If I were to ask you to play a quick game of
word association right now, and I threw out the
word Edsel, what is the very first thing that
fires in your synapses? For the vast majority
of people, even those who weren't even born in
the 20th century, let alone the 1950s, it isn't
just an image of a vintage car with chrome bumpers.
It's a punchline. It really is. It's a punchline.
It is the cultural synonym for a catastrophic,
humiliating commercial flop. It's right up there
with the Titanic or New Coke. It is. It's one
of those rare proper nouns that has. you know,
transcended its original meaning to become a
generic entry in the dictionary of business failures.
Right. If you launch a product today, whether
it's software, a beverage or a gadget, and it
absolutely bombs, the business press will say
you've pulled an Edsel. It has become shorthand
for a disaster born of hubris. Exactly. It's
the ultimate cautionary tale. But the mission
for this deep dive is to move past the easy punchline,
because when you actually peel back the layers
and look at the numbers, the scale of this disaster
is just, well, it's mind. It is. We aren't just
talking about a car that didn't sell quite as
well as they hoped. We are talking about a financial
crater that nearly swallowed an empire. The numbers
are truly staggering, even by modern standards.
You really have to look at the investment here.
Ford lost over $250 million on development, manufacturing,
and marketing alone. Just on the setup. Just
on the setup. And when you factor in the total
operational losses by the time the dust settled,
estimates climbed to roughly $350 million. $350
million. Now, in the late 1950s, that was a fortune.
That was an empire's ransom. If we adjust that
for inflation to 2024 dollars, we're talking
about a loss of roughly $2 .9 billion. $2 .9
billion. Gone. Just evaporated into thin air.
That is the GDP of a small nation just set on
fire. It effectively was money set on fire in
front of the entire world. And to put it in perspective
of the product itself in terms of sales, they
moved about 116 ,000 units total. Which sounds
like a lot if you're a small company. Right.
If you're a boutique manufacturer like Ferrari,
that's a great run. But for a mass market giant
like Ford, it was catastrophic. It was less than
half of their breakeven point. They were losing
massive amounts of money on every single unit
that rolled off the line. So that sets the stakes
for our deep dive today. Our mission isn't just
to point and laugh at a funny looking car with
a weird grill. It's to play detective. Yeah.
How did a company as massive As experienced and
as successful as the Ford Motor Company get this
so profoundly wrong. Was it just an ugly car?
Or was it a victim of something much more complex?
Bad timing, corporate infighting, and a market
that just shifted under its feet. That is the
pivotal question. In my experience analyzing
business history, it is rarely just about the
product being ugly or bad. A bad product can
sometimes sell if the marketing is genius, and
a great product can fail if the timing is off.
The Edsel story is really a story about corporate
hubris, about misreading the tea leaves of history,
and about the sunk cost fallacy. The incredible
danger of assuming the future is going to look
exactly like the past. Okay, let's unpack this.
To understand the Edsel, We have to understand
where Ford was as a corporate entity in the mid
1950s. Yeah. Because they weren't just throwing
darts at a board. They had a very specific strategic
reason for doing this. They felt they had no
choice. They did. You have to go back to a specific
date. January 17th, 1956. This is a watershed
moment in automotive history because that is
when Ford Motor Company went public. Oh, I didn't
realize it was that late. Yes. Before that, for
over half a century, it was entirely owned by
the Ford family. It was a kingdom run by Henry
Ford and then his descendants. But once you go
public, the rules of engagement changed completely.
Right. Suddenly you have shareholders. You have
shareholders. You have Wall Street analysts breathing
down your neck. You need sustained, demonstrable
growth every single quarter. So the pressure
is on. And when this new management team looked
at the automotive landscape, they saw a gaping
hole in their lineup. compared to their rivals,
right? Precisely. They looked across town at
General Motors and they saw a perfect ladder
of success. GM had brilliant market segmentation.
The famous GM ladder? The ladder. If you were
a young person or a working class buyer, you
started with a Chevrolet. Then, as you got a
promotion, maybe got married, you moved up to
a Pontiac. Then, as you hit middle management,
you bought an Oldsmobile. Then a Buick. And finally,
when you had truly arrived as an executive, you
bought a Cadillac. A car for every stage of life.
