill not only the roads but also the skies of America with Edsels, and was about to order when Craffey shook his head in disapproval.
On September 3, the day before X-Day, prices for various Edsel models were announced; in New York they ranged from $2,800 to $4,100. On X-Day, the Edsel was revealed to the city and the world. In Cambridge, down Massachusetts Avenue, at the head of a column of shiny new cars, a band rode; A helicopter hired by one of Doyle's recruited dealers took off from Richmond, unfurling a giant Edsel banner over San Francisco Bay. Across the country, from the Louisiana deltas and Mount Rainier to the forests of Maine, one only had to turn on a radio or television to find that, despite Warnock's failure to order rockets, the sky trembled and hummed from the Edsel. The tone for the chorus of praise for the Edsel was set by an advertisement in all the national and local papers, featuring photographs of President Ford and Chairman of the Board of Directors Breach. In the photo, Ford looked like a worthy young father, and Breach looked like a respectable gentleman who knows how to maintain his house. The Edsel looked like an Edsel. The accompanying text read: The decision to manufacture the machine is based on "what we knew, felt, guessed, thinking about you." It followed: "You are the main support of the Edsel." The tone of the ad was calm and confident. None of the readers could have a shadow of a doubt that something might be wrong in this house.
It was found that by the end of the day, 2,850,000 people saw the new car in dealerships. Three days later, in North Philadelphia, someone stole an Edsel. It is not unreasonable to assume that the kidnapping indicated that the public liked the new car. A few months later, only a very unscrupulous hijacker would have dared to steal the Edsel.
Fall and collapse
most notable external feature The Edsela was, of course, the grille. Unlike the wide horizontal grille of the other 19 American passenger cars, the Edsel's grille was narrow and vertical. Made of chromed steel, it resembled an egg standing upright in the middle of the front of the hull. The grille was decorated with the inscription EDSEL, made of aluminum, going from top to bottom. This shape of the radiator is typical for American cars produced in the middle of the century, and for many European brands. But the trouble is that the old American and European models the cars themselves were tall and narrow—that is, the entire body on the sides practically did not protrude beyond the radiator—and the Edsel had a wide and low front end, the same as its American competitors. Consequently, there was a large space on either side of the grille that had to be filled with something, and it was filled with two panels with ordinary chrome grilles. The impression is the same as if a Pierce-Arrow nose was inserted into the radiator of an Oldsmobile, or, to use a more subtle metaphor, a duchess's necklace was adorned around the cleaning lady's neck. The desire for pretentiousness is as transparent as the desire to please at any cost.
But if the Edsel's grille was naive, the story behind the rear view is completely different. Here, too, we see a departure from the design traditions of that time - from the rear wings in the form of fins that have set the teeth on edge. Instead, aficionados of the car saw bird wings at the rear, while sober observers, less prone to metaphorical thinking, called the Edsel's rear fenders eyebrows. The lines of the trunk lid and rear fenders curved up and out, reminiscent of the outlines of a seagull's wings in flight, but this impression was obscured by two long, elongated taillights located partly on the trunk lid and partly on the rear fenders. The lights of the lanterns repeated the shape of the trunk and fenders and at night created the impression of a stinging grin from slanting eyes. From the front, the Edsel had the image of a creature eager to please, even if at the cost of some buffoonery, while from the back it looked sly, dapper, brash, and perhaps a little cynical and haughty in an Oriental way. There was a feeling that an insidious creature was sitting between the radiator and the trunk, which changed the character of the car from front to back.
