After 40 years of storage this Edsel Ranger has finally seen the light of day yet again. In manageable condition with loads of original teal paint, this Edsel is looking for its new owner to return it to road duty. With bidding only reaching $805.00 this may wind up being a cheap Edsel. Find it here on ebay out of Conrad, Iowa.
Inside of the Edsel isn’t too shabby. The carpet is missing, but you can get a better look at the floors and see that they, as well, aren’t too bad either. The seats look to wear original upholstery, though they are a little dirty. The seats would benefit from a solid cleaning job, and may actually be nice viable original seats.
The dash looks nice, as does the gauge cluster. There is no hazing, cracks, or oxidation. The door panels look solid as well. From examining the photos we see no major rot in the floors of this Edsel. There is clearly some surface rust, and there is a fair amount of dirt as well. The interior looks suitable enough for a driver, but is nice over all. The dashboard looks to have a crack midway in.
Turquoise and white is a lovely color on the Edsel, and surprisingly there is still a great deal of original paint left. Although there is some rust, it looks manageable with no critical rust apparent. The seller has mentioned that the majority of the rust is in the rockers, and over the headlights. There also looks to be some rust in the lower portion of the rear quarters, and the driver side even looks to have some further damage. It is difficult to make out from the photos. Otherwise this Edsel is looking to be a fairly solid Ranger. Options are at a minimum for this Edsel as there is no power steering, or power brakes. The engine is listed as being original and untouched, backed by a 2 speed automatic transmission. It would be nice to see this one preserved, as so much original paint has survived. The paint looks to be in good enough shape that a solid buff would make it shine, and glimmer, much like it did 57 years ago.
Solid enough to be a potential road goer again, we hope this Edsel finds its way to capable hands. What would you do with this 1959 Edsel Ranger?
Man,I love Edsel`s
They are one of my dream cars.
Seems like everyone I find is a thousand of miles away.
I sure hope to buy one someday.
Had a 59 sedan like this one with the ford Y-block in it. Was pretty funny. Saw it on a car lot in like 2005 or so as I was driving by and made a uturn to go see it. Asked for a test drive, but didn’t want to drive it myself for whatever reason so had the sales guy drive it. It died half way around the block, then died again right in front of the dealership. Apparently the water pump had gone bad and completely failed. Anyway, the guy was so annoyed with it, and clearly hated old cars and that someone asked him to drive the ratty thing in his nice suit, that I asked what they wanted for it and he asked what scrap price was so I offered him $400 and he was like “SOLD” and ran inside to get the paperwork. I was going to just top off the water and drive home but the water pump just poured everything out I put in the radiator, it had no bearings at all left any more so had to trailer it home.
The local parts place had been there so long they had a damn water pump for it on the shelf way in the back. The gasket was all shrunken into a pretzel. Asked how much, and they looked at the price and it was $12 or so, they shrugged, rang it up with the dusty sticker price and away I went.
Everything on the car worked, the interior and body were kinda haggered, but it still drove nice. I registered for the first PNW Billet Proof show and set out bright and early with the car to go to it…then about the time I was within 15 miles or so of the event the carb ate all of the rust in the fuel tank and died, so I spent literally all day rebuilding the carb in a shell station parking lot. By the time I got back on the road the event was nearly over…and the car died one more exit up, same fuel problem. Turns out that was a 100 mile tow home, that AAA actually covered due to having RV Plus.
Whole fuel system was plugged with rust from one end to the other. Got that fixed and ended up trading the car for some cash and a 64 comet sedan…then ended up with two more that were coupes…those all eventually got sold.
Man that was a lot of fords in one run. Nice driving car, that Edsel. I’d own another.
