Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street. Chapter 2. The Fate of the Edsel
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这一章节记录了埃德塞尔汽车那场不幸的旅程。1955年，福特公司在经济蓬勃发展，并渴望占领中等价位汽车市场的背景下，构想了这款车。福特的目的是创造一款独特的汽车，以防止福特车主升级到奥兹莫比尔和别克等竞争对手的品牌。由理查德·克拉菲领导的“前瞻性产品规划委员会”预测，到1965年，经济将蓬勃发展，中等价位的汽车将占据销售主导地位。受到鼓舞的福特公司为此拨出了高达2.5亿美元的资金用于埃德塞尔项目。
加拿大造型师罗伊·A·布朗的任务是创造一种独特的设计，在保持熟悉感的同时，力求与众不同。该项目被严格保密，工作室的门被锁上并有人把守，但由于造型师在各公司之间流动，泄密是不可避免的。克拉菲仔细审查了每一个设计元素，做出了大约4000个决定。最终的埃德塞尔汽车采用了新颖的马领状垂直散热器格栅，非常规的后翼，以及位于方向盘轮毂上的按钮式自动变速箱控制装置。
市场研究规划主管大卫·华莱士的任务是赋予这款E-Car个性和名称。华莱士的目标是打造一个能够投射成功和渴望价值的品牌，他聘请了哥伦比亚大学在皮奥里亚和圣贝纳迪诺进行调查，以评估人们对现有汽车品牌的看法。这项研究揭示了人们对福特、雪佛兰、别克和水星的品牌个性认知，促使华莱士主张埃德塞尔的形象要吸引年轻的管理者和专业人士家庭。
选择一个名字被证明是很困难的。以埃德塞尔·福特命名的想法遭到了保留。各种研究方法，包括向公众征集名字，甚至咨询诗人玛丽安·摩尔，都未能得出结论。最后，由于福特兄弟都不在，执行委员会负责人欧内斯特·R·布里奇决定将这款车命名为埃德塞尔，尽管团队努力寻找不同的名字。
埃德塞尔于1957年9月推出，伴随着由费尔法克斯·M·科恩指导的大量广告支出，强调一种安静、自信的方式。通用销售和市场经理J.C.拉里·道尔招募了一个专门的埃德塞尔经销商网络。发布前的宣传活动引起了公众的极大兴趣，并通过诸如展示特技驾驶员的新闻发布会等策划活动进一步放大。
然而，埃德塞尔迅速衰落。该车的设计，尤其是格栅和后部，受到了批评。这款车在最初的生产过程中也饱受质量控制问题的困扰，包括漏油和功能失灵。此外，消费者报告给出了非常负面的评价。这削弱了广泛的营销努力。随着1958年经济衰退的开始，消费者的偏好转向更小、更经济的汽车，加剧了埃德塞尔面临的挑战。
销量暴跌，导致埃德塞尔部门于1958年1月与林肯-水星合并。尽管努力通过修改设计来复兴该品牌，但埃德塞尔从未恢复。生产于1959年11月停止，造成的损失估计约为3.5亿美元。
前埃德塞尔高管对失败提出了各种解释：时机不佳、设计缺陷和消费者品味的变化。 华莱士还将失败归因于俄罗斯发射的“人造卫星”，它传达了一个信息，即美国不再生产最好的技术。还有关于工厂里肮脏伎俩的报道，甚至来自福特和水星的经销商老板之间的肮脏伎俩。 尽管遭遇惨败，福特汽车公司凭借其众多的汽车品牌幸存了下来。 埃德塞尔的案例成为了一个雄心勃勃的冒险失败和消费者品味难以预测的警示故事。
The chapter chronicles the ill-fated journey of the Edsel, a car envisioned by Ford in 1955 amidst a booming economy and a fervent desire to capture the medium-priced market. Ford's intent was to create a distinct vehicle to prevent Ford owners from trading up to competitors' brands like Oldsmobile and Buick. The "Forward Product Planning Committee," led by Richard Craffi, predicted a thriving economy by 1965, where medium-priced cars would dominate sales. Emboldened, Ford allocated a quarter of a billion dollars to the Edsel project.
Roy A. Brown, a Canadian stylist, was tasked with creating a unique design, aiming for distinctiveness while retaining familiarity. Secrecy surrounded the project, with studio doors locked and guarded, although leaks were inevitable due to stylists moving between companies. Craffi meticulously scrutinized every design element, making around 4,000 decisions. The resulting Edsel featured a novel horse-collar-shaped vertical radiator grill, unconventional rear wings, and push-button automatic transmission controls on the steering wheel hub.
David Wallace, the director of planning for market research, was tasked with giving the E-Car a personality and a name. Wallace aimed to create a brand that projected success and aspirational value, engaging Columbia University to conduct surveys in Peoria and San Bernardino to assess perceptions of existing car brands. This research revealed the perceived personalities of Ford, Chevrolet, Buick, and Mercury, leading Wallace to advocate for an Edsel image appealing to younger executives and professional families.
Choosing a name proved problematic. The idea of naming it after Edsel Ford was met with reservations. Various research methods, including soliciting names from the public and even consulting poet Marianne Moore, proved inconclusive. Finally, Ernest R. Breach, acting as the head of the executive committee because the Ford brothers were away, decided to name the car Edsel, despite the team's efforts to find a different name.
The Edsel's launch in September 1957 was accompanied by substantial advertising spending under the direction of Fairfax M. Cone, emphasizing a quiet, self-assured approach. J.C. Larry Doyle, the general sales and marketing manager, recruited a dedicated network of Edsel dealers. Pre-launch publicity generated significant public interest, further amplified by staged events like a press preview showcasing stunt drivers.
However, the Edsel quickly faltered. The car's design, particularly the grill and rear, was criticized. The car was also plagued with quality control issues in its initial production runs, including oil leaks and malfunctioning features. Furthermore, consumer reports gave very negative reviews. This undermined the extensive marketing efforts. As the 1958 recession began to take hold, consumer preferences shifted towards smaller, more economical cars, exacerbating the Edsel's challenges.
Sales plummeted, leading to the consolidation of the Edsel division with Lincoln-Mercury in January 1958. Despite efforts to revive the brand with revised designs in subsequent years, the Edsel never recovered. Production ceased in November 1959, resulting in losses estimated around $350 million.
Former Edsel executives offer various explanations for the failure: bad timing, design flaws, and shifting consumer tastes. Wallace also attributed to the Russian Sputnik launch, which sent a message that the US no longer produced the best technology. There were also reports of dirty work at the plants, and even among dealership owners from Ford and Mercury. Despite the debacle, Ford Motor company, with its many car makes, survived. The Edsel case became a cautionary tale of ambitious ventures gone wrong and the unpredictability of consumer tastes.
中英文字稿 
第二章 爱德赛尔的命运
爱德赛尔是福特汽车公司在20世纪50年代末推出的一款汽车。尽管投入了大量的设计和市场推广资源，但爱德赛尔在市场上并没有取得成功。这一章将探讨这款车失败的原因，以及其对福特公司和汽车行业的影响。
首先，爱德赛尔的设计被认为过于激进和不合大众品味。此外，车型复杂、多样化的选择让消费者感到困惑，而定价策略也没有击中目标市场的需求。与此同时，推出时赶上了经济衰退，进一步削弱了消费者的购买力。
其次，营销策略虽然声势浩大，却未能有效吸引消费者。广告宣传把爱德赛尔描绘成“未来的车”，但实际车型并未达到消费者的预期。这个落差导致了市场的强烈反响，进而使得爱德赛尔成为失败的代表。
爱德赛尔的失败为企业提供了宝贵的经验教训，特别是在产品研发与市场匹配的重要性，以及如何更精准地定位目标消费者。通过探讨爱德赛尔的命运，我们可以更好地理解市场需求与产品开发之间的关系。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Chapter 2 The Fate of the Edsel
「崛起与绽放」
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Rise and Flowering
在美国经济生活的历程中，1955年被称作是汽车之年。那一年，美国汽车制造商售出了超过七百万辆轿车，比以往任何一年多出了一百多万辆。同年，通用汽车公司轻松向公众出售了价值3.25亿美元的新普通股，整个股票市场在汽车公司的带动下波动如此激烈，以至于国会展开了调查。与此同时，福特汽车公司决定推出一款新车，定位在大约2400到4000美元的中等价格范围内，并按照当时的流行趋势进行了设计。这种趋势包括车身要长、宽、低，富有大量镀铬装饰，配备丰富的小配件，以及装备动力强大到几乎能把车送上太空的发动机。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In the calendar of American economic life, 1955 was the year of the automobile. That year, American automobile makers sold over seven million passenger cars, or over a million more than they had sold in any previous year. That year, General Motors easily sold the public $325 million worth of new common stock, and the stock market as a whole led by the Motors gyrated upward so frantically that Congress investigated it. And that year, too, the Ford Motor Company decided to produce a new automobile. In what was quaintly called the medium price range, roughly from $2,400 to $4,000, and went ahead and designed it more or less in conformity with the fashion of the day, which was for cars that were long, wide, low, lavishly decorated with chrome, liberally supplied with gadgets and equipped with engines of a power just barely insufficient to send them into orbit.
两年后的1957年9月，福特公司推出了他们的新车——埃德塞尔，与之相伴的是自该公司30年前推出的Model A以来最盛大的宣传声势。据称，在第一辆埃德塞尔上市前，福特在这款车上的花费总额高达25亿美元。据《商业周刊》的报道（无人反驳），它的推出成本创下了历史上任一消费产品的新高。为了回本，福特计划在第一年卖出至少20万辆埃德塞尔。然而，也许在某个偏远雨林里还存在一个土著居民，他还没听说过事情并未如愿发展。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Two years later, in September 1957, the Ford Company put its new car, the Edsel, on the market, to the accompaniment of more fanfare than had attended the arrival of any other new car since the same company's Model A, brought out thirty years earlier. The total amount spent on the Edsel before the first specimen went on sale was announced as a quarter of a billion dollars; its launching, as Business Week declared and nobody cared to deny, was more costly than that of any other consumer product in history. As a starter toward getting its investment back, Ford counted on selling at least 200,000 Edsels the first year. There may be an aborigine somewhere in a remote rainforest, who hasn't yet heard that things fail to turn out that way.
确切地说，两年零两个月又十五天后，福特仅售出了109,466辆Edsel汽车。毫无疑问，其中有数百辆甚至上千辆是由福特的高管、经销商、销售人员、广告人员、装配线工人以及其他对该车成功有个人利益的人购买的。这109,466辆仅占当时美国乘用车销量不到百分之一。据一些外部估计，到1959年11月19日，福特公司因Edsel的销售损失约3.5亿美元，因此决定永久停止其生产。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
To be precise, two years, two months, and fifteen days later, Ford had sold only 109,466 Edsels, and, beyond a doubt, many hundreds, if not several thousands, of those were bought by Ford executives, dealers, salesmen, advertising men, assembly line workers, and others who had a personal interest in seeing the car succeed. The 109,466 amounted to considerably less than one percent of the passenger cars sold in the United States during that period, and on November 19, 1959, having lost, according to some outside estimates, around $350 million on the Edsel, the Ford company permanently discontinued its production.
这怎么可能发生呢？一个拥有如此雄厚的资金、丰富的经验和聪明才智的公司，怎么会犯下如此巨大的错误？甚至在艾德赛尔车型停产之前，一些更有见解的车迷就已经提出了一个答案。这个答案简单而似乎合情合理，因此虽然它不是唯一的解释，却被广泛接受为事实。这些人认为，艾德赛尔的设计、命名、广告宣传和推销过于依赖公众意见调查及其“年轻表亲”——动机研究，他们得出结论，当公众被过于精巧地迎合时，往往反而会转向那些虽然粗犷但更具真诚和自发注意的对象。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
How could this have happened? How could a company so mightily endowed with money, experience and, presumably, brains, have been guilty of such a monumental mistake? Even before the Edsel was dropped, some of the more articulate members of the car-minded public had come forward with an answer. An answer so simple, and so seemingly reasonable that, though it was not the only one advanced, it became widely accepted as the truth. The Edsel, these people argued, was designed, named, advertised and promoted with a slavish adherence to the results of public opinion polls, and of their younger cousin motivational research, and they concluded that when the public is wooed in an excessively calculated manner, it tends to turn away in favor of some gruffer, but more spontaneously attentive, suiter.
几年前，面对福特汽车公司可以理解的沉默（他们跟其他人一样不愿意记录自己的失误），我开始调查有关埃德塞尔事件的真相。而经过调查，我认为我们所知道的并非事情的全部真相。虽然埃德塞尔本应完全根据民意调查中表达的偏好进行广告宣传和推广，但一些传统的直觉而非科学的“卖蛇油”方法却悄然介入了。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Several years ago, in the face of an understandable reticence on the part of the Ford Motor Company, which enjoys documenting its boners no more than anyone else, I set out to learn what I could about the Edsel debacle, and my investigations have led me to believe that what we have here is less than the whole truth. For although the Edsel was supposed to be advertised and otherwise promoted strictly on the basis of preferences expressed in polls, some old-fashioned snake oil-selling methods intuitive rather than scientific crept in.
尽管按照原计划，Edsel 的命名应该会和之前的类似，但最后时刻却被抛弃，最终以公司总裁父亲的名字命名，仿佛是19世纪的某种咳嗽滴剂或马鞍皂品牌。至于外观设计，则完全没有走民意调查的形式，而是采用长期以来汽车行业设计的惯用方法，即综合公司各委员会的直觉来定夺。因此，关于 Edsel 失败的普遍解释，仔细审视之下，基本上是一种大众意义上的“神话”。然而，这个案例的实际情况可能会成为一种象征性的神话，一个现代美国的失败故事。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Although it was supposed to have been named in much the same way, science was currently discarded at the last minute, and the Edsel was named for the father of the company's president, like a 19th-century brand of cough drops or saddle soap. As for the design, it was arrived at without even a pretense of consulting the polls, and by the method that has been standard for years in the designing of automobiles, that of simply pooling the hunches of sundry company committees. The common explanation of the Edsel's downfall then, under scrutiny, turns out to be largely a myth in the colloquial sense of that term, but the facts of the case may live to become a myth of a symbolic sort, a modern American anti-success story.
Edsel 的起源可以追溯到1948年秋天，比决策之年早了七年。当时，亨利·福特二世已经担任公司总裁并成为无可争议的领导者。在其祖父、福特创始人去世一年后，亨利二世向包括执行副总裁欧内斯特·R·布里奇在内的公司执行委员会提出，应该进行研究，以评估推出一种全新且完全不同的中等价位汽车的市场可行性。于是，这些研究被启动了，研究结果显示此举有很好的理由。当时很普遍的一种现象是，对于收入微薄的低收入者，他们往往会在年收入超过5000美元后，将旧有的福特、普利茅斯或雪佛兰汽车更换为中等价位的车，作为身份提升的象征。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The origins of the Edsel go back to the fall of 1948, seven years before the year of decision, when Henry Ford II, who had been president and undisputed boss of the company since the death of his grandfather, the original Henry, a year earlier, proposed to the company's executive committee, which included Ernest R. Breech, the executive vice president, that studies be undertaken concerning the wisdom of putting on the market a new and wholly different medium-priced car. The studies were undertaken. There appeared to be good reason for them. It was a well-known practice at the time for low-income owners of Fords, Plymouths, and Chevrolets, to turn in their symbols of inferior caste as soon as their earnings rose above $5,000 a year and trade up to a medium-priced car.
从福特的角度来看，这一切本来都没问题，但出于某种原因，福特车主通常升级换车时，并不是选择公司旗下唯一的中价位汽车品牌——水星，而是转向竞争对手的中价位汽车，比如在通用汽车旗下的奥兹莫比尔、别克和庞蒂亚克，或者在克莱斯勒旗下的道奇和德索托。福特汽车公司的副总裁路易斯·D·克鲁索曾不无夸张地说：“我们实际上是在为通用汽车培养客户。”1950年朝鲜战争的爆发意味着福特别无选择，只能继续为竞争对手培养客户，因为在那个时候推出新车是不可能的。于是，公司执行委员会搁置了福特总裁提出的研究建议，公司的一些问题就这样被搁置了两年。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
From Ford's point of view, this would have been all well and good except that for some reason, Ford owners usually traded up not to Mercury, the company's only medium-priced car, but to one or another of the medium-priced cars put out by its big rivals, Oldsmobile, Buick, and Pontiac, among the General Motors products, and, to a lesser extent, Dodge and De Soto, the Chrysler candidates. Louis D. Crusoe, then a vice president of Ford Motor Company, was not overstating the case when he said, "We have been growing customers for General Motors." The outbreak of the Korean War, in 1950, meant that Ford had no choice but to go on growing customers for its competitors, since introducing a new car at such a time was out of the question. The company's executive committee put aside the studies proposed by President Ford, and their matters rested for two years.
在1952年底，战争的结束似乎已经近在眼前，公司决定恢复中断的工作。一个称为“前瞻产品规划委员会”的小组积极重新展开研究，并将大部分具体工作交给了在理查德·克拉菲指导下的林肯-水星部门。克拉菲是该部门的助理总经理，一个中年大约四十多岁的人，他性格坚定，总是带着困惑的表情。克拉菲是明尼苏达州一家小型农业杂志印刷工的儿子，曾是一名销售工程师和管理顾问，1947年加入福特公司。虽然他在1952年无法预见，但随后有让他困惑的理由。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Late in 1952, however, the end of the war appeared sufficiently imminent for the company to pick up where it had left off, and the studies were energetically resumed by a group called the Forward Product Planning Committee, which turned over much of the detailed work to the Lincoln Mercury Division, under the direction of Richard Craffi, the Division's Assistant General Manager. Craffi, a forceful, rather Saturnine man, with a habitually puzzled look, was then in his middle forties. The son of a printer on a small farm journal in Minnesota, he had been a sales engineer and management consultant before joining Ford in 1947, and although he could not have known it in 1952, he was to have reason to look puzzled.
作为直接负责Edsel汽车及其命运的人，他享受了短暂的辉煌，也陪伴它经历了痛苦的终结，可以说他与命运有个约会。1954年12月，经过两年的努力，前瞻产品规划委员会向执行委员会提交了一份六卷本的重磅报告，总结了他们的发现，并附有大量统计数据。报告预测到1965年，美国将迎来一个鼎盛时期，或者说非常接近鼎盛期。到那时，前瞻产品规划委员会估计美国的国民生产总值将达到每年5350亿美元，比十年前增加超过1350亿美元。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
As the man directly responsible for the Edsel and its fortunes, enjoying its brief glory and attending it in its mortal agonies, he had a rendezvous with destiny. In December 1954, after two years' work, the Forward Product Planning Committee submitted to the executive committee a six-volume blockbuster of a report, summarizing its findings, supported by copious statistics. The report predicted the arrival of the American millennium, or something a lot like it, in 1965. By that time, the Forward Product Planning Committee estimated the gross national product would be $535 billion a year, up more than $135 billion in a decade.
实际上，这个千禧年的这一部分比预期的要来得更快。国内生产总值在1962年就超过了5350亿美元，到1965年达到了6810亿美元。运营中的汽车数量将达到7000万辆，比之前增加了2000万辆。美国超过一半的家庭年收入会超过5000美元，而新售出的汽车中有超过40%将是中等价位或更高价位。1965年的美国在这份详细的报告中呈现得淋漓尽致，犹如底特律所期望的那样：银行充盈着资金，街道和公路上到处都是耀眼的中等价位的大型汽车，而新富阶层则渴望获得更多这样的汽车。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
As a matter of fact, this part of the millennium arrived much sooner than the Forward Planner's estimated. The GNP passed $535 billion in 1962, and for 1965 was $681 billion. The number of cars in operation would be $70 million, up $20 million. More than half the families in the nation would have incomes of over $5,000 a year, and more than 40% of all the cars sold would be in the medium price range or better. The report's picture of America in 1965, presented in crushing detail, was of a country after Detroit's own heart, its banks oozing money, its streets and highways choked with huge dazzling medium-priced cars, its newly rich, upwardly mobile citizens racked with longings for more of them.
寓意很清楚。如果那时福特没有推出第二款中档车，不仅仅是一个新型号，而是一个新的品牌，并且在其领域中成为热门，那么公司将错失全国市场的份额。另一方面，福特的高管们也非常清楚推出新车所带来的巨大风险。例如，他们知道，自汽车时代开始以来，曾推出过的2,900种美国汽车品牌中，比如1905年的黑乌鸦、1906年的普通人之车、1907年的虫子车、1911年的丹·帕奇和1920年的孤星车，仅有大约20款仍在市场上。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The moral was clear. If, by that time, Ford had not come out with a second medium-priced car, not just a new model but a new make, and made it a favorite in its field, the company would miss out on its share of the national bottle. On the other hand, the Ford bosses were well aware of the enormous risks connected with putting a new car on the market. They knew, for example, that of the 2,900 American makes that had been introduced since the beginning of the automobile age, the Black Crow 1905, the Average Man's Car 1906, the Bug Mobile 1907, the Dan Patch 1911, and the Lone Star 1920 among them, only about 20 were still around.