In all other respects, the exterior trim of the Edsel differed little from the traditional. The decorations on the side parts probably took less chrome than usual. The car was also distinguished by a groove from the rear wing to the middle of the body. Approximately in the middle of the groove, parallel to it, the word EDSEL, typed in chrome letters, flaunted, and directly under the rear window there was a small decoration in the form of a lattice, on which, again, the same word flaunted (whatever one may say, stylist Brown fulfilled his promise - didn’t he vowed to create a machine "recognizable at first sight"?). The interior of the car was made in such a way as to correspond as much as possible to the instructions of the general manager Craffy: the car should become the apotheosis of the “era of buttons”. Craffy was a reckless prophet who brought the push-button era into the mid-range car, but the Edsel responded to that prophecy the best it could. In any case, no one has yet seen so many unseen gizmos in the cockpit of a car. On the dashboard is a button that opens the trunk lid. Next was the lever to unlock the parking brake. The speedometer began to glow red when the driver exceeded the maximum speed chosen by him. Single disc set for heating and cooling levels. Buttons that controlled the height of the antenna, the flow of warm air into the cabin, a button that controlled the wipers, as well as a row of eight indicator lights that began to blink alarmingly if the engine was too cold or overheated. Indicators for the generator, an indicator that indicated the parking brake was applied. An indicator that signaled an open door, a decrease in oil pressure, a decrease in oil level, a decrease in the level of gasoline in the tank. For skeptical drivers - an indicator of the real fuel level. The apotheosis of the apotheosis, an automatic push-button transmission mounted in the steering wheel, in the hub, in the form of five buttons arranged in a circle that were pressed so easily that the manufacturers and sellers of the Edsel rarely resisted the temptation to show that they could be turned on with a toothpick.
Of the four Edsel models, the two largest and most expensive, the Corsair and Citation, were 5.56 meters long, 5 cm longer than the largest of the Oldsmobiles. Both cars had a width of 2.03 m, the maximum for any known passenger car, and a height of 1.45 m - that is, the same as any other car in the middle price category. The Ranger and Pacer, smaller Edsels, were 15 cm shorter, 2.5 cm narrower and 2.5 cm lower than the Corsair and Citation. These last two cars were equipped with 345 hp eight-cylinder engines. with., that is, they were more powerful than any other American car of that time. And the Ranger and Pacer were equipped with 303 hp engines. with., which was almost the maximum for cars of this class. When you press the "Drive" button with a toothpick at idle, the Corsair or Citation (both cars weighed two tons) took off so briskly that in 10.3 seconds they developed a speed of 1600 m / min. After 17.5 seconds, the car was 400 meters from the starting point. If something or someone got in the way of the car when the toothpick touched the button, then the matter could turn into a serious nuisance.
When the veils of secrecy were removed from the Edsel, it received, as theater critics put it, mixed reviews. Automotive daily newspaper editors have limited themselves to simple descriptions of the car, stingy reviews, sometimes somewhat ambiguous (“The originality of the style looks very impressive,” wrote Joseph Ingram in the New York Times), and sometimes openly laudatory (“Handsome and outright rookie,” – written by Fred Olmsted in the Detroit Free Press). In automotive magazines, the reviews were more detailed, tougher and more critical. Motor Trend magazine, a publication interested in conventional rather than exclusive cars, devoted an eight-page critique of the Edsel's merits in October 1957 by the magazine's Detroit editor, Joe Wherry. Joe praised the appearance and comfort of the car, as well as convenient devices, but did not always substantiate his opinion; paying tribute to the automatic transmission buttons on the steering wheel, he wrote: "You never have to take your eyes off the road for a moment." He acknowledged that there were "other unique features that the designers did not take advantage of", but summed up his opinion with a sentence richly seasoned with laudatory adverbs: "The Edsel is well made, behaves well on the road and obeys the steering wheel well." Tom McCahill of Mechanix Illustrated generally admired the "bag of nuts," as he affectionately called the new car, but made a few caveats that, incidentally, shed light on the average consumer's experience. “On ribbed concrete,” he wrote, “every time I pressed the gas pedal to the floor, the wheels began to vibrate like a Waring homogenizer ... At high speed, especially on tight turns, the suspension began to behave like a stubborn horse. More than once I wondered what would happen to this sausage if it had a stronger grip on the road.
The most sobering—and probably the most damaging—criticism of the Edsel in the first months after its introduction came in a January 1958 article in the consumer union's monthly magazine Consumer Reports. There were more potential Edsel buyers among his 800,000 subscribers than among people who read Motor Trend or Mechanix Illustrated. After testing the Corsair on the road, the magazine gave its opinion:
The Edsel has no decisive advantages over cars from other manufacturers. By design, this is quite an ordinary car. Shaking on a rough road makes itself felt with a creak and crackle that surpasses all acceptable boundaries. Control Corsair - the car reacts slowly to the steering wheel, heels in corners and creates a feeling of detachment from the road - does not deliver, to put it mildly, no pleasure. Combined with the fact that the car shakes like jelly on the move, all this creates the impression that the Edsel has become not a step forward, but a step back. When driving around the city, when every now and then you have to switch from acceleration to braking, or when overtaking, or if you want to enjoy fast driving, eight cylinders begin to voraciously absorb fuel. According to the consumer union, the steering wheel is not the best place to place the gear controls, as shifting them requires the driver to take their eyes off the road. [Think of Mr. Werry.] The "full of luxury" Edsel, as it was called on the cover of one magazine, will certainly satisfy anyone who confuses empty decoration with true luxury.