They had a car for every tax bracket and every
stage of the American dream. It was a cradle
-to -grave strategy. GM kept you in the family
for your entire life, but Ford didn't have that
ladder. What did Ford have? No! Ford had Ford.
the working man's car and then way up at the
top of the mountain they had lincoln there was
a massive barren wasteland in the middle just
a huge price jump a huge jump and lincoln was
trying to compete with oldsmobile and buick which
was the wrong target lincoln should have been
fighting Cadillac. They were aiming too low.
Exactly. So Ford was hemorrhaging customers.
They were tracking this data. They saw thousands
of lineal Ford owners trading in their cars and
walking across the street to buy an Oldsmobile
or a Buick because Ford had nothing to offer
them in that medium price bracket. So if I'm
a Ford customer in 1955 and I'm doing well, I've
got a little extra cash in my pocket and I want
to upgrade from my basic Ford sedan, I literally
have to leave the brand. You have to leave the
brand. You are forced out. And in the 1950s,
that medium price market was where the volume
and the profit margins were. It was the juicy
middle. Where all the money was. It was. So the
strategy makes perfect sense on paper. You move
Lincoln up market to fight Cadillac head to head.
You keep Mercury as a step up from Ford. Ford,
and then you create a brand new fourth brand,
an intermediate division, to fight in that rich
territory against Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and DeSoto.
The logic is sound. It really is. So development
begins in 1955. They give it the codename e -car,
which just stood for experimental car. Right.
And this brings us to the first major psychological
element of this failure. Hubris. Reading through
the internal memos and the press releases from
this time, Ford wasn't just hopeful. They were
arrogant about this. It was supreme confidence
bordering on delusion. You have to remember,
the mid -50s were the golden age of American
corporate confidence. The war was over, the economy
was booming, and American industry felt invincible.
We can do anything. Anything. And Ford assured
investors and the Detroit automotive press that
the e -car wasn't a gamble. They claimed the
styling and specifications were the result of
sophisticated market analysis. I love that phrase.
It sounds so official. It does. But they essentially
told the world that they could guarantee broad
public acceptance before a single member of the
public had even seen a sketch. Guaranteed acceptance.
That is a dangerous phrase in any business. It
implies you've solved the equation of human desire.
It does. And as we'll see, humans are notoriously
bad at fitting into equations. They believe that
with enough data, enough focus groups, and enough
charts, they could scientifically engineer a
hit. They thought they could dictate what the
public wanted rather than discovering it. So
they have the car. They have the strategy. Now
they need a name. And this. This is honestly
one of my favorite parts of the story because
it is a case study in indecision and corporate
absurdity. It really is. It really illustrates
how disjointed the decision making process was.
It was absolute chaos. Initially, there was a
very natural proposal to name the car after Edsel
Ford. Now, for context, Edsel was Henry Ford's
son. He was the father of the current CEO at
the time, Henry Ford II. Right. Edsel Ford had
been the company president. He was a sensitive,
artistic soul who actually. had great taste,
but he died relatively young. So naming it after
him would be a nice tribute. But the family wasn't
on board with that. I hated the idea, passionately.
Henry Ford II specifically said he did not want
his father's good name spinning around on thousands
of hubcaps. Wow, that's a great quote. Isn't
it? He felt it was disrespectful. They wanted
to keep the family legacy separate from the commercial
grinder of a mid -market sedan. So no Edsel.
They do what any confused corporation does. They
hire consultants. Right. They hired the advertising
firm Foot Cone and Belding. And the directive
was simple. Find us a name that conveys excitement,
modernity, and status. The agency went to work
and came back with a list. A list. It was a fun
book. They produced 6 ,000 possibilities. 6 ,000
names. You can just imagine the executive meeting.
Ernest Bruch, who was the chairman of the board
and a top Ford executive, famously looked at
this mountain of paperwork and said, we hired
you to find one name. Not 6 ,000. That's a fair
point. It was analysis paralysis at its finest.
And amidst this chaos, the marketing manager,
again named David Wallace, gets desperate. He
decides to try something completely different.
He starts a correspondence with the famous modernist
poet Marianne Moore. Of all people. Right. He
asks her for creative input and what she sent
back. I mean, you cannot make this stuff up.
The Marianne Moore letters are legendary in the
advertising world. They are completely unorthodox.
She was clearly approaching this from a linguistic
and artistic perspective, completely detached
from the reality of selling steel and rubber
to a suburban dad. Oh, completely. I have to
read some of these. Because I want you, the listener,
to imagine walking into a dealership in 1957,
looking at a shiny new car and seeing the badge
on the back. Imagine driving a utopian turtletop.