他们非常了解二战后汽车行业的惨烈状况，其中包括已经彻底放弃的Crosley和尽管在1954年仍存在但已奄奄一息的Kaiser Motors。在一年后，亨利·J·凯瑟为他的汽车业务写下告别时，前瞻产品规划委员会的成员们一定面面相觑，感到不安。他在告别辞中写道：“我们本以为会往汽车行业掷入5000万美元，但没想到这些钱竟然无声无息地消失了。”福特的人还知道，工业界的另外两大巨头——通用汽车和克莱斯勒——自前者在1927年推出LaSalle，后者在1928年推出普利茅斯以来，都没有尝试推出新的标准尺寸车型，而福特自己自1938年发布水星以来也没有尝试过这样做。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
They knew all about the automotive casualties that had followed the Second World War, among them Crosley, which had given up altogether, and Kaiser Motors, which though still alive in 1954, was breathing its last. The members of the Forward Product Planning Committee must have glanced at each other uneasily when, a year later, Henry J. Kaiser wrote in a valediction to his car business, "We expected to toss $50 million into the automobile pond, but we didn't expect it to disappear without a ripple." The Ford men also knew that neither of the other members of the industry's powerful and well-heeled Big Three, General Motors and Chrysler, had ventured to bring out a new standard-size make since the former's LaSalle in 1927, and the latter's Plymouth in 1928, and that Ford itself had not attempted to turn the trick since 1938, when it launched the Mercury.
然而，福特的人非常乐观，他们的乐观程度如此之高，以至于决定投入凯撒公司五倍的资金到汽车行业中。1955年4月，亨利·福特二世以及其他执行委员会的成员正式批准了前瞻性产品规划委员会的成果，并成立了一个名为特殊产品部门的新机构，由资深的克拉夫蒂领导负责实施这些计划。这样，公司正式认可了设计师们的努力。这些设计师在几个月前就已经开始绘制新车的设计草图，尽管他们以及新成立的团队在接管项目时，还不知道这款新车会被命名为何，因此在福特公司内外，甚至在公司发布的新闻稿中，它被称为E-Car。据解释，E代表实验性的意思。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Nevertheless, the Ford men felt bullish, so remarkably bullish that they resolved to toss into the automobile pond five times the sum that Kaiser had. In April 1955, Henry Ford II, breach, and the other members of the Executive Committee officially approved the Forward Product Planning Committee's findings, and to implement them set up another agency, called the Special Products Division, with the Star-Crossed Crafty as its head. Thus the company gave its formal sanction to the efforts of its designers, who, having defined the trend of events, had already been doodling for several months on plans for a new car. Since neither they nor the newly organized crafty outfit, when it took over, had an inkling of what the thing on their drawing boards might be called, it became known to everybody at Ford, and even in the company's press releases as the E-Car. The E, it was explained, standing for experimental.
负责E-Car设计工作的那个人，也可以用行业中的词语"造型"来描述，是一位加拿大人。那时，他还不到四十岁，名字叫罗伊·A·布朗。在负责E-Car之前，他曾在底特律艺术学院学习工业设计，并参与过收音机、游艇、有色玻璃制品、凯迪拉克、奥兹莫比尔和林肯汽车的设计工作。"造型"这个词在汽车行业中根深蒂固。通常来说，"造型"这个动词的意思是命名，因此特别产品部门为E-Car选择名字的巨大努力其实就是"造型程序"，而布朗和他的同事们在做的是完全不同的事情。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The man directly in charge of the E-Car's design, or, to use the gruesome trade word, styling, was a Canadian. Then, not yet forty, named Roy A. Brown, who, before taking on the E-Car, and after studying industrial design at the Detroit Art Academy, had had a hand in the designing of radios, motor cruisers, colored glass products, Cadillacs, Oldsmobiles, and Lincoln's. The word styling is a weed deeply embedded in the garden of automobileia. In its preferred sense, the verb to style means to name, thus the special product's division's epic efforts to choose a name for the E-Car, which will be chronicled presently, were really the styling program, and what Brown and his associates were up to was something else again.
根据韦氏词典的第二层意思，“to style”是指按照被接受的风格进行设计。这正是布朗希望展示其独创性所努力避免做的事情，所以布朗进行的应该是“反风格设计”计划。布朗最近回忆起他在新项目上工作的雄心。他写道：“我们的目标是创造一种独特的车辆，使其能够在造型主题上从当时路上行驶的十九种其他品牌的汽车中脱颖而出。”当他写下这些时，他正在英国担任福特汽车公司有限公司的首席造型师，这家公司是卡车、拖拉机和小型汽车的制造商。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In its second sense, says Webster, to style means to fashion in the accepted style. This was just what Brown, who hoped to achieve originality, was trying not to do, so Brown's must have been the anti-styling program. Brown recently recalled his aspirations as he went to work on the new project. Our goal was to create a vehicle, which would be unique in the sense that it would be readily recognizable in styling theme from the nineteen other makes of cars on the road at that time. He wrote from England, where at the time of his writing, he was employed as chief stylist for the Ford Motor Company Limited, manufacturers of trucks, tractors, and small cars.
我们甚至从远处拍摄了这十九辆车的照片进行研究，很明显，在几百英尺的距离下，它们的相似度非常高，几乎难以区分出每一辆车的品牌。它们简直就像同一个模子里出来的。我们决定选择一种新颖但又让人感到熟悉的设计风格。当E车还在福特位于底特律郊外迪尔伯恩的造型设计工作室中设计时，其开发工作在充满戏剧性却效果不大的保密条件下进行，这种保密措施在汽车行业中并不罕见。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
We went to the extent of making photographic studies from some distance of all nineteen of these cars, and it became obvious that at a distance of a few hundred feet, the similarity was so great that it was practically impossible to distinguish one make from the others. They were all peas in a pod. We decided to select a style that would be new in the sense that it was unique, and yet at the same time be familiar. While the E-car was on the drawing boards in Ford's styling studio, situated, like its administrative offices, in the company's barony of Dearborn, just outside Detroit, work on it progressed under the conditions of melodramatic, if ineffectual secrecy, that invariably attend such operations in the automobile business.
工作室门上的锁可以在十五分钟内更换，如果钥匙落入敌人手中就可以这样处理。有一支保安队伍全天候守护工作室，还有一台望远镜间歇性地对准周围地形的高点，以防窥探者潜伏。然而，这些灵感迸发的预防措施注定会失败，因为它们无法防御底特律版特洛伊木马——跳槽的发型师。这些发型师的阳光背叛让竞争对手相对容易地跟踪竞争对手的动向。当然，没有人比竞争对手自己更清楚这一点，但这些谍影重重的把戏被认为能在公关价值上收回成本。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Locks on the studio doors that could be changed in fifteen minutes if a key should fall into enemy hands. A security force standing around the clock guard over the establishment, and a telescope to be trained at intervals on nearby high points of the terrain where the peakers might be roosting. All such precautions, however inspired, are doomed to fail, because none of them provide a defense against Detroit's version of the Trojan horse, the job-jumping stylist, whose cheerful treachery makes it relatively easy for the rival companies to keep tabs on what the competition is up to. No one, of course, is better aware of this than the rivals themselves, but the cloak and dagger stuff is thought to pay for itself in publicity value.
克拉菲每周大约两次，低着头走在低处，前往造型工作室。在那里，他会与布朗协商，查看工作进展，并给予建议和鼓励。克拉菲不是那种通过一次灵光乍现就能确定目标的人。相反，他将电动车的造型过程拆解成一系列需要细致决策的步骤。比如如何设计翼子板的形状，选择什么样的镀铬图案，决定使用哪种门把手等等。如果米开朗基罗曾经把创作《大卫》的所有决策都列出来，他从未透露过。而克拉菲是一个头脑有序的人，在这个讲求秩序且有电脑辅助的时代，他后来计算出，在设计电动车的过程中，他和他的同事们至少做出了4000个决策。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Twice a week or so, Kraphi, head down and sticking to low ground, made the journey to the styling studio, where he would confer with Brown, check up on the work as it proceeded, and offer advice and encouragement. Kraphi was not the kind of man to envision his objective in a single revelatory flash. Instead, he anatomized the styling of the e-car into a series of laboriously minute decisions. How to shape the fenders. What pattern to use with the chrome. What kind of door handles to put on, and so on and on. If Michelangelo ever added the number of decisions that went into the execution of, say, his David, he kept it to himself. Kraphi, an orderly-minded man in an era of orderly functioning computers, later calculated that in styling the e-car, he and his associates had to make up their minds on no fewer than 4,000 occasions.
他当时推论说，如果他们在每次情况下都做出了正确的选择，最终他们应该能设计出一款风格完美的汽车，或至少是一款既独特又让人感到熟悉的车。然而，Kraphi今天承认，他发现很难将创造过程完全按照系统化要求进行，主要是因为他所做的4,000多个决策中有许多不是一成不变的。一旦你确定了一个大致的主题，就开始逐步缩小范围，他说，你会不断修改，然后又修改你的修改。最后，你得定下来，因为没有更多的时间。如果没有截止日期，你可能会无限期地继续修改。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
He reasoned at the time that if they arrived at the right yes or no choice on every one of those occasions, they ought, in the end, to come up with a stylistically perfect car, or at least a car that would be unique and at the same time familiar. But Kraphi concedes today that he found it difficult thus to bend the creative process to the yoke of system, principally because many of the 4,000 decisions he made wouldn't stay put. Once you get a general theme, you begin narrowing down, he says, you keep modifying and then modifying your modifications. Finally, you have to settle on something because there isn't any more time. If it weren't for the deadline, you'd probably go on modifying indefinitely.
1955年年中，这款电动车的设计就已基本完成，之后只做了一些小的修改。到了两年后，世人发现它最引人注目的特征是一个新颖的马蹄形散热器格栅，竖直设置在传统的低而宽的前端中央，独特与熟悉的结合一目了然，但并非所有人都对此感到钦佩。然而，在两个重要方面，Brown或Kraphi（或两者）完全偏离了传统，设计了一个独特的车尾，其横向宽展的尾翼与当时市场上流行的纵向尾鳍形成鲜明对比。此外，还有一个独特的自动变速器按键组，设置在方向盘的中央。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Except for later minor modifications of the modified modifications, the e-car had been fully styled by a mid-summer of 1955. As the world was to learn, two years later, its most striking aspect was a novel, horse-collar-shaped radiator grill, set vertically in the center of a conventionally low, wide front end, a blend of the unique and the familiar that was there for all to see, though certainly not for all to admire. In two prominent respects, however, Brown or Kraphi, or both, lost sight entirely of the familiar, specifying a unique rear end, marked by widespread horizontal wings that were in bold contrast to the huge longitudinal tail fins, then captivating the market, and a unique cluster of automatic transmission push buttons on the hub of the steering wheel.
在公众首次看到这款汽车之前不久的一次演讲中，克拉菲透露了一些关于其造型的线索。他表示，这款车的外观非常独特，从前后左右都能立即辨认出来，而内饰则体现了按钮时代的精髓，没有过多科幻风格的设计。终于，在1955年8月15日，福特高层成员首次见到了这款车。当天在造型中心的保密仪式上，克拉菲、布朗和他们的助手们紧张一边微笑一边搓手，福特产品规划委员会的成员，包括亨利·福特二世和布里奇，认真审视着一台被帘幕揭开的E-Car全尺寸模型。这是一款用粘土制成的模型，锡箔纸模拟铝和铬的效果。当时的场景近乎震撼。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In a speech to the public delivered a while before the public had its first look at the car, Kraphi let fall a hint or two about its styling, which he said made it so distinctive that externally it was immediately recognizable from front, side, and rear, and internally it was the epitome of the push button era, without wild blue yonder Buck Rogers concepts. At last came the day, when the men in the highest stratum of the Ford hierarchy were given their first glimpse of the car. It produced an effect that was little short of apocalyptic. On August 15, 1955, in the ceremonial secrecy of the styling center, while Kraphi, Brown, and their aides stood by smiling nervously and washing their hands in air, the members of the Forward Product Planning Committee, including Henry Ford II and Breach, watched critically as a curtain was lifted to reveal the first full size model of the E-Car. A clay one with tin foil simulating aluminum and chrome.
根据目击者的说法，观众安静地坐着，仿佛有整整一分钟，直到有一个人突然开始鼓掌。自1896年亨利首次组装他的无马车以来，在公司间的首次展示会上从未发生过这样的事情。对于艾德赛尔失败的解释中，最有说服力且经常被引用的是，它成为了决策与投放市场之间时间差的受害者。几年后，当被称为紧凑型的小型且马力较小的汽车变得如此受欢迎，以至于彻底颠覆了传统汽车的地位时，便很容易看出艾德赛尔是一大倒退。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
According to eyewitnesses, the audience sat in utter silence for what seemed like a full minute, and then, as one man burst into a round of applause. Nothing of the kind had ever happened at an intercompany first showing it forward since 1896, when old Henry had bolted together his first horseless carriage. One of the most persuasive and most frequently cited explanations of the Edsel's failure is that it was a victim of the time lag between the decision to produce it and the act of putting it on the market. It was easy to see a few years later, when smaller and less powerful cars, euphemistically called compacts, had become so popular as to turn the old automobile status ladder upside down that the Edsel was a giant step in the wrong direction.
然而，在遥远的1955年，要看清这一点并不容易。美国的创造力曾经带来了电灯、飞机、老式汽车、原子弹，甚至还有一种税制，让人在特定情况下通过慈善捐赠获得利润。然而，美国还没有找到一个方法，让汽车在设计图纸完成后，能及时进入市场。从制作钢模、通知零售商、准备广告和促销活动，到为每个新步骤获得高层批准，以及在底特律及其周边地区被视为与呼吸同样重要的各种例行程序，通常需要耗费大约两年的时间。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
But it was far from easy to see that in fat, tail-finity 1955. American ingenuity, which has produced the electric light, the flying machine, the tin lizzy, the atomic bomb, and even a tax system that permits a man, under certain circumstances, to clear a profit by making a charitable donation, has not yet found a way of getting an automobile on the market within a reasonable time after it comes off the drawing board. The making of steel dies, the alerting of retail dealers, the preparation of advertising and promotion campaigns, the gaining of executive approval for each successive move, and the various other gavat-like routines that are considered as vital as breathing in Detroit in its environs, usually consume about two years.
预测未来的消费趋势对于那些负责规划已有品牌年度车型变化的人来说已经够难的了。更不用说是推出像“E车”这样的全新产品，这是一个更具挑战的任务。在这个过程中，需要加入一些复杂的新步骤，比如赋予产品独特的个性和选择一个合适的名称。此外，还要多方咨询以确定产品是否会被市场接受。而且，到新产品发布的时候，国家经济状况可能会让推出任何新车看上去都是一个好主意。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Guessing future tastes is hard enough for those charged with planning the customary annual changes in models of established makes. It is far harder to bring out an old-together new creation, like the E-Car, for which several intricate new steps must be worked into the dance pattern, such as endowing the product with the personality and selecting a suitable name for it, to say nothing of consulting various oracles in an effort to determine whether or not the product is used. Rather, by the time of the unveiling, the state of the national economy will make bringing out any new car seem like a good idea.
特别产品部按照规定程序行事，要求其市场研究规划主任大卫·华莱士为E-Car提供个性化设计并命名。华莱士外形瘦削，棱角分明，常常抽烟斗，说话柔和、缓慢且富有思考，给人一种典型大学教授的印象，就像是那种教授的模范，虽然实际上他的学术背景并不强。1955年加入福特之前，他在宾夕法尼亚州的威斯敏斯特学院自力更生完成学业，曾在经济大萧条期间在纽约市当建筑工人，之后从事了十年的市场研究工作。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Faithfully executing the prescribed routine, the special product division called upon its director of planning for market research, David Wallace, to see what he could do about imparting a personality to the E-Car and giving it a name. Wallace, a lean, craggy-jawed pipe-puffer with a soft, slow, thoughtful way of speaking, gave the impression of being the platonic idea of the college professor, the very steel die from which the breed is cut, although in point of fact, his background was not strongly academic. Before going to Ford in 1955, he had worked his way through Westminster College in Pennsylvania, written out the Depression as a construction laborer in New York City, and then spent ten years in market research at time.
尽管如此，给人的印象才是关键，而华莱士承认，在他任职福特期间，他有意识地利用自己的学者风范，因为这有助于他与迪尔伯恩那些直率而务实的人打交道。他带着些许满足地说，我们的部门被视为一个“半个智囊团”。他坚持住在安娜堡，而不是迪尔伯恩或底特律，因为他认为后两者在下班后简直无法忍受。在打造电动汽车形象方面，他无论成功与否，似乎都通过自己些许的古怪之举，成功地塑造了华莱士的个人形象。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Still, impressions are what count, and Wallace has admitted that during his tenure with Ford, he consciously stressed his professorial air for the sake of the advantage it gave him in dealing with the bluff, practical men of Dearborn. Our department came to be regarded as a semi-brain trust, he says, with a certain satisfaction. He insisted typically on living in Ann Arbor, where he could bask in the scholarly aura of the University of Michigan, rather than in Dearborn or Detroit, both of which he declared were intolerable after business hours. Whatever the degree of his success, in projecting the image of the e-car, he seems, by his small eccentricities, to have done splendidly at projecting the image of Wallace.
我并不认为戴夫在福特工作的动机主要是经济方面的，他的老上司克拉夫蒂说。戴夫是个书卷气十足的人，我觉得他是把这份工作当作一个有趣的挑战来看待的。很少有人可以像这样给出更好的形象展示证据了。华莱士清楚地记得他和他的助手在为电动车选择合适的人选时的坦率理由。我们对自己说，面对现实吧，两千美元的雪佛兰和六千美元的凯迪拉克在基本机制上并没有太大区别。他说，别被那些宣传迷惑了，你会发现它们其实基本上是一样的。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
I don't think Dave's motivation for being at Ford was basically economic, his old boss, Crafty, says. Dave is a scholarly type, and I think he considered the job an interesting challenge. One could scarcely ask for better evidence of image projection than that. Wallace clearly recalls the reasoning, candid enough, that guided him and his assistance as they sought just the right personality for the e-car. We said to ourselves, let's face it, there is no great difference in basic mechanism between a $2,000 Chevrolet in a $6,000 Cadillac, he says. Forget about all the Ballyhoo, we said, and you'll see that they are really pretty much the same thing.
尽管如此，总有一些人的内心深处对凯迪拉克情有独钟，无论是因为它的高价，还是尽管如此。他们认为汽车是一种梦想实现的途径。人们心中似乎有某种非理性的因素，让他们更喜欢某种汽车，而这种因素与汽车的机械性能无关，而是与他们想象中的汽车个性有关。我们自然希望的是赋予电动汽车一种个性，使得最多数的人想要拥有它。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Nevertheless, there's something, there's got to be something, in the makeup of a certain number of people that gives them a yen for a Cadillac, in spite of its high price, or maybe because of it. We concluded that cars are the means to a sort of dream fulfillment. There's some irrational factor in people that makes them want one kind of car rather than another, something that has nothing to do with a mechanism at all, but with the car's personality, as the customer imagines it. What we wanted to do naturally was to give the e-car the personality that would make the greatest number of people want it.
我们认为相对于其他中等价位汽车的制造商，我们有一个很大的优势，因为我们不需要担心改变一个已经存在的、可能有些令人反感的形象。我们所要做的，就是从零开始创造出我们想要的确切形象。为了确定电动车应该具备什么样的确切形象，华莱士决定先评估市场上已经存在的中等价位汽车的形象，以及所谓低价位汽车的形象。因为有些廉价汽车的1955年款价格已经跃升到中等价位的范围。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
We figured we had a big advantage over the other manufacturers of medium priced cars because we didn't have to worry about changing a pre-existent, perhaps somewhat obnoxious personality. All we had to do was create the exact one we wanted from scratch. As the first step in determining what the e-car's exact personality should be, Wallace decided to assess the personalities of the medium priced cars already on the market, in those of the so-called low priced cars as well. Since the cost of some of the cheap cars' 1955 models had risen well up into the medium price range.