Three months later, summing up the testing of the entire range of the new car, Consumer Reports returned to the Edsel, calling it "overpowered and overloaded with unnecessary fixtures and expensive accessories compared to any other car in this price class." In the ranking, the magazine took Corsair and Citation to the lowest positions. Following Craffey, Consumer Reports called the Edsel an apotheosis; but, unlike Craffey, the magazine concluded that the car was "the apotheosis of the many frills" with which Detroit manufacturers "repel potential buyers."
Nevertheless, it must be said that the Edsel was not so bad. He embodied the spirit of his time - or at least the spirit of the time when he was created, that is, the beginning of 1955. He was clumsy, powerful, vulgar, clumsy, well-intentioned - the epitome of de Kooning's woman. Many people, in addition to the employees of the agency Foot, Cone and Belding, who were paid to do this, sang the praise of the car, instilling conviction in the souls of hasty buyers, instilling in them a sense of well-being and prosperity. Moreover, the designers of several competitors, including Chevy, Buick and Edsel's fellow Ford, later paid homage to Brown's design by copying at least one distinguishing feature- the shape of the hind wings. The Edsel was doomed, but to say that because of its design features is to fall into simplification, just like to say that unhappiness was caused by excessive delving into the motivations of buyers. The fact is that several other factors played a role in the commercial failure of the short and unhappy Edsel. One of them, oddly enough, is that the first copies of the Edsel, which, of course, became the object of the closest attention, turned out to be surprisingly imperfect. In a preliminary campaign of promotion and advertising, Ford generated unprecedented public interest in the Edsel. It must be understood that the car was awaited with such impatience, with which no other was ever expected. And after all this, the car simply did not work. Ridiculous failures, minor breakdowns of equipment systems have become the talk of the town. "Edsels" got to dealers with oil leaks, with sticky lids of hoods and trunks, and the buttons could not be pressed not only with a toothpick, but also with a sledgehammer. One stunned customer who stormed into a bar on the Hudson and demanded a double whiskey explained to the dumbfounded audience that the dashboard of his brand new Edsel had just burst into flames. Automotive News magazine wrote: the very first Edsels were usually poorly painted, low-grade sheet steel was used to make the body, poor-quality accessories. As evidence, the magazine cited the story of a dealer who received one of the first convertible Edsels: "The top is loose, the doors are skewed, the top was set at the wrong angle, and the front springs sagged." Ford was especially unlucky with samples bought by the consumer union. The union buys cars on the free market so as not to buy specially prepared copies. He bought an Edsel with the wrong gear ratio, leaky cooling system seal, grating rear axle differential. In addition, the interior heating system produced portions of hot air when turned off. Former Edsel executives have calculated that only half of the first Edsels lived up to the stated standards.
The dilettante may sincerely wonder how Ford, with its unprecedented power and world fame, could sink into the production of a car to the level of Mack Sennett comedies . The weary hard worker Craffey bravely explained that when a company starts production of a new model of any brand - even an old and tried one - the first samples are always defective. A more exotic hypothesis—though only a hypothesis—suggests that deliberate sabotage took place at one of the four Edsel factories, since all but one of the factories also assembled Fords and mercury". In its marketing of the Edsel, Ford forgot General Motors' instructions that allowed the manufacturers and sellers of its Oldsmobiles, Buicks, Pontiacs, and high-end Chevrolets to compete for customers without giving up an inch. and even encouraged competition. Some Ford and Lincoln-Mercury department heads hoped from the very beginning that the Edsel would fail (Craffy, anticipating this turn of events, requested that the Edsel be assembled at a separate facility, but management rejected his proposal). Still a veteran automotive business Doyle, speaking as the second man after Craffey, spoke very dismissively that the Edsel could fall victim to the unscrupulous work of the factories. “Of course, the Ford and Lincoln-Mercury departments weren't keen to see another company car on the market,” he said, “but as far as I know, nothing was beyond fair competition. On the other hand, at the level of distributors and dealers, there was a serious fight against whispering and spreading rumors. If I had worked in another division, I would have behaved in exactly the same way. No defeated general of the old school could speak with greater nobility.
