Ford Edsel - Why did it flop?

The Edsel is a platform of car planed, designed and produced by Ford in the late 50s to the early 60s.
It was highly publicised as the 'car of the future' 

The start of the Edsel's problems came from critics about its unique design, the huge vertical grill was a massive eye sore for most consumers.
Along with 'interesting' looks the Edsel was the result of ford ignoring its customer base, they took polls from Ford owners to try and create a car that they would want to buy, however they disregarded most of the results and created a car that Ford wanted to make.

From the start the Edsel was plagued with reliability issues, mainly engine failure and a sloppy new style of automatic transmission, mounted in the centre of the steering wheel.
It's over complication in design was its downfall, it was very difficult to work on and most workshop mechanics didn't want anything to do with the car.

The last reason that the Edsel failed was it's pricing.

It started at $2,500 which was more expensive than any other Ford at the time, and when all options were added the grand total came to $3,800 which was in line with smaller Cadillacs of the day which seemed ridiculous for an unreliable, ugly Ford.

In the end the Edsel's production run meandered on for 2 miserable years from 1958 to 1960 and in that time only 44,891 were made, in 1960 only 76 convertibles were made, making them incredibly rare.
A good example of the convertible sold recently for $47,000

Overall the failure of the Edsel was down to poor marketing, over hyping the car to the point where people thought it was the 'car of the future' and finally for being made incredibly poorly by Ford's own mechanics and employees, quality control practically didn't exist.

It will be forever remembered as the biggest automotive failure in the 20th century, and will serve as a reminder to Ford not to ignore their customer base again.