为此，他委托哥伦比亚大学应用社会研究局在伊利诺伊州皮奥里亚和加利福尼亚州圣贝纳迪诺分别对800位近期购车者进行采访，了解他们对不同汽车品牌的心理印象。在进行这项商业活动时，哥伦比亚大学通过保留发布研究结果的权利来保持其学术独立性。华莱士表示，我们的想法是在城市中找到人群集中地区的反应，而不是一个全面的横截面。我们想要的是能够展示人际因素的研究结果。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
To this end, he engaged the Columbia University Bureau of Applied Social Research to interview 800 recent car buyers in Peoria, Illinois, in another 800 in San Bernardino, California, on the mental images they had of the various automobile makes concerned. In undertaking this commercial enterprise, Columbia maintained its academic independence by reserving the right to publish its findings. Our idea was to get the reaction in cities among clusters of people, Wallace says. We didn't want a cross-section. What we wanted was something that would show interpersonal factors.
我们选择皮奥里亚作为一个中西部典型的城市，因为它没有像通用汽车玻璃厂这样的额外因素。我们选择圣贝纳迪诺是因为西海岸在汽车行业中非常重要，并且那里的市场很不一样，人们倾向于购买更华丽的汽车。哥伦比亚的研究人员在皮奥里亚和圣贝纳迪诺进行了一些问题调查，几乎涉及到汽车相关的所有内容，但不包括诸如汽车价格、安全性、运转情况等方面的问题。尤其是，华莱士想知道受访者对现有各种品牌的印象。例如，在他们看来，自然会购买雪佛兰、别克或其他品牌的人，他们的年龄、性别、社会地位是什么。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
We picked Peoria as a place that is Midwestern, stereotyped, and not loaded with extraneous factors like a General Motors glass plant, say. We picked San Bernardino because the West Coast is very important in the automobile business, and because the market there is quite different, people tend to buy flashier cars. The questions that the Columbia researchers fared forth to ask in Peoria and San Bernardino dealt exhaustively with practically everything having to do with automobiles except such matters as how much they cost, how safe they were, and whether they ran. In particular, Wallace wanted to know the respondents' impressions of each of the existing makes, who in their opinion would naturally own a Chevrolet, or Buick, or whatever, people of what age, of which sex, of what social status.
根据这些答案，华莱士发现很容易为每种车型勾画出一个性格画像。福特的形象逐渐清晰，它是一辆非常快、充满阳刚气息的车，没有特别的社交性质，通常由牧场主或汽车技工驾驶。相比之下，雪佛兰则显得更为成熟、睿智、速度稍慢，阳刚气息不那么强烈，并且略微更加高雅，被比喻为牧师的车。而别克像是一位中年女士，或者至少比福特更像一位女士，性别和车辆的关系是相对的，仍保留着一点顽皮的特质，最合适的搭档可能是一位律师、医生或舞蹈乐队领队。至于水星，它几乎像是辆改装赛车，最适合年轻的别克赛车手。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
From the answers, Wallace found it easy to put together a personality portrait of each make. The image of the Ford came into focus as that of a very fast, strongly masculine car, of no particular social pretensions that might characteristically be driven by a rancher, or an automobile mechanic. In contrast, Chevrolet emerged as older, wiser, slower, a bit less rampantly masculine, and slightly more distinguished, a clergyman's car. Buick gelled into a middle-aged lady, or at least more of a lady than Ford, sex and cars having proved to be relative, with a bit of the devil still in her, whose most felicitous mate would be a lawyer, a doctor, or a dance band leader. As for the Mercury, it came out as virtually a hot rod, best suited to a young Buick racing driver.
因此，尽管这个品牌的汽车价格较高，但购买它的人收入并不比普通福特车主高。所以，福特车主没有更换到这个品牌的汽车也就不足为奇了。这种形象与事实之间的奇怪差异，加上事实上所有四个品牌的汽车外观非常相似，且发动机马力几乎相同的情况，只是进一步证明了华莱士的观点：汽车爱好者，就像恋爱中的年轻人一样，无法以理性的方式评价他们所钟爱的对象。当研究人员结束在皮奥里亚和圣贝纳迪诺的研究时，他们不仅对这些问题找到了答案，还对其他问题进行了调查，其中有几个问题似乎只有最深奥的社会学思想家才能与中价位汽车联系起来。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Thus, despite its higher price tag, it was associated with persons having incomes no higher than the average Ford owners. So no wonder Ford owners had not been trading up to it. This odd discrepancy between image and fact, coupled with the circumstance that, in sober truth all four makes looked very much alike, and had almost the same horsepower under their hoods, only served to bear out Wallace's premise that the automobile fancier, like a young man in love, is incapable of sizing up the object of his affections in anything resembling a rational manner. By the time the researchers closed the books on Peoria and San Bernardino, they had elicited replies not only to these questions, but to others, several of which it would appear, only the most abstruse sociological thinker could relate to medium-priced cars.
坦率地说，我们是浅尝辄止的，华莱士说，这是一次大范围的调查行动。在调查过程中，我们发现了一些零碎的信息，当这些信息拼凑在一起时，研究人员通过查看年收入在4,000至11,000美元之间的受访者，得出了一个观察结果。在这些受访者中，相当一部分人对他们调制鸡尾酒的能力不太有信心。在回答关于调制鸡尾酒能力的问题时，他们的回答基本集中在“还行”这个类别上。显然，他们意识到自己仍在学习阶段。他们也许能够调制马提尼或曼哈顿这类流行饮品，但在这些之外，他们的调制技能就不是很丰富了。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Frankly, we dabbled, Wallace says, it was a dragnet operation. Among the odds and ends that the dragnet dredged up were some that, when pieced together, led the researchers to report, by looking at those respondents whose annual incomes range from $4,000 to $11,000, we can make in observation. A considerable percentage of these respondents, to a question about their ability to mix cocktails, are in the somewhat category on the ability to mix cocktails. Evidently, they do not have much confidence in their cocktail mixing ability. We may infer that these respondents are aware of the fact that they are in the learning process. They may be able to mix artinis or manhattans, but beyond these popular drinks, they don't have much of a repertoire.
沃莱士梦想着一辆理想的、可爱的电动车，当这样的好消息不断涌入他在迪尔伯恩的办公室时，他感到非常高兴。然而，当需要做出最终决定的时候，他意识到必须放下无关紧要的问题，比如调制鸡尾酒的技巧，再次关注老问题——形象。在他看来，这其中最大的陷阱是迎合所谓的时代潮流，过分追求极端的男子气概、年轻化和速度感。实际上，他从哥伦比亚的一份报告中解读出一段明确的警告，提醒人们不要犯这样的错误。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Wallace, dreaming of an ideally lovable e-car, was delighted as returns like these came pouring into his dearborn office. But when the time for a final decision drew near, it became clear to him that he must put aside peripheral issues like cocktail mixing prowess and address himself once more to the old problem of the image. And here, it seemed to him the greatest pitfall was the temptation to aim, in accordance with what he took to be the trend of the times, for extremes of masculinity, youthfulness and speed. Indeed, the following passage from one of the Columbia reports, as he interpreted it, contained a specific warning against such folly.
粗略来说，我们可能会猜测，开车的女性大多是有工作的，相比没有车的人，她们的行动更加自由，并且从掌握传统上被视为男性的角色中获得满足感。然而，无论女性从汽车中获得何种满足感，无论她们对汽车赋予怎样的社会形象，她们仍希望展现女性的特质，或许是更具世故的女性，但仍是女性。在1956年初，华莱士开始总结他所在部门的研究成果，并编写了一份报告提交给特殊产品部的上级，题为《电动汽车的市场和个性目标》。这份报告充满事实和数据，并夹杂着大量以斜体或大写字母呈现的简短段落，使忙碌的高管可以在几秒钟内掌握要点。虽然报告开头有一些空闲且可以略过的哲学思考，但随后迅速进入结论部分。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Offhand, we might conjecture that women who drive cars probably work, and are more mobile than non-owners, and get gratifications out of mastering a traditionally male role. But there is no doubt that whatever gratifications women get out of their cars, and whatever social imagery they attach to their automobiles, they do want to appear as women. Perhaps more worldly women, but women. Early in 1956, Wallace set about summing up all of his department's findings in a report to his superiors in the Special Products Division, entitled The Market and the Personality Objectives of the e-car, and weighty with facts and statistics, though generously interspersed with terse sections in italics or capitals, from which a hard-pressed executive could get the gist of the thing in a matter of seconds, the report first indulged in some airy, skippable philosophizing, and then got down to conclusions.
当一个车主看到自己的车型被认为是女性可能会购买的，但他本人却是男性时，会发生什么？这种车型形象与车主自身特征之间明显的不一致，是否会影响他更换车型的计划？答案是肯定的。当车主特征与车型形象发生冲突时，车主更倾向于计划换一款车型。换句话说，当买主认为自己和他所拥有的车型的典型车主不同时，他就会想要换一种让他内心更感舒适的车型。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
What happens when an owner sees his make as a car which a woman might buy, but is himself a man? Does this apparent inconsistency of car image and the buyer's own characteristics affect his trading plans? The answer, quite definitely, is yes. When there is a conflict between owner characteristics and make image, there is greater planning to switch to another make. In other words, when the buyer is a different kind of person from the person he thinks would own his make, he wants to change to a make in which he inwardly will be more comfortable.
需要注意的是，这里提到的冲突可以分为两种情况。如果一个品牌形象鲜明且明确，那么拥有与之相对立特征的车主显然会产生冲突。然而，当品牌形象模糊不清时，同样也可能引发冲突。在这种情况下，车主会感到同样的挫败，因为无法从他的品牌中获得满意的认同感。问题在于如何在品牌形象过于明确和过于模糊之间找到平衡呢？
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
It should be noted that conflict, as used here, can be of two kinds. Should a make have a strong and well-defined image, it is obvious that an owner with strong opposing characteristics would be in conflict, but conflict also can occur when the make image is diffused so weakly defined. In this case, the owner is in an equally frustrating position of not being able to get a satisfactory identification from his make. The question then was how to steer between the cilla of a two-definite car personality and the caribtous of a two-week personality?
对此，报告建议，利用竞争对手在形象上的弱点。在年龄问题上，电动车的形象定位不要太年轻也不要太老，而是要与中年车辆的形象相近。在社会阶层方面，电动车的地位可以稍低于别克和奥兹莫比尔。在性别这个微妙的问题上，电动车的形象应该尽量兼顾各种性别，与那些充满活力的经典款车型相似。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
To this, the report replied, capitalize on imagery weakness of competition. And when on to urge that in the matter of age, the e-car should take an imagery position neither too young nor too old, but right alongside that of the middling old's mobile. That in the matter of social class, not to mince matters, the e-car might well take a status position just below Buick and Oldsmobile. And that in the delicate matter of sex, it should try to straddle the fence, again along with the protein old's.
在某些情况下，尤其在沃尔斯的风格中，最理想的电动车可能是适合年轻主管或专业家庭使用的智能车。这种智能车代表了车主良好的品味和风格，吸引那些既有冒险精神又有责任感的年轻人、公司高管或专业人士。即便许多人无法真正达到这种生活状态，但仍渴望拥有这样的身份。家庭方面，这不仅限于男性，而是一种健康、良好的角色。在成长过程中，电动车代表着对你的信任和支持，帮助你实现目标。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In some, and in Wallace typography, the most advantageous personality for the e-car might well be the smart car for the younger executive or professional family on its way up. Smart car, recognition by others of the owner's good style and taste, younger, appealing to spirited but responsible adventurers, executive or professional. Millions pretend to this status whether they can attain it or not. Family, not exclusively masculine, a wholesome good role. On its way up, the e-car is faith in you, son, will help you make it.
以前，充满激情但负责任的冒险家们对电动车充满信心，但它需要一个名字。在其历史的早期，Crafty曾向福特家族的成员建议将新车命名为Edsel Ford，以此纪念老亨利的独子Edsel Ford。老亨利是福特汽车公司的总裁，从1918年一直任职到1943年去世，Edsel Ford是新一代福特家族成员亨利二世、Benson和William Clay的父亲。这三兄弟表示，他们的父亲可能并不希望自己的名字出现在数百万个车轮盖上。因此，他们建议特别产品部门开始寻找一个替代名称。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Before, spirited but responsible adventurers could have faith in the e-car however it had to have a name. Very early in its history, Crafty had suggested to members of the Ford family that the new car be named for Edsel Ford, who was the only son of Old Henry, the president of the Ford Motor Company from 1918 until his death in 1943, and the father of the new generation of Ford's, Henry II, Benson and William Clay. The three brothers had that Crafty know that their father might not have cared to have his name spinning on a million hubcaps, and they had consequently suggested that the special product division start looking around for a substitute.
为了表达同样的意思，这段文字可以翻译成中文如下：
"1955年夏末和初秋时，Wallace同样热忱地开展了这项工作，就像之前进行的个性宣传活动一样。他聘请了几家研究机构，在纽约、芝加哥、Willow Run和安娜堡设有面试员，这些面试员手持2,000个可能的名字清单，在街头人群中进行问卷调查。面试员并没有简单地询问受访者对某个名字如火星、木星、Rover、Ariel、Arrow、Dart或Ovation的看法，而是问每个名字带来了什么自由联想。在得到答案后，他们还会询问受访者认为这些名字的反义词是什么。"
这个翻译旨在保持原意并尽量使读者易于理解。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
This it did, with the zeal no less emphatic than it displayed in the personality crusade. In the late summer and early fall of 1955, Wallace hired the services of several research outfits, which set interviewers armed with a list of 2,000 possible names to canvas sidewalk crowds in New York, Chicago, Willow Run and Ann Arbor. The interviewers did not ask simply what the respondent thought of some such name as Mars, Jupiter, Rover, Ariel, Arrow, Dart or Ovation. They asked what free associations each name brought to mind, and having got an answer to this one, they asked what word or words was considered the opposite of each name.
基于这样一种理论，从潜意识的角度来看，反面的意义就像硬币的背面一样是名字的一部分。经过这一切的努力，特别产品部门最终决定，结果仍不明确。与此同时，Crafty和他的团队多次在一个昏暗的房间里开会，利用聚光灯注视着一系列写有名字的纸板标牌，这些标牌一个接一个地被展示出来，供他们考虑。在参与讨论的人中，有人支持把名字定为"凤凰"（Phoenix），因为这个词有重生和崛起的含义；另一个人则偏好"天鹰"（Altair），因为这个名字在字母顺序中几乎总是排在最前面，这就像动物王国中的土豚享有的优势一样。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
On the theory that, subliminally speaking, the opposite is as much a part of the name as the tail is of a penny. The results of all this, the special product division eventually decided, were inconclusive. Meanwhile Crafty and his men held repeated sessions in a darkened room, staring with the aid of a spotlight at a series of cardboard signs, each bearing a name, as, one after another, they were flipped away. They were flipped over for their consideration. One of the men thus engaged spoke up for the name Phoenix because of its connotations of ascendancy, and another favored Altair on the ground that it would lead practically all alphabetical lists of cars, and thus enjoy an advantage analogous to that enjoyed in the animal kingdom by the Artvark.
在某个悠闲的时刻，有人突然中断了翻牌游戏，用不可思议的语气问道：“我是不是两三张牌之前看到‘别克’？”大家都看向负责这些活动的华莱士。他抽着烟斗，露出一个学术式的微笑，然后点了点头。翻牌游戏和街头采访一样无果而终。就在这个阶段，华莱士决定尝试从诗人的天赋中获得灵感，因为普通的方法已经失败了。他开始与诗人玛丽·安·摩尔进行著名的车名通信交流，这些信件后来发表在《纽约客》上，之后被摩根图书馆编辑成书出版。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
At a certain jowsy point in one session, somebody suddenly called a halt to the card flipping and asked, in an incredulous tone, didn't I see Buick go by two or three cards back? Everybody looked at Wallace, the impresario of the sessions. He puffed on his pipe, smiled an academic smile, and nodded. The card flipping sessions proved to be as fruitless as the sidewalk interviews, and it was at this stage of the game that Wallace, resolving to try and ring from genius with a common mind had failed to yield, entered into the celebrated car naming correspondence with the poet, Mary Ann Moore, which was later published in The New Yorker and still later in Book Form by the Morgan Library.
我们希望这个名字通过联想或其他方式唤起一种优雅、迅捷、先进的特性和设计的直观感觉，华莱士在给摩尔小姐的信中写道，同时展现出一种优雅的感觉。如果有人问，迪尔伯恩的众神中到底是谁有灵感找摩尔小姐帮忙，华莱士说，这不是神的灵感，而是一位小助手的妻子，她刚从玛荷女学院毕业，曾在那儿听过摩尔小姐的讲座。如果她丈夫的上司更进一步，真的采纳了摩尔小姐的建议，比如“智能子弹”、“理想乌龟顶”、“子弹浮雕”或“粉彩图”、“双重圆顶”或“动态但丁”——摩尔小姐还就最后一个提议询问是否是对好汽车的描述——那么，谁也无法预测这款e车可能达到的高度，但事实是，他们并没有这样做。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
We should like this name to convey through association or other conjuration some visceral feeling of elegance, fleetness, advanced features and design, Wallace wrote to Miss Moore, achieving a certain feeling of elegance himself. If it is asked, who among the gods of Dearborn had the inspired and inspiriting idea of enlisting Miss Moore's services in this cause, the answer, according to Wallace, is that it was no God, but the wife of one of his junior assistants, a young lady who had recently graduated from Mount Holyoke, where she had heard Miss Moore lecture. Had her husband's superiors gone a step further and actually adopted one of Miss Moore's many suggestions, intelligent bullet, for instance, or utopian turtle top, or bullet clausine, or pastelogram, or mangus cevique, or a Dante con moto, description of a good motor, Miss Moore queried in regard to this last. There is no telling to what heights the e-car might have risen, but the fact is that they didn't.
对诗人的想法和他们自己的想法都感到满意的特殊产品部主管，接着叫来了Foot, Cone and Building公司——这家最近签约负责电动汽车广告业务的广告公司。秉承麦迪逊大道一贯的活力，Foot, Cone and Building在其纽约、伦敦和芝加哥的办公室中组织了一场竞赛，奖品则是一辆全新的汽车，奖励给想出一个能被接受的名字的人。不久之后，Foot, Cone and Building就收集到了18,000个名字，其中包括Zoom、Zip、Benson、Henry和Drough（如果不确定，可以反过来拼写）。广告公司猜测特殊产品部的主管可能会觉得这个名单有些庞大，于是开始工作，将名单缩减至6,000个名字，然后在一个执行会议中展示给他们。看，这里，Foot Cone 的一名员工自豪地说，甩下一叠文件到桌上，6,000个名字，全部按字母顺序排列并交叉参考。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
This satisfied with both the poet's ideas and their own, the executives in the special products division, next called in Foot, Cone and Building, the advertising agency that had lately been signed up to handle the e-car account. With characteristic Madison Avenue vigor, Foot, Cone and Building organized a competition among the employees of its New York, London, and Chicago offices, offering nothing less than one of the brand new cars as a prize to whoever thought up an acceptable name. In no time at all, Foot, Cone and Building had 18,000 names in hand, including Zoom, Zip, Benson, Henry and Drough, if in doubt, spell it backward. Suspecting that the bosses of the special products division might regard this list as a trifle unwieldy, the agency got to work, and cut it down to 6,000 names, which it presented to them in executive session. There you are, a Foot Cone man said triumphantly, flopping a sheaf of papers on the table, 6,000 names, all alphabetized and cross-referenced.
狡猾的人惊呼了一声。他说：“我们不需要6,000个名字，我们只需要一个。”情况很紧急，因为新车的模具制造即将开始，其中一些模具需要刻上车的名字。在一个星期四，Foot, Cone and Building取消了所有假期，启动了所谓的紧急计划，指示其位于纽约和芝加哥的办公室独立行动，将6,000个名字的名单缩减到10个，并要求在周末结束前完成任务。就在周末结束前，这两家Foot Cone办公室分别向特别产品部提交了各自的10个名字列表。令人难以置信的是，这两个列表中竟然有四个名字是一样的，而所有人都坚持声称这只是一个巧合。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
A gasp escaped crafty. We don't want 6,000 names, he said. We only want one. The situation was critical, because the making of dies for the new car was about to begin, and some of them would have to bear its name. On a Thursday, Foot, Cone and Building canceled all leaves and instituted what is called a crash program, instructing its New York and Chicago offices to set about independently cutting down the list of 6,000 names to 10, and to have the job done by the end of the weekend. Before the weekend was over, the two Foot Cone offices presented their separate lists of 10 to the special products division, and by an almost incredible coincidence, which all hands insist was a coincidence, four of the names on the two lists were the same.
