Roy Brown Jr. Dies: Ill-Fated Ford Edsel Designer Passes Away At 96

Roy Brown Jr., designer of the ill-fated Ford Edsel, has passed away at the age of 96. The designer of the notorious flop was in hospice in Ann Arbor, Mich. Where his wife says he was suffering from pneumonia and Parkinson's disease.

The Edsel, Brown Jr.'s most famous design, was loaded down with a slew of futuristic options including problematic floating speedometers and push-button shifters. The infamous vertical grille that Edsel and executives at Ford saw as the "next big thing," failed to register with consumers. It was derided as looking like "a toilet" or an "Oldsmobile sucking on a lemon."

One feature that Brown Jr. fought for caught on, however.  The inclusion of seatbelts as a standard option is a trend that continues into this day, mostly due to the fact that it is required by law.

A lot of the problems the Edsel faced came from odd marketing and poor market research. The Edsel was cheaper than many mid-level Mercurys of the time, but was marketed as a luxury car to confused consumers.

The behemoth of a car also had the misfortune of coming out during an economic downturn and was viewed by the public as a taunting symbol of unnecessary excess. The car was too big, too flashy, and too heavy to jibe with the sensibilities of Americans in the late '50s.

"This car was kind of aimed at a market that didn't really exist," Matt Anderson, the curator of transportation at the Henry Ford museum in Dearborn, Mich., told the New York Times.

Only a little of 100,000 Edsels were purchased and the car was out of production before the start of the '60s. Brown Jr. was transferred to the British division of Ford, but he ever lost faith in the Edsel and stood by his creation for the rest of his life.

"I'm proud of the car," he told The Sun-Sentinel of Florida in 1985. "There is not a bad line on the car."

The car is now considered a collectible among car enthusiasts, a throwback to a time when automobile designers weren't afraid to think bigger.

"If you are unprejudiced and look at the car, it's beautiful," Edsel broker Robert Mayer told the New York Times. "The young people who have never heard of it look at it and think it's beautiful."