We must still pay tribute to the people who created the grandiose advertisement for the Edsel. Despite the fact that the cars rattled, failed and fell apart on the move, turning into a pile of chrome wreckage, things did not go so badly at first. Doyle claims that 6,500 cars were ordered or actually sold on Edsel Day. This is an impressive start, but there are also early signs of resistance. For example, one dealer in New England that sold both Edsels and Buicks reported that two customers walked into the showroom, looked at the Edsel, and immediately ordered Buicks.
In the next few days, sales fell sharply, but this is understandable and expected: the excitement of the first day has passed, the first flowers have been plucked. Dealership deliveries—a common measure of sales—are measured in ten-day periods, and in the first ten days of September, of which Edsel only sold six, 4,095 vehicles were sold. This is less than the number given by Doyle, but after all, buyers wanted equipment and colors that were not available in the salons. These orders went to factories. Deliveries of cars to dealers in the next ten days fell even more, but not by much, and in the third decade, fewer than 3,600 cars were sold. In the first ten days of October, nine of which were working days, dealers sold a total of 2,751 cars, a little over 300 cars a day. In order to sell 200,000 cars a year - and the only way production could make a profit - it was necessary to sell an average of 600-700 cars a day, and this, you see, is somewhat more than 300. On Sunday evening, October 13, Ford staged a grand television promotional show dedicated to "Edsel", taking the time usually allotted to the Ed Sullivan show . The program cost $400,000, Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra took part in it, but, alas, the car's sales did not increase after that. It became obvious that the case was rubbish.
By December, the Edsel panic had subsided enough that the sponsors decided to work together to find a way to try and boost sales. Henry Ford II, speaking to dealers on a private closed television network, urged them to calm down, promised that the company would support them to the end, and said in a casual tone: "The Edsel came to stay." Letters signed by Craffey were sent out to 1.5 million mid-price car owners asking them to visit local dealers and try out the Edsel. The company promised to give anyone who did so a 20-centimeter plastic Edsel model, regardless of whether the person bought the car or not. The Edsel department paid for the production of the models, a gesture of desperation, for normally no car company would humiliate dealers (until then the dealers paid for everything themselves). The department also began to offer dealers what they called "sales bonuses." This meant that dealers could cut prices by $100-$300 without losing their margin. Craffey told a reporter that so far, sales have been as he had hoped, but not as much as he had hoped for. Trying to restrain himself, he nevertheless let slip that he expected the collapse of the Edsel. The Edsel's advertising campaign, which began with restrained dignity, began to fall into blatant harshness. “Anyone who has seen it knows – along with us – that the Edsel is a success,” read one magazine advertisement, and in a later advertisement this phrase was repeated twice, like a mantra: “The Edsel is a success.” . It's a new idea - YOUR idea - on American roads... Edsel is a success" and "Everyone will know it's you arrived, if you arrive in an Edsel” and also: “This car is really new and the cheapest!” In the refined circles of Madison Avenue, the use of rhyming advertising was considered a sign of bad taste, driven by commercial necessity.
The frantic and costly measures taken in December by the Edsel department bore fruit, however small: in the first ten days of 1958, the department could report that sales had increased by 18.6% compared with the last ten days of 1957. The catch, the Wall Street Journal readily stated, was that the December period was one business day longer than the first 10-day period in January, meaning there was essentially no increase in sales. In any case, January's ostentatious joy became the swansong of the Edsel department. On January 14, 1958, Ford announced that it was merging the Edsel division with the Lincoln-Mercury division to form the Mercury-Edsel-Lincoln division under the overall direction of James Nance, who headed the Lincoln-Mercury division. It was the second merger of three divisions into one by a major automobile company after General Motors merged the Buick, Oldsmobile, and Pontiac divisions during the Great Depression. The meaning of the gesture of the administration was completely clear to the employees of the liquidated department. “With so much competition within the new division, Edsel simply didn't have a chance,” Doyle says. “We became stepchildren.”