海盗、引文、步测者和护林员这几个名字奇迹般地通过了双重审查。沃莱士说，在这个过程中，海盗似乎显得鹤立鸡群。除了其他有利因素之外，它在街头采访中的表现也非常出色。与海盗有关的自由联想通常比较浪漫，比如海盗、冒险家之类的。而与之相对的名字，我们选了公主，或其他同样有吸引力的名字，正是我们想要的。无论是否是海盗，这款电动汽车在1956年春初被命名为Edsel，但直到当年秋天公众才被告知。这个决策是在福特执行委员会的一次会议上作出的，当时碰巧福特家的三兄弟都不在场。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Corsair, citation, pacer and ranger, had miraculously survived the dual scrutiny. Corsair seemed to be head and shoulders above everything else, Wallace says, along with other factors in its favor, it had done splendidly in the sidewalk interviews. The free associations with Corsair were rather romantic, pirate, swashbuckler, things like that. For its opposite, we got Princess, or something else attractive on that order, just what we wanted. Corsair, or no, Corsair, the e-car was named the Edsel in the early spring of 1956, though the public was not informed until the following autumn. The ethical decision was reached at a meeting of the Ford Executive Committee held at a time when, as it happened, all three Ford brothers were away.
在福特总统缺席的情况下，会议由1955年成为董事会主席的布里奇主持。那天他的情绪果断，对于冒险家和公主的话题不愿多做停留。在听取最终的选择后，他说道：“我一个也不喜欢。我们再看看其他的吧。”于是，他们重新审视那些被淘汰但仍受青睐的名字，其中包括“埃德塞尔”。尽管福特家族的三兄弟承认他们父亲可能的愿望，这个名字还是被保留下来，作为一个风向标。布里奇带领他的同事们耐心地重新审视了名单，直到他们看到“埃德塞尔”这个名字。布里奇平静而果断地说：“就叫这个吧。”
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In President Ford's absence, the meeting was conducted by breach, who had become Chairman of the Board in 1955, and his mood that day was brask, and not one to linger long over swashbucklers and princesses. After hearing the final choices, he said, I don't like any of them. Let's take another look at some of the others. So they took another look at the favored rejects among them the name Edsel, which, in spite of the three Ford brothers expressed interpretation of their father's probable wishes, had been retained as a sort of anchor to Windward. Breach led his associates in a patient scrutiny of the list until they came to Edsel. Let's call it that, Breach said, with calm finality.
有四个主要型号的电动车，每个型号都有不同的版本，Breach通过补充魔法、私掠者、引述、开拓者和巡游者可能被用作这些型号的副名称，来起诉他的同事。亨利二世在拿骚度假时接到了一个电话，他表示如果Edsel是执行委员会的选择，他会服从这个决定，前提是他能得到其他家族成员的批准。在几天之内，他得到了家人的同意。正如Wallace稍后给Moore小姐写信时所说的那样，我们选择了一个名字。这个名字在我们追求的共鸣、欢快和热情方面有所欠缺，但对我们很多人来说，它具有个人尊严和意义。亲爱的Moore小姐，我们的名字是Edsel。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
There were to be four main models of the e-car, with variations on each one in Breach sued some of his colleagues by adding that the magic for, corsair, citation, pacer, and ranger might be used, if anybody felt so inclined, as the sub names for the models. A telephone call was put through to Henry II, who was vacationing in Nassau. He said that if Edsel was the choice of the executive committee, he would abide by its decision, provided he could get the approval of the rest of his family. Within a few days, he got it. As Wallace wrote to Miss Moore a while later, we have chosen a name. It fails somewhat of the resonance, gaiety, and zest we were seeking, but it has a personal dignity and meaning to many of us here. Our name, dear Miss Moore, is Edsel.
我希望你能理解。可以假设，电动车命名的消息在支持更具象征性名字的人群中引发了一定程度的失望，这些支持者包括步行者、锥形物和贝尔丁等团体，而他们中没有一个人赢得一辆免费车。失望的情绪因一个事实而加剧：从一开始名字“Edsel”就被排除在比赛之外。然而，这种失望与特别产品部门的许多员工所感受到的忧郁相比，显得微不足道。一些员工觉得这个名字有公司的历史传承色彩，而这与美国的文化格调格格不入。还有一些像华莱士一样信任群体潜意识巧合的人则认为“Edsel”是一个非常不幸的音节组合。它的自由联想是什么？椒盐卷饼、柴油、强行推销？它的反义词又是什么呢？似乎并没有。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
I hope you will understand. It may be assumed that word of the naming of the e-car spread a certain amount of despair among the foot, cone, and belding backers of more metaphorical names, none of whom won a free car. A despair heightened by the fact that the name Edsel had been ruled out of the competition from the first. But their sense of disappointment was as nothing compared to the gloom that enveloped many employees of the special products division. Some felt that the name of a former president of the company, who had sired its current president, bore dynastic connotations that were alien to the American temper. Others, who, with Wallace, had put their trust in the quirks of the mass unconscious believe that Edsel was a disastrously unfortunate combination of syllables. What were its free associations? Pretzel, diesel, hard sell? What was its opposite? It didn't seem to have any.
尽管如此，事情已经解决了，现在除了尽量表现得无所谓之外无能为力。而且，特别产品部门内部对这件事的看法也不统一，Kraphi本人当然是那些对这个名字没有异议的人之一。他一直以来都没有这些异议，还拒绝同意那些认为Edsel的衰落始于命名这一天的人。事实上，Kraphi对事情的发展非常满意，以至于在1956年11月19日上午11点，当时经过一个漫长而深思熟虑的夏天之后，福特公司向世界发布了E车命名为Edsel的好消息，他还在宣布时加上了自己的一些戏剧性点缀。就在那一天的整点，Kraphi管理下的电话接线员开始用“Edsel部门”来代替“特别产品部门”来接听电话。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Still, the matter was settled, and there was nothing to do but put the best possible face on it. Besides, the anguish in the special products division was by no means unanimous, and Kraphi himself, of course, was among those who had no objection to the name. He still has none, declining to go along with those who contend that the decline in fall of the Edsel may be dated from the moment of its christening. Kraphi, in fact, was so well pleased with the way matters had turned out that when, at eleven o'clock in the morning of November 19th, 1956, after a long summer of thoughtful silence, the Ford company released to the world the glad tidings that the E-car had been named the Edsel. He accompanied the announcement with a few dramatic flourishes of his own. On the very stroke of that hour, on that day, the telephone operators in Kraphi's domain began greeting callers with Edsel Division instead of special products division.
所有印有过时部门信头的信纸都消失了，取而代之的是一叠叠印有“埃德塞尔分部”字样的信纸。在大楼外，一块巨大的不锈钢招牌上写着“埃德塞尔分部”，庄重地矗立在屋顶。克拉菲本人则保持脚踏实地，虽然他有自己的理由感到振奋。为了表彰他在E车项目中的领导作用，他获得了福特汽车公司副总裁兼埃德塞尔分部总经理的崇高头衔。从管理的角度来看，这种新旧交替的效果，只不过是无害的装饰。在迪尔伯恩测试跑道的严格保密环境下，充满活力且几乎完工的埃德塞尔汽车，已经刻有名字的车身正在进行道路测试。布朗和他的设计团队对于下年度的埃德塞尔车型设计也已经大有进展。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
All stationary, bearing the obsolete letterhead of the division vanished, and was replaced by sheaves of paper-headed Edsel Division. And outside the building a huge stainless steel sign reading, Edsel Division rose ceremoniously to the rooftop. Kraphi himself managed to remain earthbound, though he had his own reasons for feeling buoyant. In recognition of his leadership of the E-car project up to that point, he was given the august title of, Vice President of the Ford Motor Company and General Manager, Edsel Division. From the administrative point of view, this, off with the old, on with the new effect, was merely harmless window dressing. In the strict secrecy of the Dearborn Test Track, vibrant, almost full-fledged Edsels, with their name graven on their superstructure were already being road tested. Brown and his fellow stylists were already well along with their designs for the next year's Edsel.
新一批零售商已经在为一个全新的组织报名，该组织将负责向公众销售艾德赛尔汽车。同时，Foot, Cone and Belding广告公司在不再需要紧急搜集或处理客户名单之后，已经专注于为艾德赛尔创意广告。该广告项目由公司负责人费尔法克斯·M·科恩亲自指导。
在设计广告宣传计划时，科恩非常依赖所谓的“沃莱士处方”——这是在命名阶段之前，由沃莱士制定的艾德赛尔品牌个性方案。方案定义艾德赛尔为适合年轻的职业家庭或正在提升中的专业家庭使用的时尚汽车。科恩对这一方案非常热衷，只做了一个修改，就是将目标客户从“年轻职业人士”改为“中等收入家庭”。他的直觉是，中等收入家庭要比年轻职业人士多很多，甚至比那些自认为是年轻职业人士的人都多。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Recruits were already being signed up for an entirely new organization of retail dealers to sell the Edsel to the public. And Foot, Cone and Belding, having been relieved of the burden of staging crash programs to collect names and crash programs to get rid of them again, was already deep in schemes for advertising the Edsel. Under the personal direction of a no less substantial pillar of his trade, then Fairfax M. Cone, the agency's head man. In planning his campaign, Cone relied heavily on what had come to be called the Wallace Prescription. That is, the formula for the Edsels personality as set forth by Wallace, back in the days before the big naming bee. The smart car for the younger executive or professional family on its way up. So enthusiastic was Cone about the prescription that he accepted it with only one revision, the substitution of middle income family for younger executive. His hunch being that there were more middle income families around than young executives, or even people who thought they were young executives.
在一种可能因为他成功获得一个预计每年将带来超过一千万美元收入的客户而来的愉悦心情中，Cone多次向记者描述了他为Edsel策划的广告活动。Cone保持着安静和自信，尽量避免使用形容词“新”，虽然它显然适用于这个产品，但他认为这没什么吸引力。最重要的是，这个广告活动要以冷静古典为特色。Cone告诉媒体：“我们认为，让广告与汽车本身竞争是非常不明智的。我们希望不会有人说‘你看到那个Edsel广告了吗？’无论是在报纸、杂志还是电视上，而希望数十万人会不断地说，‘你看到那辆Edsel了吗？’或者‘你读过关于那辆车的报道吗？’这就是广告和销售之间的区别。”
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In an expansive mood, possibly induced by his having landed an account that was expected to bring billings of well over $10 million a year, Cone described to reporters on several occasions the kind of campaign he was plotting for the Edsel. Quiet, self-assured, and avoiding as much as possible the use of the adjective new, which though it had an obvious application to the product, he considered rather lacking in cash. Above all, the campaign was to be classic in its calmness. We think it would be awful for the advertising to compete with a car, Cone told the press. We hope that no one will ever ask, say did you see that Edsel ad? In any newspaper or magazine or on television, but instead that hundreds of thousands of people will say and say again, man did you read about that Edsel? Or did you see that car? This is the difference between advertising and selling.
显而易见，康恩对他的竞选活动和埃德塞尔汽车充满信心，就像一位棋士坚信自己会赢一样。他在下每一步棋时，都有能力解释自己策略的高明之处。汽车业界至今仍在赞美这场活动中展现的高超技巧，但对于最终的结果却是感叹不已。这是他首次被指派负责埃德塞尔部门的推动，旨在吸引零售经销商。通常，成熟的汽车制造商推出新车时，会通过已经代理其其他品牌的经销商进行，而这些经销商最初也只是将新品牌作为一种副业。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Evidently enough, Cone felt confident about the campaign and the Edsel, like a chess master who has no doubt that he will win. He could afford to explicate the brilliance of his moves even as he made them. Automobile men still talk, with admiration for the virtuosity displayed in a shutter at the ultimate outcome of the campaign. It's the first time he has been told to be a pilot of the Edsel divisions drive to round up retail dealers. Ordinarily, an established manufacturer launches a new car through dealers who are already handling his other makes, and who, to begin with, take on the upstart as a sort of sideline.
创新的目标是通过挖掘那些与其他厂商或福特公司其他部门（如福特和林肯水星）签约的经销商，来建立一个零售经销商组织。最开始被拉拢进来的经销商并不需要取消他们以前的合同。工作的重心是与零售商签约，让他们专门销售艾德赛尔品牌的汽车。经过深思熟虑后，最终确定的发布日目标为1957年9月4日，并计划在全美范围内发展1200家艾德赛尔经销商。这些经销商不只是简单的经销商。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The goal set for innovation is to be able to build a retail dealer organization by making raids on dealers who had contracts with other manufacturers, or even with the other Ford company divisions, Ford and Lincoln Mercury. The first carralled were not obliged to cancel their old contracts. All the emphasis was on signing up retail outlets exclusively dedicated to the selling of Edsels. The goal set for Introduction Day, which after a great deal of soul searching, was finally established as September 4, 1957, was 1200 Edsel dealers from coast to coast. They were not to be just any dealers either.
Crafty 明确表示，Edsel 有意只与那些在销售汽车时不依赖于近乎违法的高压推销手段的经销商合作，因为这些手段最近让汽车行业的声誉受损。Crafty 说，我们必须要有高质量的经销商和优质的服务设施。对于一个已经建立品牌的汽车，顾客会将糟糕的服务归咎于经销商；但如果是 Edsel，这种指责会被归咎于汽车本身。目标是招募 1200 家经销商，这是一个很高的标准。因为无论经销商质量如何，他们都不会轻易更换品牌。一般来说，每个经销商在他们的代理业务上至少投资了 10 万美元，而在大城市，这个投资额会更高。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Crafty made it clear that Edsel was interested in signing up only dealers whose record showed that they had a marked ability to sell cars without resorting to the high pressure tricks of borderline legality that had lately been giving the automobile business a bad name. We simply have to have quality dealers with quality service facilities, Crafty said, a customer who gets poor service on an established brand blames the dealer. On an Edsel, he will blame the car. The goal of 1200 was a high one. For no dealer, quality or not, can afford to switch makes lightly. The average dealer has at least $100,000 tied up in his agency, and in large cities, the investment is much higher.
他必须雇佣销售人员、技工和办公室员工，自己购买工具、技术文献和相关的科学知识，其中后者的花费高达5,000美元，并且要以现金支付工厂提供的汽车。这个负责按照如此严格要求来组建Edsel销售团队的人是J.C. Larry Doyle。他作为该部门的总销售和市场经理，仅次于Crafty，是这个任务的主导人物。Doyle在福特公司有着40年的工作经验，从在堪萨斯城做办公室男孩开始，他的大部分时间都在销售领域度过。在这个领域中，Doyle是一位独具一格的人物。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
He must hire salesmen, mechanics and office help, buy his own tools, technical literature and science, the latter costing as much as $5,000 is set, and pay the factory spot cash for the cars he receives from it. The man charged with mobilizing an Edsel sales force along these exacting lines was J.C. Larry Doyle, who as general sales and marketing manager of the division ranked second to Crafty himself. A veteran of 40 years with a Ford company who had started with it as an office boy in Kansas City and had spent the intervening time mainly selling, Doyle was a maverick in his field.
一方面，他给人一种和蔼和体贴的感觉，这使他与那些遍布大陆汽车销售区的油腔滑调、鲁莽无礼之人完全不同。另一方面，他并不掩饰对一些事物的怀疑，比如分析汽车的性别和地位，对此他形容道：“打台球的时候，我喜欢一只脚踩在地上。”然而，他确实知道如何卖车，而这正是艾德赛尔部门所需要的。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
On the one hand, he had an air of kindness and consideration that made him the very antithesis of the glib, brash denizens of a thousand automobile rows across the continent. And on the other, he did not trouble to conceal an old-time salesman's skepticism about such things as analyzing the sex and status of automobiles, a pursuit he characterized by saying, When I play pool I like to keep one foot on the floor. Still he knew how to sell cars, and that was what the Edsel division needed.
回忆起他和他的销售团队如何完成这项不太可能的任务——说服已经在最困难的行业之一取得成功的有声望的成功人士，放弃赢利的特许经营权，转而选择一个冒险的新项目，Doyle不久前说：“早在1957年刚推出几辆新的Edsel车时，我们就在五个区域销售办公室的每个办公室里放了两辆。不用说，我们把那些办公室门锁上了，窗帘也都拉上了。”
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Recalling how he and his sales staff brought off the unlikely trick, a persuading substantial and reputable men who had already achieved success in one of the toughest of all businesses, to tear up profitable franchises in favor of a risky new one, Doyle said not long ago, As soon as the first few new Edsels came through early in 1957, we put a couple of them in each of our five regional sales offices. Needless to say, we kept those offices locked in the blinds drawn.
在周围几英里范围内，各个品牌的经销商都想看看这辆车，哪怕只是出于好奇，这为我们提供了所需的筹码。我们表示，只会向那些真正有兴趣与我们合作的经销商展示这辆车。接着，我们派出地区现场经理到周边城镇，争取让每个镇的头号经销商来看车。如果头号经销商不行，我们就去找排名第二的。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Dealers in every make for miles around wanted to see the car, if only out of curiosity, and that gave us the leverage we needed. We let it be known that we would show the car, only to dealers who are really interested in coming with us. And then, we sent our regional field managers out to surrounding towns to try to line up the number one dealer in each to see the cars. If we couldn't get number one, we'd try for number two.
总之，我们安排了一套系统，确保没有人能在没有听完我们销售团队成员关于整个情况的一小时完整介绍之前，看到Edsel。这非常有效。效果好到，到1957年夏中时，很明显，Edsel在上市那天会有很多优质的经销商。实际上，它仅比1200家的目标少了几十家。事实上，一些经销商，以及其他品牌的厂商，显然对Edsel的成功非常有信心，或者被道尔团队的介绍所吸引，以至于他们几乎只对Edsel稍作一瞥就愿意签约。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Anyway, we set things up so that no one got in to see the Edsel without listening to a complete one-hour pitch on the whole situation by a member of our sales force. It worked very well. It worked so well that by mid-summer 1957, it was clear that Edsel was going to have a lot of quality dealers on Introduction Day. In fact, it missed the goal of 1200 by a couple of dozen. Indeed, some dealers and other makes were apparently so confident of the Edsel success, or so bemused by the Doyle Staff's pitch, that they were entirely willing to sign up after hardly more than a glance at the Edsel itself.
道尔的人不断敦促他们仔细研究这辆车，并不停地列举它的各种优点。然而，潜在的Edsel经销商根本不理会这些劝说，迫切要求立即签署合同。事后看来，道尔真可谓有如神奇的吹笛人，现在Edsel已不再是迪尔伯恩独享的项目，福特公司已不可逆转地决定推进。不管顶层管理层怎么想往回收，直到道尔采取行动前，整个项目随时都可以悄然取消。但一旦签署了经销合同，就有合同义务推出这款车，就算如传言般机智也得履行合同。此事很快得到了处理。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Doyle's people urged them to study the car closely, and kept reciting the litany of its virtues. But the prospective Edsel dealers would waive such protestations aside and demand a contract without further ado. In retrospect, it would seem that Doyle could have given lessons to the Pied Piper. Now that the Edsel was no longer the exclusive concern of Dearborn, the Ford company was irrevocably committed to going ahead. Until Doyle went into action, the whole program could have been quietly dropped at any time, had a word from top management. But once the dealers had been signed up, there was the matter of honoring your contract to put out a car, crafty as explained. The matter was attended to with dispatch.
1957年6月初，公司宣布在为Edsel汽车的前期成本拨出的2.5亿美元中，1.5亿美元用于基础设施建设，包括将多个福特和水星工厂改造成生产新车的需求，5000万美元用于Edsel汽车的专用工具，另外5000万美元用于最初的广告和宣传活动。同样在6月，一辆Edsel汽车被秘密地用封闭的货车运往好莱坞。这辆汽车将在未来发布的电视广告中作为明星出现。在一个上锁的摄影棚里，安保人员巡逻，此车在几位经过精心挑选的演员面前亮相。这些演员承诺在汽车正式推出之前保持绝对的保密。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Early in June 1957, the company announced that of the $250 million it had set aside to defray the advanced costs of the Edsel, $150 million was being spent on basic facilities, including the conversion of various Ford and Mercury plants to the needs of producing the new cars, $50 million on special Edsel tooling, and $50 million on initial advertising and promotion. In June, too, an Edsel destined to be the star of a television commercial for future release was stealthily transported in a closed van to Hollywood, where, on a locked sound stage, patrolled by security guards, it was exposed to the cameras in the admiring presence of a few carefully chosen actors, who had sworn that their lips would be sealed from then until introduction day.