It paints a picture, doesn't it? Though probably
not the aerodynamic one they were hoping for.
I mean, what even is that? Or how about the pastelogram?
Which sounds like a geometry equation drawn in
chalk. Or something you get from the post office.
It does. Or the resilient bullet. Resilient bullet
sounds terrifying. Like a projectile that bounces
back and hits you. Not a great image for a car.
My personal favorite might be the Mongoose Civic.
It sounds like a French sports car designed for
small mammals. It's poetic, but it doesn't scream
American muscle. And Andante Con Moto, which
is a musical tempo. She also suggested Turco
Tinga. Which sounds like a tropical disease you
catch in the jungle. It's just incredible. So
they have 6 ,000 corporate names, they have utopian
turtletop, and they are running out of time.
Production is looming. How did they land back
on the one name the family strictly forbade?
It was the ultimate anticlimax. Ernest Breach
was chairing a board meeting. Henry Ford II was
actually away at the time, conveniently out of
the room. Of course he was. Breach looked at
all the options, didn't like any of them, and
just decided to call it Edsel. in honor of Edsel
Ford. After all that time, money, and 6 ,000
suggestions, they went with the placeholder that
the CEO had specifically rejected. It feels like
a gnomon. Yeah. They couldn't even agree on what
to call it, so they just forced a decision that
the boss hated. It certainly speaks to the internal
friction and lack of unified vision that would
plague the whole project. You have a car named
by committee, but the wrong committee. So we
have a name. The Edsel. Now let's talk about
the car itself, the physical object. Because
even if they called it the Thunder Cougar Falcon
Bird, it wouldn't matter if the car was ugly.
And the design of the Edsel is, well, controversial
is putting it mildly. It is putting it very mildly.
The controversy centered almost entirely on the
front grill. The infamous horse collar. Yes,
the vertical center grill. Now what's fascinating
here is that the original design by Roy Brown,
the lead stylist, was actually quite different.
delicate vertical opening. It was supposed to
be elegant, reminiscent of high -end European
cars or the classic LaSalles of the 1930s. Okay,
so a thin, classy grille. What happened? How
did we get from elegant to the monster that was
released? Engineering happened. The engineers
looked at the slender opening and said, this
won't let in enough air. The engine will overheat.
Ah, a practical problem. A very practical problem.
So they demanded it be made wider and taller.
Then, Ernest Breach, the same guy who picked
the name, demanded it be even taller to look
more imposing on the road. So what started as
a delicate accent became a gaping maw. And the
public reaction was brutal. It was visceral.
People called it a horse collar. They called
it a toilet seat. But the most famous insult,
which appeared in the press and became the defining
joke, was that it resembled an Oldsmobile sucking
a lemon. Oof. That is hard to come back from.
It really is. It signaled that the car was sour,
pinched. Weird. And it wasn't just the front.
The 1958 station wagons had a serious design
flaw in the back. They used these boomerang -shaped
taillights. Okay, picturing a boomerang. Now
imagine two of them. But because of the shape,
at a distance, the left taillight looked like
an arrow pointing to the right, and the right
one looked like an arrow pointing to the left.
Oh no. So if a driver signaled a left turn, the
shape of the light was literally pointing the
traffic behind them to the right. That is genuinely
dangerous. It was confusing, and management refused
to pay for sheet metal changes to fix it because
the tooling was already done, so they were stuck
with it. Just one bad design choice after another.
But the Edsel wasn't just about looking weird.
It was supposed to be the car of the future.
It was packed with gadgets. And some of these
features sound. Well, let's talk about the teletouch
drive, because this sounds like science fiction
gone wrong. Ugh, the teletouch. This was a classic
case of technology for technology's sake. It
was a push -button transmission system, which
was trendy at the time. Chrysler had buttons
on the dash. Right, I've seen those. But Ford,
wanting to be different, put the buttons right
in the center of the steering wheel hub. Wait.
The center of the steering wheel. Isn't that
where the horn goes? Exactly. That is the universal
instinctive location for the horn. So you had
drivers in traffic, in a panic, slapping the
center of the wheel to honk at someone, and instead
they were downshifting or throwing the car into
neutral. That's a disaster waiting to happen.
I could just picture it. It gets worse. The buttons
were arranged in a circle. Street racers found
a way to make fun of it. They joked that the
buttons stood for D for drag, L for leap, and
R for race. But the real problem was reliability.