During the last year and ten months of its existence, the Edsel was indeed a stepson. In general, they did not pay much attention to him, advertised a little and kept signs of life in him, just to avoid a clear demonstration of a blunder and in the shaky hope that maybe everything will work out. The advertising reflected a quixotic desire to convince car dealers that everything was fine; in mid-February, an advertisement in Automotive News quoted Nance as saying:
After the formation of a new department at Ford - MEL - we analyzed the sales dynamics of the Edsel with great interest. We consider it very significant that within five months of the start of Edsel sales, their volume was higher than the volume of sales of any other brands of cars driving on American roads during the first five months. The steady rise in popularity of the Edsel can and should be a source of satisfaction and hope for the future.
Nance's comparison was meaningless, since no car of any brand had been presented with such pomp as the Edsel, and a statement of confidence covered the ringing void.
It is possible that Nance overlooked an article by S. Hayakawa, a semanticist, published in the quarterly journal ETC: A Review of General Semantics in the spring of 1958, entitled "Why the Edsel Wrong?". Hayakawa, who was both the magazine's founder and editor, explained in the introduction that he believes the subject matter is one of general semantics, since cars, like words, are "important symbols of American culture." The author further argued that the failure of the Edsel could be explained by the fact that the company's management "listened to motivation researchers for too long" and, in trying to create a car that satisfies the sexual fantasies of buyers, could not organize the production of a normal, practical vehicle, ignoring the "reality principle ". “Motivationalists have not bothered to explain that only psychopaths and neurotics actualize their irrationality and their compensatory fantasies,” Hayakawa scolded the Detroit automakers so sternly, adding, “The problem with selling symbolic pleasure through such costly vehicles as the Edsel is that that in this field the sale is in unequal competition with the much cheaper forms of symbolic enjoyment - Playboy (50 cents copy), Amazing Science Fiction (35 cents copy) and television (free).
Despite the competition with Playboy, and perhaps because part of the public motivated by symbols - people who can pay for both a magazine and a car, the Edsel continued to roll somehow, although, of course, it was breathing its last. The car moved, as the sellers say, but not at the wave of a toothpick. Indeed, as a stepson, he sold no better than when he was a beloved son. This suggests that all the talk of symbolic enjoyment or dumb horsepower had absolutely no effect on sales. A total of 34,481 Edsels were registered in different states in 1958, far fewer than new cars from competing manufacturers, and less than one-fifth of the 200,000 cars sold needed to keep sales profitable; yet motorists have invested more than a hundred million dollars in the Edsel. The picture became clearer in November 1958, when the following Edsel models appeared. The cars became 20 cm shorter, lost 250 kg and reduced power by 158 hp. With. compared to its predecessors. The vertical grille and tail wings remained in place, but the reduction in power and the change in proportions led Consumer Reports to change their anger and say, "Ford, which wrecked the Edsel last year, made a very decent car out of it this year." Many motorists agreed with this assessment. In the first half of 1959, 2,000 more cars were sold than in the first half of the previous year. At the beginning of the summer, an average of 4,000 cars were sold monthly. Here, at least, there has been progress; sales already accounted for a quarter, not a fifth, of the minimum profitable income.
On July 1, 1959, there were 83,849 Edsels on American roads. The largest number (8344) - in California, always crowded with cars of various brands, and the smallest - in Alaska, Vermont and Hawaii (122, 119 and 110, respectively). In short, the Edsel as an eccentric curiosity has found its niche. Despite the fact that Ford was losing shareholders' money every day and subcompact cars were gaining dominance on the roads, and the company, naturally, could not have tender feelings for the unsuccessful offspring, it nevertheless took the last chance, and in mid-October 1959, planned the release of the third generation " edsela". The 1960 Edsel arrived about a month after the Falcon, Ford's first—and ever-successful—subcompact car; this new version was very vaguely reminiscent of the old "Edsel". Gone was the vertical grille and tail wings. What was left was a cross between a Ford Fairlane and a Pontiac. The first sales were negligible; by mid-November, only one plant, in Louisville, was still turning out Edsels at about 20 a day. On November 19, the Ford Foundation, which planned to sell a huge stake in Ford, issued a prospectus, which is required by law in such a situation. The product description note stated that the Edsel was launched in September 1957 and discontinued in November 1959. On the same day, the vague confession was confirmed and made public by a spokesman for Ford. However, he also muttered something not quite intelligible. “If we knew the reason why people refuse to buy an Edsel, we would try to do something about it.”
