Re: Alfa Heart Grille Origins

[jack@domain.elided (Jack Hagerty)]

>From: "Denis, Jean" <Jean_Denis@domain.elided>

>Obviously, that classic beauty, the Ford Edsel was the inspiration for the
>derivative, yet distinctive, Alfa icon!

>In fact, suddenly realizing this, I intend to email all Edsel web groups
>post haste and insist that they join our, and all other, Alfa discussion
>forums to celebrate our common inspiration, apparent good taste and
>camaraderie!

>Good Idea, huh?

Obviously with tounge firmly in cheek, but it strikes pretty close to home.
My parents had '59 Villager (that's the low end wagon version) which they
kept for 25 years. I learned to drive on that thing and the International
Edsel Owners Club was the first car club I ever joined (while a senior in
high school). I've kept up the membership out of nostalgia (30 years this
year!) even though the car's been gone for 15 or so. They sold it to a
high school senior...

There was nothing wrong with the cars that a couple of years development
couldn't fix. The '58s were the worst (but the most innovative). They
used electric stepper motors to shift the transmission (are you listening
164 owners?) and had fully integrated A/C and heater controls. They dropped
all of that for '59 where it was basically a badge engineered Ford, and
for '60 (all 2,200 of them) were almost down to the new compact class. The
tooling had already been started for the '61 so they just called it "Comet"
and made it a Mercury.

Incidentally, the "Villager" nameplate is the longest lived in the history
of Ford having been in continuous use for 42 years now. It started out as 
the low end Edsel wagon (the "Bermuda" was the high end wagon) then went to 
the Mercury wagon, the Ford Fairmont wagon and now it's on the minivan. The 
other Edsel nameplates "Ranger" re-emerged as their small pickup, "Pacer" was 
used by AMC for their weird but innovative bubble car, "Citation" was Chevy's 
first serious attempt at FWD and "Corsair" was a WWII dive bomber.

- - Jack

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