The image is from Walker's Edsel Owners' Club homepage.
Posted on 10/23/2005 7:24:22 AM PDT by cloud8
BEULAH, N.D. (AP) -- Leroy Walker can recite a story for each one of his Edsels, all 226 and counting.
There's a lipstick red '58 that caused its driver to be arrested three times between Las Vegas and Bowman, because he was mistaken for a bank robber who used an identical car for a getaway.
Another, a two-tone green '58 Ranger, was delivered that same year in front of a church for a wedding present. Walker purchased it three years ago from the widow at an auction.
"She had lived an exciting life," Walker said. "She drove an Edsel."
Today, both cars sit almost derelict, like most of the other Edsels, intermingled with other weather-ravaged cars in overgrown fields. About 100 of the Edsels run.
It's widely considered the most hideous and over-hyped vehicle ever to hit the highway, but the Edsel couldn't be more magnificent to Walker. It's a car to be coveted, he said -- from its horsecollar grill to its spaceship-like tailfins and scads of gadgets like a push-button gear selector on the steering wheel.
"The highway gets a little sweeter when you're driving an Edsel," he said. "There isn't a soul on the road who doesn't smile and wave at you."
Walker, 64, is the self-proclaimed and undisputed "Edsel King." His 37-acre salvage yard a few miles north of Beulah, a town of about 3,000, is known as "Edsel World."
It's where his beloved Edsels are scattered haphazardly, by design.
"I don't want a natural disaster like a tornado taking them all out at once," Walker said.
He has thousands of other lesser cars and trucks, but he doesn't know exactly how many or much about their history. Scraping and salvaging those vehicles pays for his Edsel addiction.
"The Edsels are the only ones I keep track of," he said.
Bob Kreipke, the corporate historian for Ford Motor Co., said, "Henry Ford and his (only) son, Edsel, would be proud of (Walker) for recognizing what that car was worth."
Today, the Edsel is the symbol of corporate failure. Slightly more than 110,000 of the cars were produced, mostly in the late 1950s.
"Here in Detroit, it is synonymous with a car that didn't sell," Kreipke said. "We must have taken a bath on that thing."
Walker and other Edsel enthusiasts say many believe the car failed because of its oblong grill, which many likened to a toilet seat. It was described as an "Oldsmobile sucking a lemon."
But Walker and Kreipke said the car was doomed by a weak economy, over-promotion, poor initial quality, and a buying trend toward smaller cars.
"It was a good, sound car," Kreipke said. "It was priced a few hundred dollars more than what people wanted to dig in their pockets for."
Other automakers, including other Ford divisions, "badmouthed the Edsel because they were jealous of it," Walker said.
The first Edsel that Walker ever saw was in 1958 when a local farmer sped by his father's farm in Beulah.
"It was something unique, something different," he said. "I'd never seen anything like it."
He didn't own his first one until 1961, a 1958 model with a bad clutch that he got in a trade for a Mercury.
"He is the king," said Hugh Lesley, of Oxford, Pa., who owns "only" 160 Edsels, the second-biggest collection.
"We've both got that terrible Edsel bug," he added.
Ila Walker said her husband has been collecting Edsels for all 43 years that they've been married. She hardly notices when another appears on their property.
"You don't want to know what I think of them," she said. But she does enjoy attending Edsel rallies across the country.
Walker's collection has grown every year since that first purchase. He sells about five of them each year, and many parts.
A good-running Edsel can be purchased for a fraction of a used, newer car, he said.
"I can get you down the road for about $4,000 in an Edsel that will take you all the way to Los Angeles," he said.
Walker said he recently turned down an offer from Sweden of more than $50,000 for a restored Edsel Citation convertible, one of about 60 known to exist.
Robert Mayer, who owns Edsel World in Fort Meyers, Fla., which sells, brokers and rebuilds Edsels, said Walker is obviously well-known among Edsel enthusiasts.
"Leroy's got the most Edsels, that's true," said Mayer, who also is the founder of The Edsel Club, one of three worldwide organizations dedicated to the car. "But he's very resistant about selling or getting rid of any. He's so possessive with his cars and parts, it's like pulling teeth. He just wants to keep everything."
The price has to be right for Walker to part with one of his Edsels.
"I'm not going to drive all the way to Virginia and pick one up and turn around and sell it for $500," he said.
Most of Walker's cars have come from the Dakotas and Minnesota, the North Dakota ones usually lacking such features as power windows, seats and steering. "Farmers had no use for those," Walker said.
Walker expects to stop dabbling in Edsels on the day he dies.
Then, he said, "my family might take it over, or someone will pick them up and recycle them into Toyotas or Volkswagens, probably."
The image is from Walker's Edsel Owners' Club homepage.
Fix Or Repair Daily
Trees and lakes ?
Well, for the most part, we have managed to clear the horizon of useless obstructions such as trees and hills. (The last Ice Age was a big help, there--God's own bulldozer).
It has taken a long time, but oh, the effect....
(8^D)
> It's widely considered the most hideous and
> over-hyped vehicle ever to hit the highway, ...
It was mostly a victim of the long auto development cycle
in 1950. Ford carefully researched the post-war market,
and found that there was demand for a car like this.
But it took so many years to go from concept to production
that by the time the first one rolled off the line, the
market had moved on ...
.. as had auto aesthetics. I was a kid when it was
intro'd. Many people, including me, thought it was ugly.
So was the AMC Matador. Design tastes are a moving
target, and one that Chrysler seems to have a handle on,
or maybe it's just that the design cycle is short now.
Another common myth about the Edsel is that it was also
a lemon. This is true only in the marketing sense.
Apparently, mechanically, it was about the same quality
as other FMC products at the time.
> Well, for the most part, we have managed to clear the horizon of useless obstructions such as trees and hills.
LOL Until "Fargo," I wasn't sure if North Dakota actually existed...never having met anyone from there, or seen a license plate :)
> North Dakota uses no road salt. So cars last much, much longer without rusting out.
Rust never sleeps.
Around here (Boston), the road salt gets kicked up by the traffic and mixes with exhaust fumes into a choking cloud that hovers over the streets.
I don't know if GM might have out-finned Ford in the design department.
> I was a kid when [the Edsel] was intro'd. Many people, including me, thought it was ugly.
So was I, and so did I. Most important, so did our folks. Plus the Edsel was hung with a reputation for poor build quality, whether it deserved it or not, and with its edgy looks, quickly became the butt of jokes--what do you get when you cross a Ford with a lemon?--and no one would have been caught riding in one :)
It's not unusual to go to a shopping mall when you are a couple states away to come back to your car and see people standing there looking at your license plate.
We lived in the Twin Cities for 16 years and when the first flake hit the ground, salt by the ton was poured on metro streets and highways. October was when the first sign of winter was the appearance of you "winter beater," usually an old Chevy Impala...
Edsel=Mercury sucking a lemon.
Well, somebody has to keep the 'south' in South Dakota...
Found on road dead
You asked for round? The 1934 Chrysler Airflow was the Mother of all Roundness. (More pix here.)
I think 50s auto styling with its evokation of aircraft motifs got way out of control.
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