在这项精细的摄影操作中，埃德塞尔部门巧妙地聘请了Cascade Pictures的服务，该公司也为原子能委员会工作。据了解，没有任何意外泄漏。Cascade Pictures的一位负责人后来严肃地表示：“我们采取了与原子能委员会影片相同的防护措施。” 几周之内，埃德塞尔部门已经有1800名员工，并迅速在新改造的工厂里填补了约15,000个工厂职位。7月15日，埃德塞尔汽车开始在马萨诸塞州萨默维尔、新泽西州莫瓦、肯塔基州路易斯维尔和加利福尼亚州圣荷西的生产线上下线。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
For this delicate photographic operation, the Edsel Division cannily enlisted the services of Cascade Pictures, which also worked for the Atomic Energy Commission, and, as far as is known, there were no unintentional leaks. We took all the same precautions we take for our AEC films, a grim cascade official has since said. Within a few weeks, the Edsel Division had 1,800 salaried employees and was rapidly filling some 15,000 factory jobs in the newly converted plants. On July 15, Edsels began rolling off assembly lines at Somerville, Massachusetts, Maua, New Jersey, Louisville, Kentucky, and San Jose, California.
同一天，Doyle 取得了一项重大成就，成功签下了查尔斯·克莱斯勒——这位被认为是美国顶尖专家之一的曼哈顿经销商。在回应来自迪尔伯恩的诱人邀请之前，他曾代表Oldsmobile，Edsel宣称的竞争对手之一。7月22日，Edsel的首则广告在《生活》杂志上刊登。这个黑白的双页广告设计经典简洁，画面中一辆汽车飞速行驶在乡间公路上，速度快到只剩模糊的影像。广告文案以“最近在公路上出现了一些神秘的汽车”为标题，继续说明模糊影像是一辆正在测试中的Edsel，并在最后保证：“Edsel即将到来。”
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The same day, Doyle scored an important coup by signing up Charles Chrysler, a Manhattan dealer regarded as one of the country's foremost practitioners in his field, who had represented Oldsmobile, one of Edsels' self-designated rivals before heeding the siren song from Dearborn. On July 22, the first advertisement for the Edsel appeared in life. A two-page spread in plain black and white, it was impeccably classic in calm, showing a car whooshing down a country highway at such high speed that it was an indistinguishable blur. Lately, some mysterious automobiles have been seen on the roads, the accompanying text was headed. It went on to say that the blur was an Edsel being road tested, and concluded with the assurance, the Edsel is on its way.
两周后，生活杂志上出现了第二则广告，这次广告展示了一辆看起来像幽灵的汽车，被白色床单覆盖着，停在福特设计中心的入口。这次的标题是：“你镇上的一个人最近做了一个改变他人生的决定。” 广告中解释说，这个决定就是成为一名Edsel汽车的经销商。撰写广告的人可能没想到他的话如此贴切。1957年那个紧张的夏天，Edsel的当红人物是公共关系总监C. Gale Warnock，他的职责不仅仅是成为一个经销商。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Two weeks later, a second ad appeared in life, this one showing a ghostly-looking car, covered with a white sheet, standing at the entrance to the Ford Styling Center. This time, the headline read, A Man in Your Town recently made a decision that will change his life. The decision, it was explained, was to become an Edsel dealer. Whoever wrote the ad cannot have known how truly he spoke. During the tense summer of 1957, the man of the hour at Edsel was C. Gale Warnock, Director of Public Relations, whose duty was not so much to be a man.
这并不是为了引起公众对即将上市产品的兴趣，因为对此已经有充足的关注，而是为了保持这种兴趣的极高热度，并能在产品发布日或公司称之为“Edsel日”当天或之后，轻易转换为购买新车型的欲望。沃诺克是一位衣着整洁、和蔼可亲的男子，留着小胡子，来自印第安纳州的康弗斯。在他被一家小公司的草稿从芝加哥的福特公司召来之前，他为县级博览会做过一些宣传工作，这一背景使他能够在现代公共关系人的甜美圆滑中，融入老式嘉年华推销员的不羁精神。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
It was not so much to generate public interest in the forthcoming product, there being an abundance of that, as to keep the interest at white heat, and readily convertible into a desire to buy one of the new cars on or after Introduction Day, or as the company came to call it, Edsel Day. Warnock, a dapper affable man with a tiny mustache, is a native of Converse Indiana, who long before a crappy drafted him from the Ford office in Chicago, did a spot of publicity work for County Fairs, a background that has enabled him to spice the honeyed smoothness of the modern public relations man with the touch of the old carnival pitchman's uninhibited spirit.
回忆起他去迪尔伯恩的召唤，沃诺克说道：“为Edsel汽车获得公众关注几乎太容易了。1956年年初，当时天气还很冷，Crafty在俄勒冈州波特兰稍微谈了一下这款车。我们本来只想在当地媒体上引起一些关注，但新闻通讯社把这个故事扩散到了全国。各种剪报像潮水般涌来。那时候，我就意识到我们可能要面临麻烦了。公众对我们的车的期待变得疯狂，觉得这将是一辆梦幻般的车，像他们从未见过的东西。”
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Recalling his summons to Dearborn, Warnock says, It was almost too easy to get publicity for the Edsel. Early in 1956, when it was still cold, the E-Car, Crafty gave a little talk about it out in Portland, Oregon. We didn't try for anything more than a play in the local press, but the wire services picked the story up and it went out all over the country. Clippings came in by the bushel. Right then, I realized the trouble we might be headed for. The public was getting to be hysterical to see our car, figuring it was going to be some kind of dream car, like nothing they'd ever seen.
我对Crafty说，当人们发现这辆车和其他车一样有四个轮子和一个引擎时，他们可能会感到失望。大家一致认为，为了在过分宣传和不足宣传埃德塞尔之间取得平衡，最安全的方法是不要整体介绍这辆车，而是逐步展示其独特魅力，就像汽车界的“脱衣舞”一样。这个说法是Warnock自己无法庄重地使用的，但他很乐意看到《纽约时报》为他使用。这个策略后来有时被故意或者无意地违反了。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
I said to Crafty, when they find out it's got four wheels and one engine, just like the next car, they're liable to be disappointed. It was agreed that the safest way to tread the tightrope between overplaying and underplaying the Edsel would be to say nothing about the car as a whole, but to reveal the car's individual charms, a little at a time, a sort of automotive strip tease, a phrase that Warnock couldn't with proper dignity use himself, but was happy to see the New York Times use for him. The policy was later violated now and then, purposely or inadvertently.
在前埃塞尔日（Edsel Day）之前的夏天，记者们一再请求Crafty批准Warnock向他们展示埃塞尔，每次只给一个记者，这被Warnock称为“窥视游戏”或“看过就忘”。此外，运输埃塞尔到经销商的货车在公路上越来越多，车子前后都用帆布覆盖着，这帆布常常被风吹开，似乎让公众更加“垂涎欲滴”。那个夏天，Crafty、Doyle、Edsel的产品规划部商品经理Jay Emmett Judge，还有负责广告、销售推广和培训的助理总销售经理Robert F.G. Copeland组成的埃塞尔“四人组”（Edsel Forsem）也在进行演讲活动。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
For one thing, as the pre-Edsel Day summer wore on, reporters prevailed upon Crafty to authorize Warnock to show the Edsel to them, one at a time, on what Warnock called a peek-a-boo, or you've seen it now forget it basis. And for another, Edsels loaded on vans for delivery to dealers were peering in the highways in ever increasing numbers, covered for an aft with canvas flaps that, as if to wet the desire of the motoring public, were forever blowing loose. That summer, too, was a time of speech-making by an Edsel Forsem, consisting of Crafty, Doyle, Jay Emmett Judge, who is Edsel's Director of Merchandise in Product Planning, in Robert F. G. Copeland, its Assistant General Sales Manager for Advertising, Sales Promotion and Training.
为了不让自己失去对他们的追踪，沃诺克用彩色图钉在办公室的地图上标记他们的位置，因为这四个组织在全国范围内上下左右地快速移动，几乎从不停歇。沃诺克在迪尔伯恩的一天早晨，一边啜饮第二杯咖啡，一边沉思：“让我看看，Crafty从亚特兰大到新奥尔良，Doyle从Council Bluffs到盐湖城。”然后他站起来将图钉拔出再重新插入。尽管Crafty的大部分听众都是银行家和金融公司代表，他们希望能给Edsel汽车经销商提供贷款，但那个夏天他的演讲并没有重复大众宣传的夸张调子，而是对新车前景进行了谨慎甚至严肃的评论，几乎像一位政治家。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Ranging separately up and down and across the nation, the four orders moved around so fast, and so tirelessly that Warnock, lest he lose track of them, took to indicating their whereabouts with colored pins on a map in his office. Let's see, Crafty goes from Atlanta to New Orleans, Doyle from Council Bluffs to Salt Lake City. Warnock would muse of a morning in Dearborn, sipping his second cup of coffee, and then getting up to yank the pins out and jab them in again. Although most of Crafty's audiences consisted of bankers and representatives of finance companies, who it was hoped would lend money to Edsel dealers, his speeches that summer, far from echoing the General Hoopla, were almost statesman-like in their cautious, even somber references to the new car's prospects.
他们可能感到困惑，因为国家整体经济前景的发展让比Crafty更乐观的人都感到迷惑。1957年7月，股市开始大幅下跌，这标志着人们记忆中1958年经济衰退的开始。然后，在八月初，所有品牌的中档1957款汽车的销量都开始下降，整个形势迅速恶化，以至于在八月底，汽车新闻报道说，各个品牌的经销商以历史上第二高的未售出新车数量结束了销售季。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And well they might have been, for developments in the general economic outlook of the nation were making more sanguine men than Crafty look puzzled. In July 1957, the stock market went into a nose-dive, marking the beginning of what is recalled as the recession of 1958. Then, early in August, a decline in the sales of medium-priced 1957 cars of all-makes said in, and the general situation worsened so rapidly that, before the month was out, automotive news reported that dealers in all-makes were ending their season with the second largest number of unsold new cars in history.
如果狡猾的他在孤独的巡回中曾考虑撤退到迪尔伯恩寻找安慰，那么当八月份，水星公司的广告噱头将使得新人艰难无比时，就不得不打消这个念头。水星公司是由埃德塞尔共同管理的，投入了一百万美元进行为期30天的广告宣传，特别是针对价格敏感的买家，这显然是在暗示当时大多数经销商以折扣价出售的1957款水星车比预计的新埃德塞尔要便宜。而与此同时，Rambler（拉姆布勒）作为当时唯一在产的美国制造小型车，销售量也开始令人不安地上升。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
If Crafty, on his lonely rounds, ever considered retreating to Dearborn for consolation, he was forced to put that notion out of his mind when, also in August, Mercury, Edsel's own stablemate, served notice that it was going to make things as tough as possible for the newcomer by undertaking a million-dollar 30-day advertising drive aimed especially at price-conscious buyers, a clear reference to the fact that the 1957 Mercury was then being sold at a discount by most dealers cost less than the new Edsel was expected to. Meanwhile, sales of the Ramblur, which was the only American-made small car then in production were beginning to rise ominously.
面对所有这些不祥的预兆，克拉夫特养成了一个习惯，总是在演讲结束时讲一个略显悲观的故事。这个故事是关于一家不成功的狗粮公司董事会主席的，他对其他董事说：“先生们，让我们面对现实吧。狗不喜欢我们的产品。” 至于我们公司，克拉夫特至少在一次情况下补充说，极为清晰地阐明了其中的道理：“很多事情将取决于人们是否喜欢我们的汽车。”
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In the face of all these evil portents, Crafty fell into the habit of ending his speeches with a rather downbeat anecdote about the board chairman of an unsuccessful dog-food company, who said to his fellow directors, gentlemen, let's face facts. Dogs don't like our product. As far as we're concerned, Crafty added on at least one occasion, driving home the moral with admirable clarity, a lot will depend on whether people like our car or not.
然而，大多数其他的爱德赛尔成员对克拉夫特的疑虑并不感兴趣。或许最不为之所动的是法官，他作为巡回演讲者，专门在社区和市政团体中发表演讲。尽管受到"脱衣政策"的限制，法官仍通过展示各种动画草图、卡通、图表以及汽车零部件的图片，让观众眼花缭乱，搭配影院屏幕进行演示，以此活跃他的讲座，通常听众都要走到半路时才意识到他没有展示过吉利柯。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
But most of the other Edselmen were unimpressed by Crafty's misgivings. Perhaps the least impressed of all was Judge, who, while doing his bit as an itinerant speaker, specialized in community and civic groups. Undismade by the limitations of the stripped-tease policy, Judge brightened up his lectures by showing such a bewildering array of animated drafts, cartoons, charts, and pictures of parts of the car, all flashed on a cinema-scope screen, that his listeners usually got halfway home, before they realized that he hadn't shown the Monetzel.
他在礼堂里不安地来回走动，同时讲话，用自动幻灯片转换器随意切换屏幕上的万花筒般的图像。这项技巧得益于一支电工团队，他们事先在场地布下了错综复杂的电线网络，将设计的几十个地板开关连接起来，这些开关撒布在大厅各处，只要他用脚踢一下就能响应。这些演出后来被称为“法官盛会”，每场演出花费埃德赛尔部门5000美元，这个数字包括技术团队的工资和费用。他们会提前一两天到达现场，搭建电气设备。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
He wandered restlessly around the auditorium, as he spoke, shifting the kaleidoscopic images on the screen at will with the aid of an automatic slide-changer, a trick made possible by a crew of electricians, who laced the place in advance, with a maze of wires linking the devised dozens of floor switches, which, scattered about the hall, responded when he kicked them. Each of the Judge Spectaculars, as these performances came to be known, cost the Edsel Division $5,000, a sum that included the pay and expenses of the technical crew, who would arrive on the scene a day or so ahead of time to set up the electrical rig.
在最后一刻，法官总是戏剧性地乘飞机降临小镇，急匆匆地赶到大厅，然后开始他的表演。他可能会开场说：“这个Edsel项目最伟大的方面之一就是产品和销售背后的哲学。”他会随意地摆弄开关，夸夸其谈。“我们这些参与其中的人，都为这个背景感到非常自豪。当这款车在今秋发布时，我们迫不及待地期待它的成功。再也不会有如此宏大而意义非凡的项目与我们联系在一起。”接着，他会展示一张挑逗性的幻灯片，上面可能是一只轮毂盖或是车翼的一部分，以此来让观众先睹为快，这款车将在1957年9月4日展现在美国公众面前。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
At the last moment, Judge would descend melodramatically on the town by plane, hasten to the hall and go into his act. One of the greatest aspects of this whole Edsel program is the philosophy of product and merchandising behind it, Judge might start off, with the desultory kick get a switch here, a switch there. All of us, who have been a part of it, are real proud of this background, and we are anxiously awaiting its success when the car is introduced this fall. Never again will we be associated with anything as gigantic and full of meaning as this particular program. Here is a glimpse of the car which will be before the American public on September 4, 1957. At this point, Judge would show a provocative slide of a hubcap or section of fender.
这是一款在各个方面都截然不同的汽车，但它仍保持了一种保守的元素，使其能吸引到最多的用户。前部独特的设计与侧面造型的线条完美结合。Judge将继续充满热情地赞美，使用诸如“雕塑般的金属板”、“突出特点”和“优雅流畅的线条”等令人惊叹的词句。最终，他会以热烈的结尾宣告：“我们为艾德塞尔感到骄傲。”当它在这个秋季推出时，它将在美国的街道和高速公路上占据一席之地，为福特公司带来新的伟大成就。这就是艾德塞尔的故事。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
It is a different car in every respect, yet it has an element of conservatism which will give it maximum appeal. The distinctivist of the frontal styling integrates with the sculptured patterns of the side treatment. And on and on, Judge would rhapsodize, rolling out such awesome phrases as sculptured sheet metal, highlight character, and graceful flowing lines. At last would come the ringing peroration, we are proud of the Edsel, he would cry, kicking switches right and left. When it is introduced this fall, it will take its place on the streets and highways of America, bringing new greatness to the Ford Motor Company. This is the Edsel story.
"Strip Tees"活动的鼓点高潮是一场为期三天的Edsel汽车媒体预览会，这次活动展示了从紧凑的车头到宽大的车尾的完整造型。活动于8月26日至28日在底特律和迪尔伯恩举行，吸引了来自全国的250名记者参加。与以往的汽车展示活动不同的是，这次记者们被邀请携带妻子一同前来，很多人也确实这样做了。这次活动花费了福特公司9万美元。尽管活动很盛大，其传统的举办地点却让Warnock感到失望，因为他提议的三个地点都被否决了。他建议的地点分别是：底特律河上的一艘游轮（象征意义不对），艾泽尔肯塔基（公路无法通达），以及直接被否决的海地。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The drum roll climax of the Strip Tees was a three day press preview of the Edsel, undraped from pinched in snout to flaring rear. That was held in Detroit and Dearborn on August 26, 27, and 28, with 250 reporters from all over the country in attendance. It differed from previous automotive jamborees of its kind in that the journalists were invited to bring their wives along, and many of them did. Before it was over, it had cost the Ford Company $90,000. Grand as it was, the conventionality of its setting was a disappointment to Warnock, who had proposed and seen rejected three locales that he thought would provide a more offbeat ambiance. A steamer on the Detroit River, wrong symbolism, Edsel Kentucky, inaccessible by road, and Haiti just turned down flat.
因此，受限的沃诺克只能在8月25日星期日晚上，当记者及其配偶抵达底特律时，将他们安置在一个令人沮丧的地方——谢里登凯迪拉克酒店。并安排他们在星期一下午了解和阅读期待已久的关于整个艾德塞尔系列的细节，这些系列包括四大主线的18种车型：Corsair（海盗）、Citation（引证）、Pacer（节奏者）、Ranger（游侠），主要在尺寸、动力和装饰方面存在差异。第二天早上，各种车型样品在设计中心的圆形大厅里向记者展出，亨利二世也为他父亲致以几句敬意。一位参与策划活动的人回忆道，记者的配偶们没有被邀请参加揭幕仪式。因为这是一场过于庄重和商务化的活动。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Thus hobbled, Warnock could do no better for the reporters and their wives when they converged on the Detroit scene on Sunday evening August 25, then to put them up at the discouragingly named Sheridan Cadillac Hotel, and to arrange for them to spend Monday afternoon hearing and reading about the long awaited details of the entire crop of Edsels, 18 varieties available in four main lines, Corsair, Citation, Pacer, and Ranger, differing mainly in their size, power, and trim. The next morning specimens of the models themselves were revealed to the reporters in the styling center's rotunda, and Henry II offered a few words of tribute to his father. The wives were not asked to the unveiling, a foot cone man who helped plan the affair recalls. It was too solemn and business-like an event for that.
效果不错。即使是经验丰富的新闻记者中也有感到兴奋的人。大多数兴奋的记者报道的重点是，尽管与宣传所暗示的相比，Edsel汽车并没有那么具有颠覆性，但它仍然是一款不错的车。下午，记者们被带到了测试赛道，观赏特技车手展示Edsel汽车的各种性能。这个事件本应激动人心，但最终却惊险异常，甚至让一些人有些紧张。大家一致同意不要过多谈论速度和马力，因为就在几个月前，整个汽车行业还郑重承诺要专注于造车，而非生产“延时炸弹”。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
It went over fine. There was excitement even among the hardened newspapermen. The import of the stories that most of the excited newspapermen filed was that the Edsels seemed to be a good car, though not so radical as its billing had suggested. In the afternoon, the reporters were whisked out to the test track to see a team of stunt drivers put the Edsel through its paces. This event, calculated to be thrilling, turned out to be hair-raising, and even for some a little unstringing. In joint not to talk too much about speed and horsepower, since only a few months previously, the whole automobile industry had nobly resolved to concentrate on making cars instead of delayed action bombs.
沃诺克决定通过行动而非语言来强调艾德赛尔汽车的活力。为此，他聘请了一组特技车手。艾德赛尔汽车在两英尺高的坡道上用两个轮子行驶，从更高的坡道上四轮着地弹跳，在时速60或70英里时，以交叉的方式驶过，几乎互相擦过，并在时速50英里时漂移完成全回转。为了增加一些幽默效果，还有一名小丑司机模仿这些惊险动作。同时，艾德赛尔汽车的工程总监尼尔·L·布卢姆的声音在扩音器中响起，他轻声细语地介绍这些新车的功能、安全性、坚固性、灵活性和性能，却巧妙地避开了速度和马力这两个词，仿佛沙鹬鸟在波浪边小心翼翼地走过。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Warnock had decided to emphasize the Edsels' liveliness through deeds rather than words, and to accomplish this, he had hired a team of stunt drivers. Edsels ran over two-foot ramps on two wheels, bounced from higher ramps on all four wheels, were driven in crisscross patterns, grazing each other at 60 or 70 miles per hour, and skidded into complete turns at 50. For comic relief, there was a clown driver parodying the daredevil stuff. All the while, the voice of Neil L. Bloom, Edsels' engineering chief could be heard on a loudspeaker purring about the capabilities, the safety, the ruggedness, the maneuverability, and performance of these new cars, and skirting the words speed and horsepower as delicately as a sandpiper skirts a wave.
