1959 Edsel - Relatively smaller.

In 1959, Edsel was happy to announce the new smallerness of their cars. Huh? Even now, Americans want bigger cars at any cost. Sure, we remember the small car craze precipitated by the oil crisis of The Seventies, and the overall shittiness of the asthmatic engines that the clueless engineers designed to power them, but it's weird to see a car company bragging about the shorter length of their cars in 1959.

But there it is in black and white dark grey and light grey: "Roomy without useless length... Because Edsel's new styling sensibility called for less length this year!" Weird, huh? As a guy who likes small cars for their handling and overall non-boatiness, it's a little gratifying to see something like this said in public as early as '59.

Until, that is, you consider that Ford dissolved it's Edsel division in 1960 because "the Edsel never gained popularity with contemporary American car buyers and sold poorly." Ah. This feels more familiar - the understanding that the vast majority of the population doesn't like what I like. Best to keep my head down and my mouth shut.

Americans only buy smaller cars when they feel forced to by economic constraints. Then they resent the small car that they feel stuck with. This is why small cars are burdened with the stigma of cheapness in this country.

Anyway, nice painting! As we have come to expect, the car is painted in great detail, and everything else is rendered a bit looser and more impressionistically, seemingly with a larger brush. This helps to keep the focus on the product.

At first glance, the proud couple seems to be stepping into an antique shop or some other barnlike country-fried establishment. But nope, a closer look shows us this is a high-class restaurant, with bow ties and everything. That must be the waiter's wagon wheel parked just outside the door. Notice that the interior detail of the restaurant is painted in very muted colors (beige and brown). Again, this helps to push it into the background and keeps it from calling your attention away from the car.

Also, we can see that my copy of the magazine was sneezed on by someone with necrotic rhinitis. It's no more than I deserve for liking small cars.

UPDATE: Steve Miller posted some deep knowledge about the history of Studebaker in the comments, and it's too damn good to be missed. Here it is in "post addendum" form:

Right idea, wrong car. Studebaker, after its 1957-58 success* with the no-frills Scotsman series(single sun visor, no door arm rests, choice of three homely paint colors, painted trim instead of chrome), whacked off the front and back of their standard-sized sedans to produce... the Lark! 

Upshot of the surgery? Studebaker's sales of 44,759 units in 1958 was almost trebled for 1959. The Lark enabled Studebaker to hang on to breath long enough to produce the astounding Avanti. But the moving finger had written -- the board diversified corporate holdings, and Studebaker stumbled to the curb -- in Hamilton, Ontario -- by 1966, ending 114 years in transportation and 64 in the auto industry.

*Success is relative -- the Scotsman series accounted for close to half of Studebaker's sales for 1958. But 1958 was a recession year, and a real horror show for the car business on the whole. So, not exactly an auspicious time for Ford to launch a new marque, especially one targeting a near-luxury market.

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