‘We have been growing customers for General Motors’ observed Lewis Crusoe, a vice-president of the Ford Motor Company in the 1950s.
Mr Crusoe was talking about a well-known problem at the company; low-income Ford owners were trading up to a medium-priced car from its big rival General Motors, as soon as their earnings rose above a certain level.
To address this problem, Ford invested over $250 million to design a new model, the Ford Edsel, especially aimed at the mid-market.
It was launched amidst an obscene fanfare and Ford expected to sell 200,000 Edsels in the first year alone. Well,