I received a frantic call from a young lady, who shall remain nameless, urging me to come to her mothers house and help her relieve herself of a 58 Edsel Ranger 4dr. To make a long story short, she had owned it for 7 years and had stored it for 7 years in an inoperable and deteriorating condition in her mother’s garage who now was going to put her house up for sale in two weeks.

As a favor, I went and looked at it and offered her $50 for it. The rear window and right rear taillight were broken. The interior was in bad shape.

I don’t know what happened to the 58 Edsel, but I will tell you what I told her. A friend offered me a 59 that was an everyday driver with only 56,000 miles on it for $600 and even though that was a much better deal, I didn’t take it either.

The 58 Edsel was actually the only real Edsel ever built, at least production wise. There were so many problems with it that in order to escape the problems, all mechanicals and drive train were switched to Mercury parts in 59 and the Electric Push Button Tranny was dropped in favor of Mercury’s col. Shift.

The reason to own a 58 Edsel is that it is the only real Edsel Ford ever built. That is the same reason not to own a 58 Edsel too! Hardly anything from any other Ford product will fit the 58 Edsel, which also means that it is a worthless parts car for anything except a 58 Edsel, so buying a parts car, which was essentially what the young lady was offering me, would have been a parts keeper as the only market for parts from it would have been rather small. The parts from the 59-on Edsels were at least usable in other Ford products.

Ergo, a 58 Edsel in good shape with a complete parts car is a good purchase if you wish to drive it any at all. The 58 is a very unique vehicle and makes a good addition to anyone’s collection, but just be prepared. I would recommend joining an Edsel Club, if not for the social aspects, then for the parts, help and information available from a club.

For the record, there were 63,110 –1958 Edsels built. I doubt if there are 10% of them left, probably more like 5%.