The Ford Edsel

In 1957, the Ford motor company planned on introducing a new car into their vehicle lineup, it was to be called the Edsel. Ford put 400 million dollars into the development of the Edsel, more than it had ever put into any of their other models at this point. The concept of the Edsel was great, more horsepower, very spacious and increased luxury. The price on the other hand was a lot higher than that of the competition. Ford had put so much money into researching what consumers wanted in a car, but failed to gain any information about what consumers would be willing to pay for these attributes. Ford had set a sales goal of 100,000-200,000 cars for the 1958 model. The truth of the matter is, Ford only sold 100,847 Edsels in the three years the car was in production. Ford lost huge amounts of money, but they gained an important lesson.