The car that Edsel built

Edsel Ford, son of the cranky and archly conservative creator of Ford Motor Co., didn't find it easy living in this industry giant's often dark shadow, but his early sense of the growing importance of style added a very necessary new dimension to its products.

That style was celebrated recently with the unveiling of the newly restored 1934 Model 40 Special Speedster he had created to express his personal tastes in automotive form.

Born in 1893, an artsy Edsel first sketched cars, but was soon getting his share of grease under his fingernails working with father Henry as the Model T emerged to dominate the early days of the automobile. And, as many young men did, he modified some into "speedster" form, the "hot-rods" of their time.

His fast-tracking soon took another direction, however, through the corporate structure, as secretary in 1915, vice-president in 1917 and with Henry's resignation, president a year later. Henry, however, still in large part had his hands on the company steering wheel.

Ford's acquisition of troubled Lincoln in 1922 gave Edsel an early opportunity to influence automotive design that led to the brand's revival, and later in the decade he guided the new Model A to market with a contemporary look that helped assure its success.

"My grandfather was an early believer that everyday objects – including automobiles – could be seen as works of art," Edsel Ford II said, when his freshly restored (by RM Auto Restoration in Blenheim, Ont.) Speedster was revealed at this summer's Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance in California.

His grandson noted that, while Edsel wasn't a designer in the traditional sense, his eye for styling and its influence was readily apparent and resulted in the creation of the design department at Ford.

The Speedster project was born in 1932 following a trip to Europe by Edsel who, on his return, assigned new design guy E.T. "Bob" Gregorie to create a "continental"-style sports car for him.

Gregorie had started out as a yacht designer, but after the crash of 1929, reinvented himself as a car stylist, initially working briefly for Brewster and then General Motors but in 1931 signing on with Lincoln.

His first official effort was the Ford Model Y for the European market, which proved a success, and Gregorie, who developed a close relationship with Edsel, would go on to head the design department in 1935. He's best known for the 1936 Lincoln Zephyr and his next personal commission for Edsel, the one-off Lincoln Continental of 1939, which would go into production a year later.

But his first effort, despite embodying advanced styling concepts and a great overall look, didn't quite manage to translate Edsel's ideas into an acceptably low and racy form and he was sent back to his drawing board.

The mechanical starting point for his next attempt was a stock, 75-hp, flathead V-8-powered 1934 Model 40. The chassis was extensively modified and then clad in hand-formed aluminum bodywork, with a long sleek and louvered hood with aerodynamic grille and topless, rearward-mounted two-seater cockpit with cut-away doors and a tapered tail section.

Legend has it the rear fenders were modified fairings or "wheel pants" from a Ford Trimotor aircraft, but were likely original creations as were the cycle-style front fenders that turned with the Kelsey-Hayes wire wheels.

This elegantly racy car was painted Pearl Essence Gunmetal Dark and fitted with a grey leather interior and originally an engine-turned alloy dash mounting Lincoln instruments.

Edsel apparently approved of this one, but at the end of the decade had Gregorie modify it with twin-grille styling cues from the Lincoln Zephyr and new lower grille-work, partly in an effort to cure chronic overheating. Stewart-Warner gauges and a 160-mph racing speedometer were also added and a 239-cubic-inch, 100-hp, flathead Mercury V-8 installed.

Edsel apparently drove the car from time to time until his death from stomach cancer in 1943. Shortly afterward, the Speedster began its long perambulation through time and a variety of owners.

As part of Ford's estate it was valued at $200 and went to wife Eleanor Clay Ford. In 1944, it was sold to someone in Atlanta for $1,000, and then shipped to Los Angeles in 1947. A for-sale ad in 1948, asking price $2,500, is the next recorded mention of the Speedster until it appeared along with a Hollywood starlet on the cover of a car mag in 1952.

In 1958, Florida-based U.S. Navy sailor, John Pallasch, paid $603 for it and a couple of years later partly dismantled it before shipping out to Vietnam. It spent the next four decades in his garage, where it was discovered in 1999, covered in junk, by Bill Warner, the founder of the Amelia Island Concours d'Elegance.

Warner purchased it (no price revealed), fixed it up a bit and sold it in 2008 for $1.76-million to a collector in Texas who died shortly afterwards. At this point, Edsel Ford II stepped in to acquire it for the Edsel and Eleanor Ford House in Grosse Point Shores, Mich., where it is now part of the permanent collection.

Edsel's Speedster could serve as the ancestral prototype for the hod-rods and customs that would follow after the war, many based on early-1930s Fords.

And Gregorie as the father of all hot-rodders. His personal ride in 1934 was a Ford roadster, modified with a custom windshield and top and aluminum wheels turned in Ford's aviation workshops.

Gregorie returned to yacht design, but in an interview some years prior to his death in 2002, and while the Speedster was still "missing," fondly recalled it as "a pretty little thing."

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