在某个时刻，当一辆艾德塞尔汽车在高坡上飞跃时，差点翻车，克拉菲的脸色变得异常苍白。他后来表示，他并不知道特技表演会如此惊险，并且担心艾德塞尔的声誉受损，同时也担忧驾驶员的生命安全。沃诺克注意到老板的焦虑，便走过去问克拉菲是否享受这个表演。克拉菲简短地回答说，他会在表演结束且所有人安全之后再作答。然而，其他人似乎都玩得很开心。售卖冰淇淋的人说道，他看到那些漂亮的艾德塞尔汽车在绿色的密歇根山岗上，整齐而壮观地表演。那是美丽的，就像是火箭，令人激动，大家的士气高涨。沃诺克的高涨情绪让他更加天马行空。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
At one point, when an Edsel leaping a high ramp just missed turning over, Craffi's face took on a ghastly pallor. He later reported that he had not known that daredevil stunts were going to be so extreme, and was concerned both for the good name of the Edsel and the lives of the drivers. Warnock, noticing his boss's distress, went over and asked Craffi if he was enjoying the show. Craffi replied tersely that he would answer when it was over and all hands safe. But everyone else seemed to be having a grand time. The foot cone man said, he looked over this green Michigan hill, and there were those glorious Edsels, performing gloriously in unison. It was beautiful. It was like the rockets. It was exciting. Morale was high. Warnock's high spirits had carried him to even wild or extremes of fancy.
特技驾驶表演就像新车揭幕一样，被认为对妻子们来说有些过于刺激，但足智多谋的沃诺克为她们准备了一场时尚秀，希望她们能同样觉得有趣。节目明星由艾德赛尔造型师布朗介绍，称为既美丽又才华横溢的巴黎时装设计师，但在秀的最后却揭晓这其实是一位女装大佬。为了增加表演的真实性，沃诺克并没有事先告诉布朗这个秘密。从此布朗和沃诺克之间的关系再也不如从前，但妻子们得以在她们给丈夫的故事中多加入一两段。当晚，在造型中心举行了一场盛大的晚会，整个地方被布置成一个夜总会，配有一个喷泉，随着雷·麦金利乐队的音乐起舞。乐队的徽标是创始人已故格伦·米勒时代遗留的字母GM，通常在每位乐手的乐谱架上醒目地展示，差点让这次晚会对沃诺克而言变得不太愉快。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The stunt driving, like the unveiling, was considered too rich for the blood of the wives, but the resourceful Warnock was ready for them with a fashion show that he hoped they would find at least equally diverting. The star of the show, who was introduced by Brown, the Edsel stylist, as a Paris couturier, both beautiful and talented, turned out at the final curtain to be a female impersonator, a fact of which Warnock, to heighten the verisimilitude of the act, had given Brown no advance warning. Things were never again quite the same between Brown and Warnock, but the wives were able to give their husbands an extra paragraph or two for their stories. That evening there was a big gala for one and all at the styling center, which was itself styled as a nightclub for the occasion, complete with a fountain that danced in time with the music of Ray McKinley's band, whose emblem, the letters GM, a holdover from the days of its founder, the late Glenn Miller, was emblazoned as usual on the music stand of each musician, very nearly ruining the evening for Warnock.
第二天早上，福特公司的官员召开了一场总结新闻发布会，宣布了Edsel汽车的发布，就像一个健康的年轻人一样，我们对这款新车的自豪感溢于言表。随后，71位记者各自驾驶一辆Edsel出发回家，他们并不是把车开到自己的车库，而是要将它们送到当地Edsel经销商的展厅。让我们来听听沃诺克是如何描述这次活动的高潮部分的。有几次不太顺利的事件，其中一位司机只是简单地计算失误，结果撞车，这可不是Edsel的问题。还有一辆车的油底壳掉了，导致发动机锁死，这种情况在最好的车上也可能发生。幸运的是，当这次故障发生时，司机正在驶过一个名字听起来很美丽的小镇，我想是堪萨斯州的天堂镇，这给事件的新闻报道增添了一丝积极的色彩。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The next morning at a wind-up press conference held by Ford officials, breach declared of the Edsel, it's a husky youngster, and like most other new parents, were proud enough to pop our buttons. Then 71 of the reporters took the wheels of as many Edsels and set out for home, not to drive the cars into their garages, but to deliver them to the showrooms of their local Edsel dealers. Let Warnock describe the highlights of this final flourish. There were several unfortunate occurrences. One guy simply miscalculated and cracked up his car running into something, no fault of the Edsel there. One car lost its oil pan, so naturally the motor froze. It can happen to the best of cars. Fortunately, at the time of this malfunction, the driver was going through a beautiful sounding town, Paradise, Kansas, I think it was, and that gave the news reports about it a nice little positive touch.
最近的一位经销商给了一名记者一辆新的Edsel，他开车回家，途中攀登了派克峰。接着，有一辆车因为刹车失灵撞破了收费站。这有些糟糕。有趣的是，我们最担心的事情——其他司机太想看Edsel，以至于挤我们的车下路——其实只发生过一次。那是发生在宾夕法尼亚收费公路上的。当时我们的一个记者开车行驶得很顺利，直到一位普利茅斯的司机为了看个究竟紧跟上来，靠得太近，结果导致Edsel被刮擦。损伤不大。1959年底，在Edsel宣告停产后，《商业周刊》报道说，在一次大型新闻发布会上，一位福特的高管对记者说，如果公司没有陷得这么深，我们绝不会在现在推出它。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The nearest dealer gave the reporter a new Edsel, and he drove on home, climbing Pike's Peak on the way. Then one car crashed through a tollgate when the brakes failed. That was bad. It's funny, but the thing we were most worried about, other drivers being so eager to get a look at the Edsels that they'd crowd our cars off the road happened only once. That was on the Pennsylvania turnpike. One of our reporters was tooling along, no problems, when a Plymouth driver pulled up a long sign to rubberneck, and edged so close that the Edsel got sideswiped. Minor damage. Late in 1959, immediately after the demise of the Edsel, Business Week stated that at the big press preview, a Ford executive had said to a reporter, if the company weren't in so deep, we never would have brought it out now.
然而，由于《商业周刊》在两年多的时间里都没有发表这条明显耸人听闻的声明，并且直到今天，所有曾经参与过埃德赛尔汽车项目的高管，包括那些忙于处理无辜的狗粮公司的高管，仍然坚信在埃德赛尔日（发布日）甚至在稍后的短时间内，他们都期望埃德赛尔能够成功。因此，这一引用应该被视为一个极具可疑性的考古发现。事实上，在媒体预览和埃德赛尔日之间的时间里，参与该项目的每个人似乎都充满了热情洋溢的乐观情绪。在《底特律自由报》上，有一家广告公司打出了 "再见了，奥兹莫比尔" 的标题，因为他们计划从奥兹莫比尔转向埃德赛尔。在俄勒冈州波特兰市的一位经销商甚至表示，在尚未亲眼见到车之前，他已经卖出了两辆埃德赛尔。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
However, since Business Week neglected to publish this patently sensational statement for over two years, and since to this day all the former ranking Edsel executives, crafty included, notwithstanding his preoccupation with the luckless dog food company, firmly maintained that right up to Edsel Day, and even for a short time thereafter, they expected the Edsel to succeed. It would seem that the quotation should be regarded as a highly suspect archaeological find. Indeed, during the period between the press preview and Edsel Day, the spirit of everybody associated with the venture seems to have been one of wild optimism. Oldsmobile, goodbye, ran the headline on an ad in the Detroit Free Press, for an agency that was switching from olds to Edsel. A dealer in Portland, Oregon, reported that he had already sold two Edsels sight unseen.
沃诺克找到了一家日本的烟花公司，他们愿意以每个9美元的价格为他制作5000个火箭。这些火箭在空中爆炸时会释放出一个九英尺长的埃德塞尔缩尺模型，由非常轻的纸制成，会像降落伞一样膨胀并飘升。他满脑子想的就是在“埃德塞尔日”那天，不仅要让美国的公路上挤满埃德塞尔，还要让它们充满天空。沃诺克一心准备下订单，而这时机智的同伴看起来有些困惑，摇了摇头。9月3日，也就是“埃德塞尔日”前一天，宣布了各种埃德塞尔车型的价格，运到纽约的汽车价格从不到2800美元到超过4100美元不等。在“埃德塞尔日”当天，埃德塞尔车亮相。剑桥，一支乐队引领着闪闪发光的车队沿着马萨诸塞大道行进。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Warnock dug up a fireworks company in Japan, willing to make him at $9 a piece, 5,000 rockets that, exploding in mid-air, would release nine-foot scale model Edsels, made of rice paper that it would inflate and ascend like parachutes, his head reeling with visions of filling America's skies as well as its highways with Edsels on Edsel Day. Warnock was about to dash off an order when crafty, looking something more than puzzled, shook his head. On September 3rd, Eday minus 1, the prices of the various Edsel models were announced, for cars delivered to New York they ran from just under $2,800 to just over $4,100. On Eday, the Edsel arrived. In Cambridge, a band led a gleaming motorcade of the new car's up Massachusetts Avenue.
从加利福尼亚州里士满起飞的一架直升机，带着一家最喜庆的经销商之一所雇佣的巨大埃德塞尔标志，飘扬在旧金山湾上空，同时遍布全国，从路易斯安那州的湿地到雷尼尔山的顶峰再到缅因州的森林。尽管沃诺克在火箭上的挫折，空气中都充满了埃德塞尔的气息，人们只需要打开收音机或电视就能感受到这一点。埃德塞尔日宣传狂潮的基调由一则广告奠定，该广告在全国各地的报纸上刊登，其中埃德塞尔与福特公司的总裁福特和董事长布里奇共同成为焦点。在广告中，福特看起来像个年轻稳重的父亲，而布里奇则如同一个持满堂红、对抗可能顺子的优雅绅士。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Flying out of Richmond, California, a helicopter, hired by one of the most jubilant of the dealers, last sold by Doyle, spread a giant Edsel sign above San Francisco Bay, and all over the nation, from the Louisiana Bios to the peak of Mount Rainier to the main woods. One needed only a radio or a television set to know that the very air, despite Warnock's setback on the rockets, was quivering with the presence of the Edsel. The tone for Edsel Day's blizzard of publicity was set by an ad, published in newspapers all over the country, in which the Edsel shared the spotlight with the Ford Company's President Ford and Chairman Breach. In the ad, Ford looked like a dignified young father, breach like a dignified gentleman, holding a full house against the possible straight.
Edsel 看起来就是一辆 Edsel。公司附带的文本宣称，生产这款车的决定是基于我们对你们所知、所猜测、所感觉、所相信、所怀疑的基础上做出的，并且补充说，你们就是 Edsel 背后的原因。语气冷静而自信。对于观众人数的真实性似乎没有太多怀疑空间。到日落之前，据估计已有两百八十五万人在经销商的展厅里看过这款新车。三天后，在北费城，一辆 Edsel 被盗。这起事件可以说是标志着公众对 Edsel 接受度的最高点。仅仅几个月后，除了一些不挑剔的汽车窃贼，可能都不会再费心去偷它了。衰落与没落。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The Edsel just looked like an Edsel. The Companying text declared that the decision to produce the car had been based on what we knew, guessed, felt, believed, suspected about you, and added you are the reason behind the Edsel. The tone was calm and confident. There did not seem to be much room for doubt about the reality of that full house. Before sundown, it was estimated two million, eight hundred fifty thousand people had seen the new car in dealer showrooms. Three days later, in North Philadelphia, an Edsel was stolen. It can reasonably be argued that the crime marked the high water mark of public acceptance of the Edsel. Only a few months later, any but the least fastidious of car thieves might not have bothered. Decline and fall.
埃德赛尔汽车最引人注目的外观特点是它的散热格栅。与当时其他19款美国车的宽大水平格栅相比，埃德赛尔的格栅设计细长且垂直。这个格栅由镀铬钢制成，形状有点像鸡蛋，位于汽车前端的中间，上面装饰有“Edsel”字样的铝制字母，从上到下排列。这样的设计意在让人联想到二三十年前或者当时大多数欧洲汽车的前脸，给人一种既经典又成熟的感觉。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The most striking physical characteristic of the Edsel was, of course, its radiator grill. This, in contrast to the wide and horizontal grills of all nineteen other American makes of the time, was slender and vertical. Of chromium-plated steel, in shape of something like an egg, it sat in the middle of the car's front end, and was embellished by the word Edsel, in aluminum letters, running down its length. It was intended to suggest the front end of practically any car twenty or thirty years ago, and of most contemporary European cars, in us to look at once seasoned and sophisticated.
问题在于，古董车和欧洲车的前端本身是又高又窄的，基本上只由散热器格栅组成。而埃德赛尔（Edsel）的前端则是宽而低，和其他美国产的竞争车型一样。因此，格栅两边必须用某些东西填充，而它们确实被填充了，充满了两块完全常见的高水位面板。其效果就像是一辆老旧的奥兹莫比尔，前端嵌入了派尔斯·箭（Pierce Arrow）的船首，又或是以比喻的方式来说，就像是一位清洁女工试戴公爵夫人的项链。试图显得高雅的努力是如此明显，以至于还颇具一番令人感到可爱的效果。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The trouble was that whereas the front ends of the antiques and the European cars were themselves high and narrow, consisting indeed of little more than the radiator grills, the front end of the Edsel was broad and low, just like the front ends of all its American competitors. Consequently, there were wide areas on either side of the grill that had to be filled in with something, and filled in they were, with twin panels of entirely conventional high water. The effect was that of an old's mobile with the prow of a pierce arrow implanted in its front end, or, more metaphorically, of the charwoman, trying on a duchess necklace. The attempt at sophistication was so transparent as to be endearing.
但是，如果说爱达尔（Edsel）的前脸因其率真而吸引人，那它的尾部设计就另当别论了。在这里，它同样打破了当时的常规设计。车尾没有采用臭名昭著的尾鳍，而是看起来像翅膀——对那些欣赏者来说如此，而对其他不那么富于幻想的人来说，就像眉毛。行李箱盖和后挡泥板的线条向上、向外延伸，确实有点像海鸥展翅飞翔的样子，但两条细长的尾灯——部分安装在行李箱盖上，部分在挡泥板上——跟随这些线条，尤其是在夜晚，造成了一种斜眼微笑的惊人错觉。从前面看，爱达尔似乎格外渴望取悦他人，即使有些滑稽。从后面看，它显得狡黠、聪明、自鸣得意，甚至带着些许玩世不恭和轻蔑。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
But if the grill of the Edsel appealed through guillessness, the rear end was another matter. Here, too, there was a marked departure from the conventional design of the day. Instead of the notorious tail fin, the car had what looked to its fanciers like wings, and to others less ethereal-minded, like eyebrows. The lines of the trunk lid and the rear fenders, swooping upward and outward, did somewhat resemble the wings of a gull in flight, but the resemblance was marred by two long, narrow tail lights, set partly in the trunk lid and partly in the fenders, which followed those lines and created the startling illusion, especially at night, of a slant-eyed grin. From the front, the Edsel seemed above all anxious to please, even at the cost of being clownish. From the rear, it looked crafty, or entel, smug, one-up, maybe a little cynical and contemptuous, too.
就好像在前格栅和后挡泥板之间，有一种神秘莫测的个性转变正在发生。在其他方面，Edsel的外观设计并不算特别出格。它的侧面装饰比平均水平略少一些镀铬，并以一个刻凹的子弹形槽为特色，从后挡泥板向前延伸，大约延续了车身一半的长度。在这个槽的中间位置，用镀铬字母显示“Edsel”这个名字，而在后窗下方还有一个类似格栅的小装饰，上面同样拼出了“Edsel”的字样。毕竟，Haddon Stylus Brown曾表示，他的目标是创造一款容易识别的车辆。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
It was as if, somewhere between grill and rear fenders, a sinister personality changed it taking place. In other respects, the exterior styling of the Edsel was not far out of the ordinary. Its sides were festooned with a bit less than the average amount of chrome, and distinguished by a gouged-out, bullet-shaped groove, extending forward from the rear fender for about half the length of the car. Midway along this groove the word Edsel was displayed in chrome letters, and just below the rear window was a small grill-like decoration, on which was spelled out of all things, Edsel. After all, Haddon Stylus Brown declared his intention to create a vehicle that it would be readily recognizable.
在汽车内部，Edsel竭尽全力实现总经理Crafty的预言，即这辆车将成为按键时代的典范。在中档车领域，所谓的按键时代使得Crafty的预言有些鲁莽，但Edsel却以一种出人意料的方式实现了这一预言，集合了一些前所未见的设备。在Edsel的仪表盘上或附近，有一个按键可以打开后备箱盖，一个杠杆可以打开引擎盖，一个杠杆可以释放手刹，还有一个速度表，当驾驶员超过预定的最高速度时会发出红光。此外，还有一个用于加热和制冷的单一拨盘控制器、一台仿赛车风格的转速表、用于操作或调节灯光的按钮、控制收音机天线高度、加热风扇、挡风玻璃以及点烟器的按钮，以及一排八个红色警示灯，提示引擎过热、未达到理想温度、发电机故障、手刹未松开、车门未关好、油压过低、油量不足，以及油箱油量不足。对于最后一项，怀疑的驾驶员可以查看安装在附近的油量表来确认。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In its interior, the Edsel strove mightily to live up to the prediction of general manager crafty that the car would be the epitome of the push-button era. The push-button era in medium-priced cars, being what it was, craftys had been a rash prophecy indeed, but the Edsel rose to it with a devilish assemblage of gadgets such as Edseldom, if ever been seen before. On or near the Edsel's dashboard were a push-button that popped the trunk lid open, a lever that popped the hood open, a lever that released the parking brake, a speedometer that glowed red when the driver exceeded his chosen maximum speed, a single dial control for both heating and cooling, a tachometer in the best racing car style, buttons to operate or regulate the lights, the height of the radio antenna, the heater blower, the windshield, and the cigarette lighter, and a row of eight red lights to wink warnings that the engine was too hot, that it wasn't hot enough, that the generator was on the blink, that the parking brake was on, that a door was open, that the oil pressure was low, that the oil level was low, and that the gasoline level was low, the last of which the skeptical driver could confirm by consulting the gas gauge mounted a few inches away.
总结这段话：这段文字主要描述了Edsel汽车的几个特点。自动变速控制盒位于方向盘中央，带有五个轻触按钮，甚至可以用牙签按下。Edsel分为四个系列，较大的两个系列是Corsair和Citation，车长219英寸，比老款车型长2英寸，宽80英寸，高57英寸。较小的系列是Ranger和Pacer，比Corsair和Citation短6英寸，窄1英寸，低1英寸。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Epidomizing this epitome, the automatic transmission control box, a restingly situated on top of the steering post in the center of the wheel sprouted a galaxy of five push-button so light to the touch that as Edselmen could hardly be restrained from demonstrating they could be depressed with a toothpick. Of the four lines of Edsels, both of the two larger and more expensive ones, the Corsair and the Citation were 219 inches long, or two inches longer than the biggest of the old's mobiles. Both were 80 inches wide, or about as wide as passenger cars ever get, and the height of both was only 57 inches, as low as any other medium-priced car. The Ranger and the Pacer, the smaller Edsels, were six inches shorter, an inch narrower and an inch lower than the Corsair and the Citation.
科赛尔（Corsair）和雪铁龙（Citation）车型配备了345马力的发动机，这使它们在上市时比任何其他美国汽车更强大。而游侠（Ranger）和太空人（Pacer）的动力为303马力，在同级车中也接近顶级。只需用牙签触碰启动按钮，待命中的科赛尔或雪铁龙轿车——无论是哪种车型，重达两吨多——如果驾驶得当，可以迅速加速。在10.3秒内，车速可达每分钟一英里，而在17.5秒内，车子能行驶四分之一英里。如果牙签碰到启动按钮时有什么东西或人挡在路上，那么后果可想而知。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The Corsair and the Citation were equipped with 345 horsepower engines, making them more powerful than any other American car at the time of their debut, and the Ranger and the Pacer were good for 303 horsepower, near the top in their class. At the touch of a toothpick to the drive button, an idling Corsair or Citation sedan, more than two tons of car, in either case, could, if properly skippered, take off with such a abruptness that in 10 and 3 tenths seconds, it would be doing a mile a minute, and in 17 and a half seconds, it would be a quarter of a mile down the road. If anything, or anybody, happened to be in the way when the toothpick touched the push button, so much the worse.