As a result, from the very beginning of the epic until November 19, 110,810 Edsel cars were produced, and 109,466 of them were sold (the remaining 1344 - almost all 1960 models - were quickly sold at a reduced price). A total of 2,846 1960 Edsels were said to have been produced, which could well make this model a collector's item. True, it will take several generations before the 1960 Edsels become as rare as the Bugatti 41s, which were made only 11 pieces in the late 1920s, and all of them were legally sold to real kings. The Edsel has much less reason to claim rarity status. Still, a 1960 Edsel Owners Club is quite possible.
How much the Edsel fiasco cost will probably forever remain a mystery, since Ford Motor Company's public records do not include lost profits and direct losses of individual divisions. However, experienced financiers believe that since the start of Edsel production, the company has lost about $200 million; Add in the officially declared development costs of another $250 million. Subtract about $100 million in plant and equipment investment, as these are recoverable costs, and the loss is $350 million. If the calculations are correct, then each Edsel ”, produced by the company, cost her $ 3,500 in net losses, that is, the cost of the car itself. In other words, the company could have saved money if, in 1955, it had abandoned the development and production of a new car and instead produced 110,810 units of a comparable price Mercury.
The end of the Edsel gave rise to an orgy of retrospective assessments in the press. Time wrote: “The Edsel has become a classic case of the wrong car for the wrong market at the wrong time. It is also a brilliant example of the limitations of market research, with its 'in-depth interviews' and rambling science-based discussions of 'motivations'." Business Week, which shortly before the death of the Edsel had written about it with undisguised seriousness and approval, now declared the car a "nightmare" and issued several scathing remarks about Wallace's research, which very soon became - like designer Brown - a scapegoat (throwing with motivational research is a very attractive sport, but of course it is not true to say that the research has had any effect on the design: it was conceived as support for an advertising campaign and began when the design was already developed). The obituary in the Wall Street Journal was more sober and, if anything, more original.
Large corporations often have to face accusations of market manipulation, price fixing, and other forms of dictatorship of consumers. And yesterday, Ford Motor Company announced that a two-year experiment with the Edsel, a mid-range car, came to an end ... due to a lack of buyers. Apparently, this is one of the ways that car manufacturers manipulate the market or impose their products on consumers ... The reason is simply the lack of taste ... When it comes to dictatorship, the consumer becomes the most cruel and powerful dictator.
The tone of the article is generally friendly and sympathetic; Ford, playing the role of an unlucky worker in the great American sitcom, fell in love with the Wall Street Journal.
As for the results of the posthumous explanations of the catastrophe given by the former heads of the Edsel department, they are remarkable for their thoughtful tone. Former executives behaved like a knocked-out boxer, opening his eyes and looking in surprise at the microphone, which is brought to his lips. Craffy, like many vanquished, scolded himself for his imprudence. He claimed that if he could get the sluggish machine of Detroit's economic and industrial routine to move forward, and if he could launch an Edsel in 1955 or even 1956, when the stock market was doing well and mid-priced cars were very popular , then the car would have been a success and is still in demand. In short, if he had seen where the blow was directed, he would have made a dive. Craffy refused to admit that some dilettantes were right in associating the crash with the company's decision to call the car an "Edsel" instead of giving it a more melodious, euphonious name that could not be reduced to "Ed" or "Eddy" and that would not be reminiscent of the dynasty. As we have already seen, Craffey believed that the choice of name did not affect the fate of the car.
Brown agreed with Craffey that the main mistake was wrong choice time and timing. “I sincerely believe that the design of the car played almost no role in the failure,” he later said, and we have no reason to doubt his sincerity. “The Edsel program, like all planning for the future market, was based on the information available at the time the decision was made. The road to hell is always paved with good intentions!”
Doyle, being a born salesman with a keen sense of the mood of the buyers, spoke out as a man who was betrayed by his best friend - the American buyers. “People didn’t like the Edsel. Why remains a mystery to me. What they have been buying over the past few years has motivated us to make this type of vehicle. We gave it to them, but they didn't want to take it. Well, actually, they shouldn't have. You can’t, after all, push a sleeping person aside and tell him: “Well, that’s enough now! You've been driving the wrong way all this time." But why did they do so? Damn it, how we have been working all these years – we saved the driver from shifting gears, created a comfortable interior, insured against extreme situations! But now give them little bugs. I can't understand it!"
