Introduction Edsel. To students of business@ the word Edsel conjures up only one thing: disaster. It was the name given to an automobile in the late 1950s that failed miserably in the marketplace and lost Ford Motor Company hundreds of millions of dollars. Most of the cause of the failure was timing?? the country fell into a recession during the year in which the Edsel was introduced. Its styling also played a significant part@ as did its name. However@ Edsel the car is not what sparked my interest in Edsel the man. I have been a Fordophile for the better part of 30 years@ and in all of the books written about the Ford Motor Company and the Ford family@ precious little has been written about Edsel Ford. I found that curious. Edsel was@ after all@ the son of Henry Ford and@ more importantly@ the president of the Ford Motor Company for a quarter of a century. Who was this man? What was he like? And why has he been ignored? After I had written The Ford Agency@ I decided to pursue a biography on this most elusive of Fords. I started my biography almost too late. By the time I began my research in the late 1980s@ most of the people who had known Edsel were long gone. The one person who could have given the most information about Edsel was his wife@ Eleanor@ and she had died in 1976@ taking a wealth of information to her grave. The story goes that Eleanor had finally consented to give an interview to noted Ford historian Professor David Lewis@ but she fell ill shortly before their scheduled interview and the two never had a chance to meet. Edsel and Eleanor's two youngest children@ Josephine Ford and William Ford@ are both still alive. Unfortunately@ neither consented to an interview for this book. I wrote to each of them several times but never received an answer. That is understandable@ although disappointing??it seems that they too adhere to Edsel's desire for privacy. Thus@ I was left with only a handful of people and any available written material with which to do my research. Nonetheless@ off I went@ and@ with the help of Richard Folsom??a Fordophile if ever there was one??and the resources of the Ford Archives@ I was able to piece together the story of Edsel Bryant Ford. During the late 1970s and the 1980s@ Dick Folsom had tracked down many of the remaining Ford relatives and Ford employees who had known both Henry and Edsel Ford@ simply because he wanted to speak to people who actually knew the Fords. He taped many of these conversations@ and the transcriptions now reside at the Ford Archives or at the Henry Ford Estate. During my preliminary research@ I was told of Dick's activities. I contacted Dick and told him what I was doing@ and he graciously introduced me to these same people. I was able to talk with them and ask them specifically about Edsel. These interviews were priceless@ particularly those with the Ford relatives@ because many of them had known Edsel from the time he was a teenager. Another fortuitous event during my research occurred when I learned that Bob Gregorie@ the first design chief of Ford Motor Company and Edsel's closest confidant during the last years of his life@ was still alive. Gregorie is now in his early nineties@ but I first met him when he was in his eighties. My good friend Dave Crippen@ chief archivist at the Ford Archives during these early years of my research@ told me about Gregorie@ and noted automotive historian@ Mike Lamm@ put me in touch with the great designer. Through extensive interviews with Gregorie@ I began to understand Edsel as a man@ a manager@ and a design executive. The extensive collections of the Ford Archives resposited at the Henry Ford Museum Greenfield Village in Dearborn@ Michigan@ filled in the remainder of the information that the interviews and other secondary materials could not provide. Here@ the massive collection of material on the Ford family and the Ford company are segregated into Accessions@ and Accession 6@ comprised of 464 boxes of material@ relates to Edsel Ford. Over a period of several months@ I gleaned through nearly every box of Accession 6@ searching for the tidbits of information pertaining to Edsel's life. In addition to Accession 6@ the Oral History Collection of the Archives was also a rich source of information. Called Reminiscences@ this is a collection of more than 250 transcribed interviews of Ford employees and family members conducted in the early 1950s in preparation for the fiftieth anniversary of Ford Motor Company. These Reminiscences??depending on whom was being interviewed??range in length from a few pages to more than a thousand pages. Most are indexed@ so it was relatively easy for me to comb through the many interviews@ looking for references to Edsel Ford. In some cases@ the Reminiscences concentrated on Edsel??one is by the doctor who delivered him@ and another is by Edsel's personal secretary. In the end@ I had thousands of note cards@ each one containing a tidbit of information on Edsel. My task at that point was to assemble all of this information into a coherent manuscript@ which I proceeded to do during the next decade. Looking back@ it is surprising that no one had ever written Edsel's biography@ for I indeed had found a lot of information about him. I suppose it was simply one of those serendipitous events that occurs in all of our lives. I decided that Edsel's biography needed to be written@ and when I started pursuing it@ things started falling into place. And the story turned out more interesting than I could ever have imagined. I am glad it is finally told.