In this case I was intrigued by the title "The 56 Worst Cars Ever Made". Why 56 ... god knows.
So here I was slipping through the list (The Dirty 56) quickly passing through cars built in 1906 or thereabouts. What was I wondering? Of Course ... where lies the Ford Edsel, a car I remember seeing on the road when I was 11 years old? At the time I rather liked the look of it, but in the end it turned out to be one of Ford's Great Big Mistakes (now that I think about it I'm surprised my dad didn't buy one. He was like that), nearly bankrupting the joint, and only getting the company off the hook by the introduction of the Mustang a few years later.
But why you ask, did the Edsel become a gigantic dud? I guess I can think of a few reasons, but none more interesting than that reported in the text of the 'Edsel Page'. Who wooda thunk?
http://www.carophile.org/the-worst-cars-of-all-time/11/#11. 1958 Ford Edsel
The Ford Edsel was doomed once the hype machine surrounding the car got rolling. The marketing department at Ford led everyone to believe the Edsel would be a fantastical car of the future, a plutonium powered scientific wonder. What they delivered was a Mercury. The Edsel wasn’t that bad a car. Sure it looked kinda plain, it drank gas, and it was far too expensive, especially during the 50’s recession, but it wasn’t as bad as it’s made out to be. Some critics blame the Edsel’s failure on the grille,which resembled a vagina. Apparently 50’s America was really phobic about the female nether regions. In truth it was probably a mixture of all of the above as well as the public jumping on the bandwagon with critics.