当埃德塞尔汽车揭开面纱时，它收到了戏剧界所称的“褒贬不一”的评价。日报的汽车编辑们大多只是简单描述了这款车，只在某些地方加入了评判的词句，其中有些表述含糊不清。《纽约时报》的Joseph C. Ingraham指出，风格的差异简直令人惊讶，有些评论甚至明显持肯定态度。底特律自由新闻的Fred Olmsted称其为“一个引人注目的新秀，力度十足。”杂志的评论一般更为详尽，有时则更加严厉。专注于普通汽车的最大月刊《Motor Trend》在其1957年10月刊中用了八页对埃德塞尔进行了分析和评论，该杂志的底特律编辑Joe H. Wery对这款车的外观、内部舒适性和配件表示喜欢，尽管他并不总是明确说明原因。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
When the wraps were taken off the Edsel, it received what is known in the theatrical business as a mixed press. The automotive editors of the daily newspapers stuck mostly to straight descriptions of the car, with only here and there a phrase or two of appraisal, some of it ambiguous. The difference in style is spectacular, noted Joseph C. Ingraham in The New York Times, and some of it openly favorable. A handsome and hard-punching newcomer, said Fred Olmsted, in the Detroit Free Press. Magazine criticism was generally more exhaustive and occasionally more severe. Motor trend, the largest monthly devoted to ordinary automobiles, as distinct from hot rods, devoted eight pages of its October 1957 issue to an analysis and critique of the Edsel by Joe H. Wery, its Detroit editor. Wery liked the car's appearance, its interior comfort and its gadgets, although he did not always make it clear just why.
在表达对方向盘上的变速按钮的敬意时，他写道：“你不需要把眼睛离开路面哪怕一瞬间。” 他承认对于更独特的方法还有无数的机会，但他用一句充满赞美之词的句子总结了他的看法：“Edsel性能不错，驾驶舒适，操控良好。” 《力学画报》的汤姆·麦凯尔对这辆车——他亲切地称之为“螺栓包”——表示普遍赞赏，但他也有一些保留意见，这些意见为汽车评论界的“上座席”增添了一分有趣的视角。他报告说，在没有肋骨的混凝土路面上，每次他快速踩下油门，车轮就像疯狂的搅拌机一样打滑。在高速行驶，尤其是在崎岖的弯道中，他发现悬挂有些“过于骑马式”。他忍不住想，如果这辆车的路面抓地力更好，究竟能表现成什么样。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In paying his respects to the transmission buttons on the steering post, he wrote, You need not take your eyes off the road for an instant. He conceded that there were untold opportunities for more unique approaches, but he summed up his opinion in a sentence that fairly peppered the Edsel with honorific adverbs. The Edsel performs fine, rides well and handles good. Tom McAill of Mechanics Illustrated generally admired the bolt bag as he affectionately called the Edsel, but he had some reservations, which he had to do with his own. He had to do with his own reservations, which incidentally throw some interesting light on an automobile critic's equivalent of an aisle seat. Unribbed concrete, he reported, every time I shot the throttle to the floor quickly, the wheels spun like a gone-wild wearing blender. At high speeds, especially through rough corners, I found the suspension a little too horsebacky. I couldn't help but wonder what this salami would really do if it had enough road adhesion.
在1958年1月的《消费者联盟月刊》中，Edsel首次面市的头几个月就受到了一次迄今为止最彻底、可能也是最具破坏性的差评。《消费者报告》的订阅者数量达80万，可能包含了比翻阅《摩托趋势》或《机械插图》的人群中更多潜在的Edsel买家。在对该车进行了一系列路试后，《消费者报告》宣布：Edsel在基本优势上没有超过其他品牌。在构造上，它几乎是一辆完全传统的汽车。这款Corsair车型在颠簸路面上车身晃动剧烈，导致各种噪音和异响，远远超出了可接受的范围。此外，Corsair 的操控特性——迟缓的转向、转弯时的侧倾以及与路面的分离感，用最委婉的话来说，也毫无亮点。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
By far the most downright, and very likely the most damaging, panning that the Edsel got during its first months appeared in the January 1958 issue of the Consumer's Union Monthly. Consumer reports, whose 800,000 subscribers probably included more potential Edsel buyers than have ever turned the pages of motor trend or mechanics illustrated. After having put a course air through a series of road tests, Consumer reports declared, the Edsel has no important basic advantages over other brands. The car is almost entirely conventional in construction. The amount of shake present in this Corsair body on rough roads, which wasn't long in making itself heard as squeaks and rattles, went well beyond any acceptable limit. The Corsair's handling qualities, sluggish, over-slow steering, sway and lean on turns, and a general detached from the road feel are, to put it mildly, without distinction.
简单来说，结合汽车像果冻一样晃动的倾向，Edsel的操控性能代表着倒退而非进步。踩下油门时，在交通中、超车时，或者只是为了体验那种愉悦的动力感受，都会让那些大气缸消耗大量燃油。在《消费者报告》的观点中，方向盘中央的按钮位置并不好。要查看Edsel按钮，司机的视线会完全离开道路。而《消费者报告》则认为这款满载奢华装备的Edsel更适合那些把小玩意儿误以为是真正奢华的人。三个月后，在对1958年所有车型的综述中，《消费者报告》再次提到了Edsel，称其动力过剩、充满小器件、增加了昂贵的配件，比任何一款车都更不实用。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
As a matter of simple fact, combined with the car's tendency to shake like jelly, Edsel handling represents retroaggression rather than progress. Stepping on the gas and traffic, or in passing cars, or just a feel the pleasurable surge of power, will cause those big cylinders really to lap up fuel. The center of the steering wheel is not, in CU's opinion, a good push button location. To look at the Edsel buttons, pulls the driver's eyes clear down off the road. Pache, Mr. Wary. The luxury-loaded Edsel, as one magazine cover described it, will certainly please anyone who confuses gadgetry with true luxury. Three months later, in a roundup of all the 1958 model cars, Consumer reports went at the Edsel again, calling it, more uselessly overpowered, more gadget-pedecked, more hung with expensive accessories than any car in the car.
将其翻译成中文，尽量易读：
在同价位的汽车中，Corsair和Citation在竞争评级中位于底部。而Edsel在消费者报告中被认为是极端糟糕的代表。杂志指出，这款车似乎体现了底特律制造商在吸引潜在购车者时过于奢华。尽管如此，从某种角度看，Edsel也不算那么糟糕。它反映了那个时代的精神，至少是它设计时的1955年初的精神。它笨重、有力、老土、天真却充满善意，像是一个意味着安抚的女人。除了那些专门负责广告宣传的Footcone和Belding公司的员工外，很少有人能恰当地评价它在最佳状态下如何让焦虑的车主感到安宁和愉快。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Then any car in its price class, and giving the Corsair and the citation the bottom position in its competitive ratings. Like crappy, Consumer reports considered the Edsel in epitome. Unlike crappy, the magazine concluded that the car seemed to epitomize the many excesses with which Detroit manufacturers were repulsing more and more potential car buyers. And yet, in a way, the Edsel wasn't so bad. It embodied much of the spirit of its time, or at least of the time when it was designed, early in 1955. It was clumsy, powerful, dowdy, gosh, well-meaning, a decooning woman. Few people, apart from employees of Footcone and Belding, who were paid to do so, have adequately hemmed its ability, at its best, to coax and jolly the harried owner into a sense of well-being.
此外，包括雪佛兰、别克和福特（Edsel 的同门兄弟）在内的几家竞争品牌的设计师，后来通过模仿汽车最受诟病线条中的至少一个特征——后尾翼的设计，来向这款棕色造型致敬。虽然 Edsel 显然命运多舛，但如果仅仅归因于其设计缺陷或者过度的动机研究，都是过于简单化的说法。事实上，在 Edsel 短暂而不幸的生命周期内，还有许多其他因素对其商业失败产生了影响。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Furthermore, the designers of several rival-makes, including Chevrolet, Buick and Ford, Edsel's own stablemate, later flattered brown styling by imitating at least one feature of the car's much-reviled lines. The rear-end wing theme. The Edsel was obviously jinxed, but to say that it was jinxed by its design alone would be an oversimplification, as it would be to say that it was jinxed by an excess of motivational research. The fact is that in a short, unhappy life of the Edsel, a number of other factors contributed to its commercial downfall.
其中一个几乎让人难以置信的情况是，很多第一批下线的埃德塞尔汽车——这些最明显被推向公众视野的车型——存在严重的缺陷。福特公司通过前期的宣传和广告活动，为埃德塞尔汽车营造了巨大的公众兴趣，大家都在期待它的到来，迎接这种汽车的热情远远超过以往的任何一款。然而，似乎这种热切的期待换来的却是一辆表现不佳的汽车。在埃德塞尔上市几周内，它的各种问题就成为全国话题。埃德塞尔汽车交付时，竟然出现了漏油、引擎盖卡住、后备箱打不开以及按钮无论怎么用力都无法按下等一系列问题。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
One of these was the scarcely believable circumstance that many of the very first Edsels, those obviously destined for the most glaring public limelight, were dramatically imperfect. By its preliminary program of promotion and advertising, the Ford company had built up an overwhelming head of public interest in the Edsel, causing its arrival to be anticipated, and the car itself to be gawked at with more eagerness, and more eagerness than had ever greeted any automobile before it. After all that, it seemed, the car didn't quite work. Within a few weeks after the Edsel was introduced, its pratfalls were the talk of the land. Edsels were delivered with oil leaks, sticking hoods, trunks that wouldn't open, and push buttons that far from yielding to a toothpick couldn't be budged with a hammer.
一位明显心烦意乱的男士踉跄地走进了哈德逊河附近的一家酒吧，急切地要求立刻来两杯烈酒，并激动地说他新买的Edsel汽车的仪表盘刚刚起火了。《汽车新闻》报道说，早期的Edsel车型普遍存在油漆质量差、薄板金属劣质以及配件有问题等问题。报道还引用了一位经销商对他收到的第一批Edsel敞篷车之一的抱怨：顶棚安装得很差，车门歪斜，挡风板角度错误，前悬挂还下沉。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
An obviously distraught man staggered into a bar up the Hudson River, demanding a double shot without delay, and exclaiming that the dashboard of his new Edsel had just burst into flame. Automotive News reported that in general the earliest Edsels suffered from poor paint, inferior sheet metal, and faulty accessories, and quoted the lament of a dealer about one of the first Edsel convertibles he received. The top was badly set, doors cockeyed, the header bar trimmed at the wrong angle, and the front springs sagged.
福特公司特别不走运的是，他们把车卖给了消费者联盟。消费者联盟为了避免收到经过特殊处理的样品，选择在公开市场购买测试车。而在他们购买的 Edsel 汽车中，发现车轴比不对，冷却系统的膨胀塞爆了，动力转向泵泄漏，后轴齿轮发出噪音，而关闭暖气时却有热风喷出。Edsel 部门的一位前高管估计，只有大约一半的首批 Edsel 汽车表现正常。一个普通人不禁要想，福特公司这样一个强大而辉煌的企业，怎么会犯下这样低级的错误，制造出如此令人失望的结局呢？
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The Ford company had the particular bad luck to sell to consumers' union, which buys its test cars in the open market as precaution against being favored with specially doctored samples in Edsel in which the axle ratio was wrong. An expansion plug in the cooling system blew out. The power steering pump leaked. Their rear axle gears were noisy, and the heater emitted blasts of hot air when it was turned off. A former executive of the Edsel Division has estimated that only about half of the first Edsels really performed properly. A layman cannot help wondering how the Ford company, in all its power and glory, could have been guilty of such a max-senet routine of build up an anti-climax.
那位勤奋但糟糕的员工解释说，当公司推出新款车型时，即使是旧款经过测试的车型，首批汽车通常会存在一些问题。一个更惊人的理论，虽然只是理论，是在装配Edsel的四家工厂中可能发生了人为破坏，而这四家工厂中除了一家以外，之前和目前都在生产福特或水星汽车。在推销Edsel时，福特公司借鉴了通用汽车的经验，后者多年来成功地允许甚至鼓励其老式汽车、别克、庞蒂亚克以及雪佛兰高档车型的制造商和销售商激烈竞争，毫不留情地争夺客户。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The one hardworking crappy explains, gamely, that when a company brings out a new model of any make, even an old and tested one, the first cars often have bugs in them. A more startling theory, though only a theory, is that there may have been sabotage in some of the four plants that assembled the Edsel, all but one of which had previously been, and currently also were, assembling fords or mercuries. In marketing the Edsel, the Ford company took a leaf out of the book of General Motors, which for years had successfully been permitting and even encouraging the makers and sellers of its oldsombials, Buicks, Pontiacs, and the higher priced models of its Chevrolet to fight for customers with no quarter given.
面对类似的内部竞争，一些福特公司旗下福特和林肯-水星部门的成员，从一开始就公开希望Edsel的失败。精明的克拉夫特意识到可能会发生什么，并要求为Edsel设立自己的装配工厂，但他的上级拒绝了他的请求。然而，道尔以汽车行业老手的身份，以及作为克拉夫特的副手的身份发言，否定了Edsel在工厂遭遇阴谋陷害的说法。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Faced with the same sort of intramural competition, some members of the Ford and Lincoln Mercury Divisions of the Ford company openly hoped from the start for the Edsels downfall. Crafty, realizing what might happen, had asked that the Edsel be assembled in plants of its own, but his superiors turned him down. However, Doyle, speaking with the authority of a veteran of the automobile business, as well as with that of Crafty's second in command, Pupu's the notion that the Edsel was a victim of dirty work at the plants.
当然，福特和林肯·水星两个部门并不希望在市场上看到另一款福特公司的汽车，他说，但据我所知，他们在高层和工厂层面的操作还算符合竞争规范。另一方面，在分销和经销商层面，你会看到一些激烈的内部竞争，包括流言和宣传攻势。如果我当时在其他部门，我可能也会这么做。没有哪个骄傲而失败的老派将军能说出更高尚的话。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Of course, the Ford and Lincoln Mercury Divisions didn't want to see another Ford company car in the field, he says, but as far as I know, anything they did at the executive and plant level was in competitive good taste. On the other hand, at the distribution and dealer level, you got some rough infighting in terms of whispering and propaganda. If I had been in one of the other divisions, I'd have done the same thing. No proud defeated general of the old school ever spoke more nobly.
这段话大致是在向那些曾经为“伊赛尔”汽车大力宣传的人员致敬。尽管这些车在实际上往往会产生噪音、故障甚至变成一堆闪亮的废金属，但最初它们下线时情况并不算糟糕。道尔说，在“伊赛尔日”那天，有超过六千五百辆伊赛尔要么被客户预定，要么实际交付。这算是一个不错的成绩。但也有一些抵触的迹象。例如，一位新英格兰的经销商在一个展厅里卖伊赛尔，在另一个展厅卖别克，他报告说，有两个顾客走进伊赛尔展厅，看了一眼伊赛尔后，立刻去下了一张别克的订单。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
It is a tribute of sorts to the men who gave the Edsel its big build up that although cars tending to rattle, balk and fall apart into shape, and fall apart, into shiny heaps of junk, kept coming off the assembly lines, things didn't go badly at first. Doyle says that on Edsel Day, more than sixty-five hundred Edsels were either ordered by or actually delivered to customers. That was a good showing. But there were isolated signs of resistance. For instance, a New England dealer selling Edsels in one showroom and Buicks in another reported that two prospects walked into the Edsel showroom, took a look at the Edsel and placed orders for Buicks on the spot.
在接下来的几天里，销量急剧下滑，但这种情况是预料之中的，就像过了新鲜期一样。汽车交付给经销商的数量是行业中的重要指标之一，通常以十天为一个周期来衡量。在9月的前十天里，埃德塞尔汽车只销售了六天，交付数量达到4095辆。这个数字低于多伊尔报告的首日数据，因为许多最初的购买是颜色和型号的组合不在库存中，需要工厂按订单生产。第二个十天的交付总数略有下降，第三个十天的交付总数降到了不足3600辆。到10月的前十天，其中九天是工作日，只交付了2751辆，每天平均交付数量略多于300辆。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In the next few days, sales dropped sharply, but that was to be expected once the bloom was off. Automobile deliveries to dealers, one of the important indicators in the trade, are customarily measured in ten-day periods, and during the first ten days of September, on only six of which the Edsel was on sale, it racked up four thousand ninety-five. This was lower than Doyle's first-day figure because many of the initial purchases were of models and color combinations not in stock, which had to be factory assembled to water. The delivery total for the second ten-day period was off slightly, and that for the third was down to just under thirty-six hundred. For the first ten days of October, nine of which were business days, there were only two thousand seven hundred fifty-one deliveries, an average of just over three hundred cars a day.
为了使艾德赛尔（Edsel）业务盈利，福特公司每年需要销售二十万辆车，也就是说，他们每天的工作日平均要卖出六百到七百辆，远远超过每天三百辆。1957年10月13日星期日晚上，福特公司为艾德赛尔举办了一场大型电视特别节目，取代了通常播出的艾德·沙利文秀。尽管该节目耗资四十万美元，并由著名的明星如平·克劳斯贝（Bing Crosby）和弗兰克·西纳特拉（Frank Sinatra）出演，但仍未能带来销量的显著增长。此时，明显可以看出情况并不乐观。对于艾德赛尔部门的前高管们来说，他们对确切的“灭亡征兆”出现的时刻意见不一。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In order to sell the two hundred thousand cars per year that would make the Edsel operation profitable, the Ford company would have to move an average of between six and seven hundred each business day, a good many more than three hundred a day. On the night of Sunday, October 13th, Ford put on a mammoth television spectacular for Edsel, pre-empting the time ordinarily allotted to the Ed Sullivan Show, but though the program cost four hundred thousand dollars and starred Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, it failed to cause any sharp spurt in sales. Now it was obvious that things were not going at all well. Among the former executives of the Edsel Division, opinions differ as to the exact moment when the portents of doom became unmistakable.
Crafty觉得，这一时刻是在十月下旬才发生的。而Wallace作为Edsel的抽烟斗的半个智囊团成员，则更进一步，将灾难的开始具体归结为10月4日这一天。这一天，第一颗苏联的人造卫星进入轨道，打破了美国技术优越的神话，并引发了公众对底特律奢华产品的反感。公关总监Warnock表示，他拥有敏锐的直觉，能够在九月中旬就察觉到公众情绪的变化。然而，Doyle却表示，他一直保持乐观态度直到十一月中旬，那时他几乎是这个部门唯一一个还没有得出"拯救Edsel需要一个奇迹"结论的人。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Crafty feels that the moment did not arrive until sometime late in October. Wallace, in his capacity as Edsel's pipe-smoking semi-brain truster, goes a step further by pinning the start of the disaster to a specific date, October 4th, the day the first Soviet Sputnik went into orbit, shattering the myth of American technical preeminence and precipitating a public revulsion against Detroit's fancier baubles. Public Relations Director Warnock maintains that his barometric sensitivity to the public temper enabled him to call the turn as early as mid-September. Contrary wise, Doyle says he maintained his optimism until mid-November, at which time he was about the only man in the division who had not concluded it would take a miracle to save the Edsel.
在11月，华莱士说，从社会学的角度来看，当时产生了恐慌，并导致了一系列的群体行为。这个群体行为表现为大家一致倾向于将整场失败归咎于汽车的设计。曾经对散热器格栅和车尾部不吝赞美的人，现在纷纷说任何傻子都能看出这些设计有多可笑。显而易见的替罪羊是布朗，他的声望在他设计的作品盛大登场时曾达到顶峰。然而在1955年8月，这个可怜的人无论好坏，都没有再做任何事情，却成为了公司的代罪羔羊。从11月开始，没有人和罗伊说话，华莱士表示。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In November, says Wallace, sociologically, there was panic, and it's concomitant mob action. The mob action took the form of a concerted tendency to blame the design of the car for the whole debacle. Edselman, who had previously had nothing but lavish praise for the radiator grill and rear end, now went around muttering that any fool could see they were ludicrous. The obvious sacrificial victim was Brown, whose stock had gone through the roof at the time of the regally-aculated debut of his design. In August 1955, now without having done anything further, for either better or worse, the poor fellow became the company scapegoat. Beginning in November, nobody talked to Roy, Wallace says.
