Were they amortizing?

I enjoy this guy’s car history videos. He’s just being himself, not using an AI narrator. Most of the material is familiar to me after 70 years of reading about cars. Occasionally he comes up with a new finding. In this case he doesn’t seem to realize his own discovery!

He shows clearly that the 1958 Edsel wagon was based on the 1957 Ford wagon, with an easy bolt-on gimmick under the taillight. He doesn’t say (and maybe wasn’t noticing) that the ’58 FORD wagon was different from the ’57 FORD.

Here’s the ’58 Edsel, ’57 Ford and ’58 Ford wagons. Ford added an oval shape to the ’58, which was more than just a bolt-on. The underlying sheetmetal was significantly different and much fatter with a shelf on top of the tailgate, along with the hinges, latches, weatherstrip and wiring. These dual ovals didn’t please Ford loyalists who expected the iconic round taillight.

Sharing wagon bodies was a common practice. Dodge and Plymouth sedans were distinctly different, but Dodge shared Plymouth wagons with variant decorations. Sharing the 1958 Ford wagon with a bolt-on variant would be the normal trick, and it also would have worked better for Edsel identity.

Here’s an Edsel sedan along with my crudely photoshopped Edsel wagon based on a ’58 Ford. This taillight would have been a closer match to the Edsel sedan taillight, with the same shape turned upside down.

Best guess: Ford must have been using up leftover ’57 wagon bodies for the low-volume Edsel wagons, amortizing a sunk cost.