It didn't work. The control wires for these buttons
ran down the steering column, but they were routed
too close to the exhaust manifold and the engine
bay. Heat and delicate electronics usually don't
mix well. They do not. The heat would melt the
insulation or damage the servo motor, so you'd
have people pressing drive and the car doing
absolutely nothing because the transmission motor
failed. It was infuriating for owners. It sounds
incredibly frustrating. But to be fair to the
engineers, there were some innovations that actually
stuck, right? It wasn't all bad ideas. That's
an important corrective to the history. Underneath
the bad styling, the Edsel actually introduced
a lot of things we take for granted today. Like
what? It had warning lights for low oil and the
parking brake, inspired by aircraft design. It
had a speed warning system, which was a precursor
to cruise control. It introduced self -adjusting
brakes, which is a first for the industry, and
a huge maintenance saver. That's a big deal.
And childproof rear door locks. Oh, really? I
didn't know the Edsel introduced child locks.
Yes. So underneath the lemon -sucking grille
and the faulty transmission buttons, there was
actually some very forward -thinking engineering.
The tragedy is that the failures were so loud
they drowned out the successes. So let's go to
E -Day. September 4th, 1957. The launch. The
marketing leading up to this was intense, wasn't
it? The hype leading up to this was unprecedented.
They treated it like a state secret or a new
weapons system. They had a top -rated TV special
called The Edsel Show. featuring stars like Bing
Crosby and Frank Sinatra. Wow, big names. Huge
names. And in the marketing, they were incredibly
secretive. They would show the car under tarps
or viewed through a blurred lens in print ads.
The tagline was, The Car of the Future. They
built up this mystery that what was under the
tarp was going to change your life. And then
the tarp comes off. And people saw. A car. A
car that looked a lot like a Ford, but with a
weird grille. The bloom popped. Instantly. The
letdown was palpable. Consumers were confused.
They didn't understand what it was. It was described
by some as a reborn LaSalle. Firsthand, the similarities
to the existing Ford and Mercury bodies were
obvious because it shared the same chassis. It
didn't look like a spaceship. It looked like
a Ford that was trying too hard. So the launch
is a thud, but now we have to get into the why.
Why did it fail so hard? Because usually, even
a weird car sells a few units. The outline suggests
there are three main theories here. Let's start
with Theory A. The market moved. This is the
aim was right. The target moved theory. And there
is a lot of economic truth to this. Remember,
planning started in the early 50s. Right. Boom
times. The medium price market was exploding.
Pontiac, Buick and Dodge were selling millions
of cars. So aiming for that market made sense
then. Yes. But cars take years to develop. They
do. And by the time the Edsel launched in late
1957, the U .S. economy had hit a sharp recession.
The Eisenhower slide of 1957. Bad timing. The
worst possible timing. People panicked. They
stopped buying big, gas -guzzling, medium -priced
cars. And the Edsel was a gas -duzzler. It required
premium fuel and had terrible mileage. And this
is right when the compact car revolution starts,
isn't it? Exactly. This is the moment the Volkswagen
Beetle starts taking off in America. They were
selling 50 ,000 Beetles a year. People were buying
Ramblers from American Motors. The American consumer
suddenly wanted efficiency and economy. And Ford
just launched a giant... Giant, expensive, chrome
-covered barge. And it wasn't just Edsel suffering,
right? The competition collapsed, too. That's
the proof that the market had shifted. It wasn't
just that people hated the Edsel. Nobody was
buying anything in this class. DeSoto sales dropped
50%. Packard, one of the most famous American
luxury brands, essentially died during this period.
They became the awful Packard Bakers. Right.
American Motors killed off Nash and Hudson to
focus entirely on the compact Rambler. The entire
medium price segment evaporated just as Edsel
walked through the door. So that's Theory A.
The recession killed it. It's very compelling.
But then there's Theory B. Ford shot themselves
in the foot with pricing and internal confusion.
This is where the strategy falls apart in practice.
Remember, Edsel was supposed to slot neatly between
Ford and Mercury. Right. The latter. Ford -Edsel,
Mercury -Mercury -Lincoln. Clear steps. But they
messed up the pricing. The cheapest Edsel, the
Ranger, was priced almost exactly the same as
the most expensive Ford, the Fairlane 500. So
they were competing with themselves. Directly.
If you walked into a dealership, you had to choose.