Wallace's Soviet satellite hypothesis answers Doyle's question as to why people weren't in the mood to buy an Edsel. In addition, the space hypothesis is quite consistent with the image of Wallace. It also allows him to defend the value of motivational research and justify failure by the time it takes. “I think we still don't realize the depth of the psychological effect that the launch of the first satellite had on all of us,” Wallace says. “Someone beat us on the tech front, and people immediately started writing articles about the low-end stuff they do in Detroit, fiddling with a high-status mid-range car and decorating it with some pathetic chrome trinkets. In 1958, when there were no small cars other than the Rambler, there was no mention of the Chevrolet, which almost conquered the market with its simple cars. The American people voluntarily indulged in asceticism. Refusing to buy an Edsel has become a symbol of the sackcloth.”
Any old man who remembers the laws of the jungle that reigned in American industry in the 19th century must have seemed strange to Wallace, who, puffing on his pipe, with philosophical good nature assessed the reasons for the auto-da-fé. The obvious moral of the Edsel story is the defeat of the giant car company. But it is not the defeat that is surprising, but the fact that the company did not fall apart from the blow and did not even suffer great damage, like most of the people who suffered defeat along with it. Thanks to the success of four other cars, the Thunderbird and then the subcompact Falcon and the Comet and later the Mustang, Ford survived as an investment. It is true that in 1958 she experienced hard times when, in part because of the Edsel, earnings per share fell from $5.4 to $2.12, dividends per share fell from $2.4 to $2, and the market price of shares fell from $60 to In 1957, it fell below $40 in 1958. But all these losses more than paid off in 1959, when earnings per share rose to $8.24, dividends became 2.8, and the share price reached $90. Things got even better in 1960 and 1961, so that the 280,000 stockholders of Ford had nothing to complain about unless they sold in a wave of panic. On the other hand, the merger of the Mercury, Edsel, and Lincoln divisions resulted in the layoff of 6,000 white-collar workers, and the company's total workforce decreased from 191,759 in 1957 to 142,076 in 1957. next year, and after stabilization of the situation increased only to 159,541 in 1959. Naturally, dealers were unhappy, who, having refused profitable franchises with other manufacturers, went bankrupt trying to sell Edsels. Under the terms of the merger of the three departments, the sales agencies also merged. In the course of the merger, some dealers were squeezed out, and those who went bankrupt because of this were bitter to hear later that after the Edsel production ceased, Ford agreed to pay half the cost of the Edsel contracts to its colleagues who survived the crisis, and made a significant a discount on all Edsels that were in the warehouses of dealers at the time of termination of production. True, car dealers operating on credit margins as small as Miami's hotel operators sometimes go bust even with the most popular cars. However, many who make their living in the brutal hustle and bustle of car dealerships, where Detroit is rarely spoken of fondly, were forced to admit that the Ford Motor Company, having made an unfortunate mistake, did everything it could to soften the blow for the dealers who chose the Edsel. . A spokesman for the National Automobile Dealers Association later said, "As far as we know, the Edsel dealers were generally satisfied with the way they were treated."
Advertising agency Foote, Cone, and Belding also suffered big losses because of the Edsel: advertising revenue did not cover the cost of hiring 60 new employees and opening a swanky office in Detroit. However, the damage cannot be called irreparable, since after the end of the Edsel advertising campaign, the agency was assigned to advertise Lincolns, and although the partnership with the Ford Motor Company did not last long, the company survived safely, starting to praise such clients as General Foods, Lever Brothers and Trans World Airways. A moving symbol of the agency's loyalty to its former client is the fact that the agency's private parking lot in Chicago was filled with Edsels every working day. Which, by the way, is significant: if the owners of the Edsels did not find the means to realize their dreams and after some time coped with annoying problems, then for more than ten years they cherished and cherished their cars, treating them like Confederate banknotes. The Edsel rarely appeared on the used car market.
