The Ford Motor Company introduced the 1958 model automobile, the Edsel. The Edsel was named after Edsel Ford, the only child of Henry Ford. During his early childhood, Edsel and his father worked side by side on cars.  Later on, Edsel became more fascinated by the shapes of automobiles than by their inner workings.  As a teenager, he built several speedsters, mostly T-based.  Edsel was indulging in a common pastime of the day, one shared by quite a few young men with money, the difference being that Edsel had an unlimited supply of parts.  This love of styling and building cars would come in very handy as time went on.

To be precise, the Edsel was launched in September 4, 1957. Edsel was to fit in between the Ford and Mercury. Ford expected to sell 200,000 of the 1958 model Edsels, but ended up only producing 68,045.

Ford tried to increase the sale by redesigning the car. The basic shape of this current model remained the same, however, some features that were not done very well in the previous year were removed. Such features include the removal of Tele-touch transmission. But the sales were staying at the low point. Only 47,396 of the 1959 models were produced.

The fall 1959 the 1960 models were released, but this time even less number of Edsels were produced. It hit the lowest number at 2,846 Edsels. There was no significant difference between Edsels 1960 and Edsels 1950, no obvious resemble was done. The only change made was the removal of some sheet metal, the horse collar. In November 9,

1959, the last assembly line of Edsel was launched. This short period of production makes the 1960 models remain very rare.

And finally at the end of 1959 Ford decided to discontinue producing Edsels in favor of smaller cars. Smaller cars were very popular during this time. Billy Joel's Edsel is a no-go simply means that the Edsels were discontinued. Edsel was really a wrong car at a wrong time.