Do I want a top -of -the -line, fully -loaded
Ford with leather seats and power windows? or
a base model stripped down Edsel, most people
chose the loaded Ford. That makes sense. And
then on the other end? On the high end, the middle
Edsels, the Pacer and Corsair, were actually
more expensive than comparable Mercurys. Wait,
I thought Mercury was supposed to be the higher
brand. Exactly. It completely broke the hierarchy.
Buyers couldn't figure it out. Is the Edsel better
than a Mercury? Is it worse? Why does it cost
more? It was a muddy, confusing mess for the
consumer. And they launched with how many models?
18. 18 models for a brand new car. That's insane.
Sedans, hardtops, convertibles, wagons like the
Bermuda, Roundup, Villager. They flooded the
market with variations before they even knew
if people wanted the basic car. It created confusion
for dealers and buyers alike. And this leads
to Theory C, which might be the nail in the coffin.
quality control. Because even if you sorted through
the pricing mess and bought one, it often didn't
work. This is the production nightmare. Ford,
in a cost -saving move, didn't build a dedicated
factory for the Edsel. They just shoved them
onto existing Ford and Mercury assembly lines.
How did the workers react to that? They hated
it. Imagine you are an assembly line worker.
You have a rhythm building Fords. Suddenly, an
Edsel comes down the line. You have to stop,
change your tools, grab different parts, install
them, then... switch back for the next four.
It breaks the whole flow. It messed up their
quotas. It was a hassle. And there are reports
of resentment leading to sabotage, or at least
gross neglect. Sabotage. Yes. Many Edsels left
a line unfinished. There are famous stories of
dealers receiving cars where the uninstalled
parts were just thrown in the trunk with a note
saying, you finish it. No way. Here's the door
handle. Good luck. Essentially. Or bolts not
tightened. Consumer reports and popular mechanics
got their hands on these cars, and the data was
just awful. 16 % of owners reported poor workmanship.
We're talking faulty welding, power steering
failures, trunks that leaked when it rained.
Leaking trunks is a pretty basic failure. You
have to get that right. It is. And odometers
that read the wrong mileage. It reinforced this
public perception that this was a lemon. So you
have a recession, confusing pricing, and a car
that leaks. It's the perfect storm of failure.
And standing in the middle of this storm is a
man named Robert McNamara. We have to talk about
him because his role in killing the Edsel is
fascinating. Robert McNamara is a huge figure
in 20th century history. He was one of the whiz
kids, a group of 10 officers from World War II
who were hired to save Ford using statistics
and logic. McNamara was all about efficiency,
data, and cost cutting. And he didn't like the
Edsel project from the start. He despised the
strategy. He hated the idea of fragmented divisions.
He thought having separate divisions for Edsel,
Mercury, and Lincoln was inefficient and bloated.
He wanted consolidation. So when the Edsel started
to wobble, He didn't try to save it. No, he became
the executioner. Almost immediately, in January
1958, just a few months after launch, he merged
Edsel into a conglomerate division called M .E
.L., Mercury Edsel Lincoln. He stripped Edsel
of its independence. Pulled its funding and support.
And the budget. Slashed. He cut the advertising
budget for 1959 and virtually eliminated it for
1960. He pushed for the Edsel to stop using its
own unique platforms and just use Ford bodies
to save money, which further diluted the brand.
He was already moving on to the next big thing.
Yes, the Ford Falcon. McNamara saw the data we
talked about, the shift to compact cars. He wanted
to focus all of Ford's energy and resources on
the Falcon. And ironically, the factory capacity
that was built up for the Edsel ended up being
used to build the Falcon. Which was a massive
success. A monster success, selling 400 ,000
in its first year. So in a cold, calculated business
sense, McNamara was right. But there is a really
dark, ironic historical footnote here regarding
McNamara. Right, the Vietnam connection. McNamara
later became the Secretary of Defense under JFK
and LBJ, overseeing the escalation of the Vietnam
War. There is a museum in Hanoi, the Ho Chi Minh
Museum, that features an Edsel crashing through
a wall. Wow, seriously. It is used to symbolize
American military failure. The idea being that
the same man who couldn't sell the Edsel also
couldn't win the war. It's of a brutal, lasting
legacy. That is heavy. So McNamara pulls the
plug. Let's talk about the slow death of the
car. Because it didn't disappear overnight. There
was a 1959 model and even a 1960 model. The 1959
model was an attempt to fix things. They toned
down the styling. The grille was integrated into
the headlights, much less lemon -sucking. It
looked more conventional. And they got rid of
the gadgets. They dropped the fancy, unreliable
gadgets like the Teletouch and the Rolling Dome
speedometer, but it was too little, too late.