As for the former heads of the Edsel department, they not only stood on their feet, but settled down quite well. No one can reproach the Ford company for letting off steam in the old way - chopping heads right and left. Craffey was appointed assistant to Robert McNamara, then vice president of the company (and later secretary of defense), for a couple of months, and then he was transferred to a regular position at Ford headquarters, where he worked for a year, and then left to become vice president. President of the Raytheon Company, one of the leading electronics firms in Waltham, Massachusetts. In April 1960, he became its president, in the mid-1960s he left this company and became a highly paid consultant in a West Coast city. Doyle was also offered a job as an employee in the company, but after traveling abroad and thinking, he decided to quit. “It was a matter of dealing with my dealers,” Doyle explains. “I assured them that the company would not leave them in trouble and would always support them, and I am not the person who can now say that none of this will happen.” After leaving Ford, Doyle remained an active member of the business community, following several businesses where he placed some of his friends and family, starting his own consulting firm in Detroit. About a month before the merger of the Edsel division with the Mercury and Lincoln divisions, Warnock left to become director of new services for the New York-based International Telephone & Telegraph Corporation. In 1960, he also retired from there, becoming vice president of Communication Counselors, the public relations department of McCann-Erickson. From there he returned to the Ford Motor Company, promotion chief for Lincoln-Mercury's East Coast division. As you can see, this head was not cut off, but, on the contrary, stroked. A seasoned designer, Brown continued to work for Ford for a while, designing commercial vehicles before moving on to work for the company's English subsidiary, Ford Motor Company, Ltd. , trucks and tractors. He convinced everyone that this was not Ford's version of the Siberian exile. “I have had a wonderful experience here and I can say that this is the most successful stage of my career,” he decisively stated in one letter from England. “We are creating a design center and assembling a team that is unparalleled in all of Europe.” Considered a think tank, Wallace was asked as such to continue working at Ford, and since he still did not want to live in or around Detroit, he was allowed to move to New York and only attend headquarters two days a week. -apartment ("they were no longer interested in where I would send them my opinion," he modestly recalled). At the end of 1958, Wallace left the company and finally fulfilled his cherished dream - he became a professional scientist and teacher. He enrolled in doctoral studies at Columbia University and began writing a dissertation on social change in Westport, which he researched by methodically interviewing its inhabitants. At the same time, Wallace taught the course "The Dynamics of Social Behavior" in new school sociological research in Greenwich Village. "I'm done with industry," he said with satisfaction in his voice one day as he boarded a Westport train with questionnaires under his arm. In early 1962, he received his Ph.D.
A good mood former employees department "Edsel" is due not only to the preservation of financial well-being; they were also enriched spiritually. All of them - with the exception of those who still work for Ford (they prefer to keep quiet) - talk about it with the vivacity and talkativeness of comrades in arms who have experienced the most glorious campaign of their lives. The most passionate is Doyle. “It was the most amazing period of my life,” he told a visitor in 1960. “I think it was because I had to work incredibly hard then. We all worked like hell. We had a good team. The people in the Edsel knew they wouldn't get another chance like this, and I love people who can rise to a challenge and take responsibility. Yes, it's a wonderful experience, despite the fact that everything ended in failure. We were on the right track! When I arrived in Europe shortly before my dismissal, I saw that they only drive small cars there, but they also have traffic jams, problems with parking, and traffic accidents also happen. But try to get into a taxi and get out without hitting your head on the jamb. Try to get around the Arc de Triomphe without being hit by one of these dwarfs. Small cars won't last long. I'm sure American drivers will soon get fed up with manual transmissions and power limitations. The pendulum will inevitably swing back.”
Warnock, like many of the public relations staff before him, claims to have acquired a second stomach ulcer from the job. “But I beat her,” he says. - A great team has gathered in Edsel. I would like to see what they could do if they had the right product at the right time. They could bring the company millions, I'll tell you what! These two years of my life I will never forget. Living history in action. It tells a lot about America in the 1950s - about great and, most importantly, almost fulfilled hopes.
Craffy, the boss of a great but failed team, is ready to testify under oath that something more than romantic memories of old warriors comes through in the conversations of his former subordinates. “It was a wonderful group, it was a pleasure to work,” he testified. “They were truly devoted to the cause, body and soul. I'm always interested in working with motivated people, and these really were. When things went awry, my guys might regret other, better, missed opportunities, but I never heard a single word of complaint from any of them. I'm not surprised they're doing well now. In industry, sometimes you have to fill bruises and bumps, but the main thing is not to give up internally and not admit defeat. I like to meet with them sometimes - with Gail Warnock and others - to remember funny and sad cases ... "
It doesn't matter if the Edsel guys miss you, whether they remember funny or sad things, but their work at Ford makes you think a lot. Maybe they miss the stage light? About how at first they basked in the rays of glory, and then cringed with shame? Or does it mean that the time has come when - as in Elizabethan dramas, but not in the old American business - there can be more greatness in defeat than in victory?
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