Local used car lot find sparks memories
From clunker to classic, the Edsel is remembered locally
By Stephen Flanagan Jackson
STEPHEN FLANAGAN JACKSON PHOTO
Julio Sanchez proudly stands with the 1959 Edsel which sat on his lot at Total Automotive Services in Ruskin for several weeks. Now, the vintage car has been purchased and transported to Minnesota.
It was a flash in the pan. Actually it was more of a flop in the pan. We are speaking, of course, of the Edsel automobile. First produced by the Ford Motor Company in 1957, there were only two more model years before Ford pulled the plug on the car that has become known as the “lemon” of the century. Actually it was Ford Company in-fighting and poor marketing tactics more so than mechanical problems that doomed the Edsel, a car ahead of its time.
You recently had a chance to buy a Edsel right here in the South Shore area where a functioning, but definitely not mint-condition, red and white Edsel sedan was parked on the front of Julio Sanchez’s used car lot at Total Automotive Services in the middle of Ruskin on the corner of U.S. 41 and College Avenue.
Now, that Edsel has been sold and transported all the way to Minnesota. Sanchez can still trace it down for you, if you are interested.
One Sun City Center resident has fond memories of the Edsel, despite its reputation as a white elephant. Her face lights up as Joan Campbell tells about the morning of her 18th birthday in St. Petersburg. For Campbell, the Edsel never was a flop, but a highlight of her teen years and also triggers loving memories of her parents as well as pride in a one-year-old Edsel.
“Most of us remember our first car. I surely do,” said Campbell.
“It was Monday morning, January 26, 1960 — my 18th birthday. After breakfast mom and I headed from the breakfast room into the garage so she could drive my friends and me to school, only her car wasn’t there.
“The electric garage door started going up, slowly revealing a bright red convertible parked outside in the driveway. My dad stood next to it, mom scurried to his side, held up keys, and they both shouted, ‘Happy birthday!’
“Thus began life with my first car, a 1959 red Edsel Corsair convertible. Having a car opened up a new sense of freedom for my friends and me. But that freedom was tempered with daddy telling me, ‘If I ever even hear of you speeding or driving recklessly, I’ll get rid of the car.’ And I knew he meant it.
This red 1959 Edsel Corsair convertible was sold at auction in 2008 for $44,000. Only 1,343 Corsair convertibles were produced that year.
Barrett-Jackson Auction Services photo
“On Friday nights and weekends we cruised up and down St. Petersburg’s Central Avenue and around the old Million Dollar Pier, then to Triplett’s Drive-in to see who was there.
“One time I invited my great-grandmother Rosa, in her mid-80s, to go cruising with my friends and me. She accepted and sat in the front passenger seat wearing a scarf over her hair to keep it in place. We had fun showing her off at Triplett’s, and she said she enjoyed her first ride in a convertible and being with young people.
“Summer came and went — then St. Petersburg Junior College —with many trips to St. Pete Beach and as gritty testimony, a tiny residue of white sugar sand in the seams of the Edsel’s black vinyl seats.
“Reminiscing about my red car brings back happy memories with my long-ago friends and especially my parents, who must have sacrificed to gift their only child with a bright red Edsel convertible for her 18th birthday,” concludes Campbell with a sparkle in her eye, revealing that her next car, which she herself purchased in the mid-’60s was a Ford Mustang.
Sanchez, somewhat of a classic car buff as well as an accomplished mechanic and businessman, talks more of the particular Edsel which sat on his lot for a few weeks and the history of the short-lived automobile’s run in the late ’50s.
“This is a 1959 Edsel built in a Canadian plant with a 330 engine and a 3-speed automatic transmission,” explains Sanchez in front of his TAS shop. Sanchez points out that this Edsel car “comes with power steering and power brakes, an upgrade option in 1959.”
He explains that this Edsel was originally black. Sanchez recalls that according to a previous owner, the engine on this car was rebuilt in early 2000 and the interior was renovated in 2003 by a different owner who sold the car in Tampa in 2004.
“Since then, the Edsel has changed hands twice and the last owner sold the car to Total Automotive Services for an undisclosed amount,” said Sanchez, talking about the Edsel.
When Sanchez first got the Edsel, it was towed to the shop where Sanchez and his crew identified electrical issues, fuel delivery issues, brake issues, running issues. “Those were taken care of, and it’s now a running/driving vehicle,” added Sanchez about two weeks before he received an offer he could not refuse and had the Edsel shipped to Minnesota recently.
Ironically, the Ford executive who threw the Edsel under the bus was Robert McNamara, the Ford Company president at the time who was acclaimed to be a Whiz Kid of American industry. McNamara showed less than astute management, however, by ending the short tenure of the Edsel before it had a chance to prove itself.
In another irony, almost immediately after halting the Edsel production in its tracks, Ford came out with the humble, fuel-efficient, plain-Jane Falcon. The compact car was a smash hit with consumers throughout the ’60s as the ostentatious, overpriced, gas hog Edsel faded into oblivion, sought after only by classic-car aficionados and auto museums.