The name was already poisoned. Sales dropped
to about 44 ,000. It was in a death spiral. And
then the 1960 model, the Ghost Edsel. This is
a collector's dream today because they are so
incredibly rare. The 1960 model was only produced
for about a month from October to November 1959.
Just one month of production. That's it. Only
2 ,846 were built. And it didn't even look like
an Edsel anymore. Not at all. They abandoned
the vertical grill entirely. It looked like a
Pontiac split grill. It was basically a Ford
with some different trim. It was an Edsel in
name only. Yeah. A ghost, like you said. And
then on November 19th, 1959, the announcement
comes. It's over. discontinued and the reaction
in the used car market was instant. The value
of a used Edsel plummeted by $400 overnight.
That's a huge chunk of value loss for people
who had just bought one. And Ford actually had
to issue coupons to apologize. They did. If you
had bought a 1960 model right before the announcement,
they gave you a coupon worth $300 to $400 toward
a new Ford product to make up for the loss in
resale value. It was a final public humiliation.
So $350 million lost, the brand destroyed. Here's
where it gets really interesting. It wasn't all
for nothing. The Edsel actually had a strange
afterlife. It did. The DNA of the Edsel survived.
Which is the great irony. We mentioned the compact
car revolution. Well, the Edsel division was
actually developing a compact car before they
were shut down. And that car became? The Comet.
The Mercury Comet. It was originally designed
as an Edsel. It even had Edsel -style keys and
those elliptical taillights. But when Edsel died,
they just slapped a Mercury badge on it. And
the Comet was a massive hit. Oh, massive. It
sold more in one year than all the Edsels combined
over its three -year run. That has to hurt if
you were an Edsel designer. Hey, they love my
car. They just hate the name. It proves that
the engineering wasn't the total problem. It
was the branding and the packaging. There was
also the Meteor, which was a Mercury model that
started life as the 1961 Edsel Ranger. The good
ideas survived under different names. And what
about the design legacy? We talked about how
ugly the grille was, but vertical grilles came
back. They absolutely did. I mean, look at Pontiac
for decades. Look at Jaguar. Alfa Romeo, and
look at the modern BMW 4 Series with those massive
vertical kidney grilles. They got a lot of hate
for those, too, initially. They did, but they
sold. The vertical grille wasn't inherently a
bad design. It was just executed poorly on the
Edsel and launched at a time when people wanted
wide, horizontal cars. And the features, self
-adjusting brakes, child locks, those are standard
on every car today. So the Edsel was... In a
weird way, ahead of its time in engineering,
but behind its time in market trends. And trapped
in a corporate structure that didn't know how
to sell it. It was just the wrong car at the
wrong time with the wrong name. It's the ultimate
case study in what not to do. It is, but I think
it's also a redemption story for Ford eventually.
Years later, Ford launched the Sierra in Europe.
It had radical styling that people initially
hated. They called it the jelly mold. But Ford
stuck with it, and it became a massive hit. They
learned that... If you are going to be radical,
you have to be patient and you have to get the
engineering right. So what does this all mean
for us? Why are we still talking about the Edsel
almost 70 years later? Because it's the perfect
storm. It's what happens when you have a recession,
confusing pricing, bad quality control and internal
sabotage all hitting at once. It wasn't just
a funny grill. It was a systemic failure from
top to bottom. And it challenges that idea of
guaranteed success. Ford had the smartest guys
in the room, the whiz kids, the biggest budget,
and the most sophisticated market analysis of
the era. And they still missed the mark completely
because the world changed while they were building
the car. That's the lesson. The world is dynamic.
You can't just rely on past data to predict the
future, no matter how good that data is. And
that raises a really provocative question for
everyone listening. We live in an age of algorithms.
We have big data that predicts our every move,
what we want to buy, what we want to watch. Companies
today are even more confident than Ford was in
1957. They are. They think they know us better
than we know ourselves. So could a modern company
make an Edsel -sized mistake today? Or are we
just as vulnerable to assuming the future will
look exactly like the past? Are we building utopian
turtle tops right now and just don't know it
yet? I think as long as humans are involved,
the potential for a $2 .9 billion mistake is
always there. On that note, thanks for diving
deep with us. We'll see you next time. Thrive
safe.