I loved the look of the 58 edsel 2dr pacers and I found a white 2 dr with 3 speed and 303 horse for $700 bucks. The Studebaker dealer in Fairbanks, Gene Immel had the seat reupholstered and I drove it home which was around the corner. Someone had screwed around with the rocker arms and put one of them in with the holes on the top. The result was when I gave a good jolt of gas the oil shot out the holes but since the one side was upside down it did not seal properly and the oil would ekk out and drop into the pistons and nearly pave the road with oil. My Dad had Howard Mackey who owned some sort of equipment shop on the Steese Hwy. rebuild the block motor. Put it back together and it still did the same thing, Howard told dad to bring it back somenight and he would look at it. When Howard decided that he would do the overhead valves, he pulled back on the springs and discovered discovered that one was put together incorrectly with the oil holes on the top rather than the bottom. He turned the mounting brackets over and put it back on the car, and it corrected the problem. When I sat down here, I knew what the parts involved were called, but as soon as I started typing my diabetes kicked in and I can’t remember. It will come back to me, but most of the reader’s will be able to remember the correct name of each part that comprised the overhead valve assembly, and it drives me coocoo that I can see them but can’t call them.
Actually I was l only going to say that Ford decided to tone the Edsel down in 59 and I thought the results were disastrous uglywise. The 60 was just a copy of the 60 Ford with a different grille. They were okay looking but lacked the pazzaz of the 58. The 303 horsepower made the 58 jump off the starting line and I thought they were faster sexier than the Fords and Chevys–but hell, I can’t remember. I sold it to Kody Slater and what he did with it is unknown to me. I still the the front end is one of the coolest to come out of Detroit.
Growing up in the 50s and 60s I saw a few Edsels but never got worked up over them. To me they were just another nice car. I remember about 1961, one of the farm hands bought a ’58 Citation (I think). I do know that it had a 410 and went like a striped-assed ape. I believe his widow still has it. A local farmer bought a ’59 model new and it’s still in the family today. There’s a farmer in the southern part of Alberta, Canada, who has about 50 assorted Edels including some wagons. I have no idea what he plans to do with them but he keeps dragging them home….
As a kid (about 10 or 11) my parents took us to the Danbury State Fair in Connecticut and they had the new Edsel there (1958) and it was certainly ‘different’. On the other hand, the 1958 Ford destroyed the beautiful 1957 design, so FoMoCo was not at the top of their design mojo….IMHO of course. I see that this 59 has a column shift. The 58s had push buttons in the middle of the steering wheel. I remember thinking that to be weird. Chrysler and AMC had their push buttons on the left side of the dash. Since Edsel changed in 1959, they must have had issues with the original button placement. Anyone know anything?
Much problems withe the vacuum box.It wasn’t reliable.
I actually like the ’59. They toned down the vertical grill from ’58 and it looks much better. I wish they would have left the rear tail light arrangement from ’58 alone, though. They got rid of the problematic TeleTouch drive on the steering wheel hub, so that’s also a plus.
You either love these, or you hate them. I love them. Some would say too many doors, I likes the 4 door hardtop models, great family cruiser. This has many needs and would not be cheap.
I like Edsels, but it has too many doors, plus it’s the most common Edsel built. The v8 may or may not be froze and the 292 is expensive to rebuild plus the rust issues. They do make good entry level projects.
Edsels are cool.. ’57 in my opinion, the coolest. Vacuum assist push button trans center of the steering wheel, Oldsmobile sucking on a lemon front grill..Just a killer car
1958 Edsel ‘Teletouch Drive’ was not vacuum assisted. It was a gutsy mechanical Relay-switched hardwired 12v DC Servo Motor mounted to the side of the Bell-Housing sortof system. Just the Strg Column itself was an engineering marvel, with dozens of little pieces designed just to keep the Button-switch subassy stationary while the Wheel was turned. Dunno what those EEs and MEs on the Drawing Boards at the Edsel Division were smoking but it must’ve been some *great* stuff to allow them to contrive that whole system up from nothing from a 1955-56 technological perspective.
Once repaired/cleaned up/relubed carefully, with some minor tweaks to robust the original design a bit along the way, i’ve found the TTDrive to be a very efficient and reliable system.
Packard used a similar electro-mechanical system on their high-end 56 models. All of the mid-century Chrysler Corp cars used a mechanical push-pull cable design, but only Edsel was brave enough to design a electro-mechanical system with stationary ‘Horn-button’ controls within the Column…
I was 16, and the two less expensive Edsels were clearly rebodied,retrimmed Fords, and the expensive ones Mercuries. Nothing really new.