11月27日，似乎情况已经够糟糕了，曼哈顿唯一的Edsel经销商Charles Chrysler宣布，由于销售不佳，他决定放弃他的特许经营权。有人传言称，他还表示福特汽车公司彻底失败了。随后，他签约了美国汽车公司，开始销售Rambler车款，这款车作为当时市场上唯一的国产小型车，销售曲线持续飙升。Doyle严肃地评论说，Edsel部门对Chrysler的叛逃并不担心。到12月，Edsel的恐慌程度有所缓解，他们的负责人可以重新振作起来，开始寻找新的方法来推动销售增长。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
On November 27, as if things weren't bad enough, Charles Chrysler, who was the only Edsel dealer in Manhattan, provided its prize showcase, announced that he was turning in his franchise because of poor sales, and it was rumored that he added the Ford Motor Company has laid an egg. He thereupon signed up with American Motors to sell its rambler, which as the only domestic small car then on the market was already the possessor of a zooming sales curve. Doyle grimly commented that the Edsel division was not concerned about Chrysler's defection. By December, the panic at Edsel had abated to the point where its sponsors could pull themselves together and begin casting about for ways to get sales moving again.
亨利·福特二世通过闭路电视向埃德赛尔汽车的经销商发表讲话，敦促他们保持冷静，并承诺公司将全力支持他们。他明确表示，埃德赛尔将继续存在。公司向中档车车主寄出了150万封信，邀请他们去当地经销商处试驾埃德赛尔车。无论是否购买真车，前来试驾的人都会得到一个八英寸的塑料车模。埃德赛尔部门负责支付这些车模的费用，这显然是绝望的表现。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Henry Ford II, manifesting himself to Edsel dealers on closed-circuit television, urged them to remain calm, promised that the company would back them to the limit and said flatly, the Edsel is here to stay. A million and a half letters went out over crappy signature to owners of medium priced cars, asking them to drop around at their local dealers and test ride the Edsel. Everyone doing so, crappy promised, would be given an eight-inch plastic scale model of the car, whether he bought a full-size one or not. The Edsel division picked up the check for the scale models, a symptom of desperation indeed.
在正常情况下，任何汽车制造商都不会采取行动来抢占经销商的利益。直到那时，经销商还像往常一样承担所有费用。该部门还开始向其经销商提供所谓的销售奖金，这意味着经销商可以在不减少利润的情况下，从每辆车的价格中减去100到300美元。克拉比告诉记者，销售情况大致符合他的预期，虽然没有达到他的期望。为了不显得过于惊讶，他似乎在暗示他已经预料到这款车会失败。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
For under normal circumstances, no automobile manufacturer would make even a move to out-fumble its dealers for such a tab. Up to that time, the dealers had paid for everything as is customary. The division also began offering its dealers what it called sales bonuses, which meant that the dealers could knock anything from $100 to $300 off the price of each car without reducing their profit margin. Crappy told the reporter that sales up to then were about what he had expected them to be, although not what he had hoped they would be. In his eel not to seem unpleasantly surprised, he appeared to be saying that he had expected the Edsel to fail.
Edsel的广告活动一开始是以庄重为主，但后来开始显得有些强硬。一则杂志广告中声称："每个见过Edsel的人都和我们一样知道，Edsel是一项成功。" 后来的广告中，这句话像咒语一样重复了两遍："Edsel是一项成功。" Edsel是一种新理念，一种美国道路上的U概念。Edsel是一项成功。不久，更加注重价格和社会地位的广告主题也开始出现。比如这样的话："当你开着Edsel出现时，他们就知道你出人头地了。" 还有："真正全新的车也是价格最低的。"
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The Edsel's advertising campaign, which had started with the study dignity, began to sound a note of stridency. Everyone who has seen it knows with us that the Edsel is a success, a magazine ad declared, and in a later ad, this phrase was twice repeated, like an incantation. The Edsel is a success. It is a new idea, a U idea, on the American road. The Edsel is a success. Soon the even less-high-toned but more dependable advertising themes of price and social status began to intrude. In such sentences as, they'll know you've arrived when you drive up in an Edsel, and the one that's really new is the lowest price, too.
在麦迪逊大道那些更高雅的广告行业领域中，我们使用押韵的宣传标语通常被视为因商业需要而导致的艺术堕落的表现。回顾Edsel部门在12月采取的紧张且昂贵的措施，他们得到了一点微小的成果。在1958年的第一个十天，他们能够报告说，销量比1957年最后十天增长了18.6%。然而，《华尔街日报》敏锐地指出，其中的玄机在于后一时间段比前一时间段多了一个销售日，所以实际上几乎没有什么增长。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In the more rarefied sectors of Madison Avenue, our resort to rhymed slogans is usually regarded as an indication of artistic depravity, induced by commercial necessity. From the frantic and costly measures the Edsel division took in December, it garnered one tiny crumb. For the first ten-day period of 1958, it was able to report, sales were up 18.6% over those of the last ten days of 1957. The catch, as the Wall Street Journal alertly noted, was that the latter period embraced one more selling day than the earlier one, so for practical purposes there had scarcely been a gain at all.
无论如何，那份一月初来自“毛里求斯”的鼓励最终成为了艾德赛尔部门的最后一次姿态。1958年1月14日，福特汽车公司宣布将艾德赛尔部门与林肯·水星（Lincoln Mercury）部门合并，形成新的“水星-艾德赛尔-林肯”部门，由曾负责林肯·水星的詹姆斯·J·南斯管理。这是自大萧条时期通用汽车将别克、奥兹莫比尔和庞蒂克合并以来，主要汽车公司首次将三个部门合并为一个。对于被裁撤的艾德赛尔部门的人而言，这一行政举措的含义再清楚不过了。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In any case, that early January word of Mauritricious cheer turned out to be the Edsel divisions' last gesture. On January 14, 1958, the Ford Motor Company announced that it was consolidating the Edsel division with the Lincoln Mercury Division to form a Mercury Edsel Lincoln Division, under the management of James J. Nance, who had been running Lincoln Mercury. It was the first time that one of the major automobile companies had lumped three divisions into one since General Motors merger of Buick, Oldsmobile and Pontiac, back in the Depression, and to the people of the expunged Edsel division, the meaning of the administrative move was all too clear.
在如此激烈的竞争环境下，埃德塞尔汽车（Edsel）几乎没有什么发展空间，它变得像个被忽视的孩子。在它存在的最后一年零十个月里，埃德塞尔的确像个被忽视的孩子，基本上不受重视，缺乏广告宣传，仅仅是勉强维持，以避免错误被过多宣传，同时也抱着一丝可能会有所突破的渺茫希望。它少数的广告投入，也只是徒劳地向汽车业界保证一切顺利。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
With that much competition in a division the Edsel wasn't going anywhere, to what else says, it became a stepchild. For the last year and ten months of its existence, the Edsel was very much a stepchild, generally neglected, little advertised, and kept alive only to avoid publicizing a boner any more than necessary, and in the forelorn hope that it might go somewhere after all. What advertising it did get strove quixotically to assure the automobile trade that everything was dandy.
在二月中旬，汽车新闻的一则广告中，南斯表示，自从福特汽车公司成立新的MEL部门以来，我们以极大的兴趣分析了Edsel的销售进展。我们认为，自Edsel推出的五个月内，其销量超过了美国路上其他任何新车型在前五个月的销量，这非常有意义。Edsel的稳步进展对我们所有人来说都是一种成就感和巨大的激励。然而，南斯的比较几乎没有意义。因为之前没有任何新车型以如此宏大的方式推出，他的自信之辞听起来显得空洞。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In mid-February, an ad in automotive news had Nance saying, since the formation of the new MEL division at Ford Motor Company, we have analyzed with keen interest the sales progress of the Edsel. We think it is quite significant that during the five months since the Edsel was introduced, Edsel sales have been greater than the first five-month sales for any other new make of car ever introduced on the American Road. Edsel's steady progress can be a source of satisfaction and a great incentive to all of us. Nance's comparison, however, was almost meaningless. No new make ever having been introduced anything like so grandiosely, and the note of confidence could not help ringing hollow.
很可能Nance从未注意到一篇由语义学家S.I. Hayakawa撰写的文章。这篇文章于1958年春季发表在《ETC：普通语义学评论》这本季刊上，标题为《为什么Edsel失败了》。Hayakawa既是《ETC》的创始人又是编辑，他在序言中解释说，他认为这个话题属于普通语义学的范畴，因为在美国文化中，汽车和词语一样，都是重要的符号。他接着论述了Edsel失败的原因在于福特公司的高管们过于听信动机研究人员的意见。在试图制造出一款满足顾客性幻想和类似需求的汽车时，他们未能提供合理和实用的交通工具，从而忽视了现实原则。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
It is quite possible that Nance's attention was never called to an article by S.I. Hayakawa, the semanticist, that was published in the spring of 1958 in ETC, a review of General Semantics, a quarterly magazine under the title, Why the Edsel Laid an Egg. Hayakawa, who was both the founder and the editor of ETC, explained in an introductory note that he considered the subject within the purview of General Semantics because automobiles, like words, are important symbols in American culture, and went on to argue that the Edsel's flop could be attributed to Ford company executives who had been listening too long to the motivation research people, and who, in their efforts to turn out a car that would satisfy customers' sexual fantasies and the like, had failed to supply reasonable and practical transportation, thereby neglecting the reality principle.
动机研究者没有告诉他们的客户，只有那些真正有精神问题的人才会在他们的补偿性幻想中表现出非理性的行为。早川先生警告底特律说，通过像Edsel Hermaphrodite这样昂贵的商品来出售象征性的满足的问题在于，它面临着更便宜的象征性满足方式的竞争，比如一本50美分的《花花公子》、一本35美分的《惊人科幻小说》，以及免费的电视。尽管《花花公子》形成了竞争关系，或者因为受符号驱使的公众中包含了能够负担得起这两者的人，Edsel还是在持续销售，不过只是勉强为之。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
What the motivation researchers failed to tell their clients is that only the psychotic and the gravely neurotic act out their irrationalities in their compensatory fantasies. Hayakawa admonished Detroit briskly and added, the trouble with selling symbolic gratification via such expensive items as the Edsel Hermaphrodite is the competition offered by much cheaper forms of symbolic gratification, such as Playboy, 50 cents a copy, astounding science fiction, 35 cents a copy, and television, free. Notwithstanding the competition from Playboy, or possibly because the symbol-motivated public included people who could afford both, the Edsel kept rolling, but just barely.
汽车启动了，正如萨尔茨曼所说，几乎像是被牙签轻轻一碰。事实上，尽管当初被视为“继子”，其销量与曾经当“宠儿”时相差无几，说明那些关于象征性满足感或仅是马力的炒作其实没有多大影响。1958年，在各州机动车管理局注册的新埃德塞尔汽车数量为34,481辆，远少于任何竞争品牌的新车，甚至不到埃德塞尔要盈利所需的每年20万辆的五分之一，但仍代表了车主们超过1亿美元的投资。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The car moved, as Salzmann say, though hardly at the touch of a toothpick. In fact, as a stepchild, it sold about as well as it had sold as a favorite son, suggesting that all the hoopla, whether about symbolic gratification or mere horsepower, had little effect one way or the other. The new Edsels that were registered with the motor vehicle bureaus of the various states during 1958 numbered 34,481, considerably fewer than new cars of any competing make, and less than one-fifth of the 200,000 a year necessary if the Edsel was to show a profit, but still representing an investment by motorists of over $100 million.
图片实际上在1958年11月有所改善，因为当时推出了艾哲尔（Edsel）第二年的车型。这些新车型缩短了最多8英寸，重量轻了最多500磅，发动机功率下降了最多158马力，价格范围也比前一代低了500到800美元。虽然倾斜的后尾端仍保留了竖直的格栅设计，但较小的功率和尺寸使得消费者报告表示让步，称福特公司在去年初代艾哲尔车型遭受差评之后，如今已将其打造成一款体面甚至是讨人喜欢的汽车。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The picture actually brightened in November 1958 with the advent of the Edsels' second-year models, shorter by up to eight inches, lighter by up to 500 pounds, and with engines less potent by as much as 158 horsepower, they had a price range running from $500 to $800 less than that of their predecessors. The vertical grille in the slant-eyed rear end were still there, but the modest power and proportions persuaded consumer reports to relent and say, the Ford Motor Company, after giving last year's initial Edsel model a black guy, has made a respectable and even likable automobile of it.
相当多的司机似乎都同意了这一点。在1959年上半年，埃德塞尔汽车的销量比1958年上半年增加了约2000辆。到1959年初夏，这款车的月销量达到了约4000辆。这被视为进步的迹象。销量几乎达到了利润最低标准的四分之一，而不是之前的五分之一。到1959年7月1日，美国道路上共有83,849辆埃德塞尔汽车。其中数量最多的地方是加利福尼亚，有8,344辆，因为这里一直以来各种品牌的汽车数量都是最多的。而数量最少的地方分别是阿拉斯加、佛蒙特和夏威夷，分别只有122辆、119辆和110辆。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Quite a number of motorists seemed to agree. About 2,000 more Edsels were sold in the first half of 1959, then had been sold in the first half of 1958, and by the early summer of 1959, the car was moving at the rate of around 4,000 a month. Here at last was progress. Sales were at almost a quarter of the minimum profitable rate, instead of a mere fifth. On July 1, 1959, there were 83,849 Edsels on the country's roads. The largest number, 8,344, were in California, which is perennially beset with far and away the largest number of cars of practically all makes, and the smallest number were in Alaska, Vermont, and Hawaii, 122, 119, and 110 respectively.
总的来说，Edsel 似乎找到了一个定位，作为一种有趣而古怪的好奇品。尽管福特公司每周仍在往 Edsel 中投入股东的资金，而小型车显然已成为潮流，但他们难以从感情上割舍这个项目。在1959年10月中旬，他们仍然选择冒险推出了第三批年度车型。1960 款 Edsel 在福特首次成功进军小型车市场的 Falcon 上市一个多月后亮相，但几乎没有引起 Edsel 热潮。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
All in all, the Edsels seemed to have found a niche for itself as an amusingly eccentric curiosity. Although the Ford Company, with its stockholders' money still disappearing week after week into the Edsel, and with small cars now clearly the order of the day, could scarcely affect the sentimental approach to the subject, in nonetheless took an outside chance, and in mid-October of 1959 brought out a third series of annual models. The 1960 Edsel appeared a little more than a month after the Falcon, for its first and instantly successful venture into the small car field, and was scarcely in Edsel at all.
垂直格栅和水平后端都消失了，剩下的设计看起来像是福特Fairlane和庞蒂亚克的混合体。它的初始销售情况非常糟糕，到十一月中旬，只有位于肯塔基州路易斯维尔的一家工厂仍在生产Edsel，而且每天仅生产大约二十辆。11月19日，福特基金会计划出售其在福特汽车公司持有的大量股票，并根据法律要求发布了招股说明书。在说明书的附注中，描述公司产品的部分提到，Edsel于1957年9月推出，并于1959年11月停产。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Gone were both the vertical grille and the horizontal rear end, in what remained looked like a cross between a Ford Fairlane and a Pontiac. Its initial sales were abysmal, by the middle of November only one plant in Louisville, Kentucky, was still turning out Edsels, and it was turning out only about twenty a day. On November 19, the Ford Foundation, which was planning to sell a block of its vast holdings of stock in the Ford Motor Company, issued the prospectus that is required by law under such circumstances, and stated therein, in a footnote, to a section describing the company's products that the Edsel had been introduced in September 1957, and discontinued in November 1959.
同一天，福特公司的一位发言人也含糊承认了这件事，并进一步证实和阐述了这一情况。他也模棱两可地表示，如果我们知道人们为什么不买爱得赛尔（Edsel），我们可能早就采取相应措施了。最终的统计数据显示，从一开始到11月19日，共生产了110,810辆爱得赛尔，其中109,466辆已售出。剩下的1,344辆，几乎都是1960年的款式，通过大幅降价很快就处理掉了。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The same day this mumbled admission was confirmed and amplified by a Ford company spokesman, who did some mumbling of his own. If we knew the reason people aren't buying the Edsel, we'd probably have done something about it, he said. The final quantitative box score shows that from the beginning, right up to November 19, 110,810 Edsels were produced, and 109,466 were sold. The remaining 1,344, almost all of them 1960 models were disposed of in short order with the help of drastic price cuts.
总的来说，1960年的埃德塞尔汽车总共只生产了2846辆，使得这种车型有可能成为收藏品。可以确定的是，要等好几代人才会像41型布加迪那样稀有，因为在20年代末，41型布加迪仅生产了不超过11辆，并且只卖给真正的国王。而且，1960年埃德塞尔之所以稀有的原因，在社会和商业上也并不如41型布加迪那样被接受。不过，1960年埃德塞尔车主俱乐部可能会出现。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
All told, only 2,846 of the 1960 Edsels were ever produced, making models of that gear a potential collector's item. To be sure, it will be generations before 1960 Edsels are as scarce as the Type 41 Bugatti, of which no more than 11 specimens were made back in the late 20s to be sold only to bona fide kings, and the 1960 Edsels reasons for being a rarity are not exactly as acceptable socially or commercially as the Type 41 Bugatti's. Still, a 1960 Edsel Owners Club may yet appear.
关于艾德塞尔惨败最终的财政损失，可能永远无法确切得知，因为福特汽车公司的公开报告中没有详细列出各个部门的盈亏情况。然而，金融专家估计，公司在艾德塞尔推出后损失了大约两亿美元。再加上正式宣布的上市前花费的2.5亿美元，减去约1亿美元可用于其他项目的设备投资，净损失为3.5亿美元。如果这些估算正确，那么公司每生产一辆艾德塞尔，亏损的金额就相当于3,200美元，而这正好是另一辆车的价格。换句话说，公司如果在1955年决定不生产艾德塞尔，而是直接赠送110,810辆价格相当的Mercury汽车，反而会节省更多的钱。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The final fiscal box score on the Edsel fiasco will probably never be known, because the Ford Motor Company's public reports do not include breakdowns of gains and losses within the individual divisions. Financial buffs estimate, however, that the company lost something like $200 million on the Edsel after it appeared. Add to this the officially announced expenditure of $250 million before it appeared. Subtract about $100 million invested in plant and equipment that were salvageable for other uses, and the net loss is $350 million. If these estimates are right, every Edsel the company manufactured cost it in lost money about $3,200, or about the price of another one. In other harsher words, the company would have saved itself money if, back in 1955, it had decided not to produce the Edsel at all, but simply to give away 110,810 specimens of its comparably priced car, the Mercury.
埃德塞尔汽车的终结在媒体上引发了一场关于事后反思的狂潮。《时代》宣称：埃德塞尔是一个经典的例子，代表着在错误的时间将错误的汽车推向错误的市场。这也是市场调研局限性的一个典型例子，该调研采用了深入访谈和动机分析这一类的方法。《商业周刊》在埃德塞尔亮相前不久，曾以明显的严肃态度和显而易见的赞同来描述它，如今则将其称为一场噩梦，并附加了一些针对华莱士调研的尖锐批评，这些调研迅速达到了与布朗设计同等的替罪羊地位。对动机调研进行批评，当时乃至现在，都被视为绝佳的竞技项目，然而实际上，动机调研决定甚至影响埃德塞尔设计的说法完全是不真实的，因为这项调研仅用于提供广告和宣传的主题，而是在布朗完成设计后才进行的。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The end of the Edsel set off an orgy of hindsight in the press. Time declared. The Edsel was a classic case of the wrong car for the wrong market at the wrong time. It was also a prime example of the limitations of market research with its depth interviews and motivational mumbo jumbo. Business Week, which shortly before the Edsel made its bow, had described it with patent solemnity and apparent approval, now pronounced it a nightmare, and appended a few pointedly critical remarks about Wallace's research, which was rapidly achieving escape-goat status equal to that of Brown's design. Jumping up and down on motivational research was, and is, splendid sport, but of course the implication that it dictated or even influenced the Edsel's design is entirely false, since the research, being intended only to provide a theme for advertising and promotion, was not undertaken until after Brown had completed his design.
《华尔街日报》在关于埃德塞尔的讣告中提出了一个可能更有道理且更为原创的观点。文章指出，大型公司常被指控操控市场、控制价格，并以其他方式对消费者发号施令。然而，就在昨天，福特汽车公司宣布，由于缺乏买家，其为期两年的中档价格埃德塞尔实验宣告结束。这一切都与汽车制造商操控市场或强迫消费者接受其产品相去甚远，其原因很简单，就是无从解释消费者的品味。在这一过程中，真正的主宰者实际上是消费者，消费者才是真正无可匹敌的"独裁者"。文章的语气友好且富有同情心。福特公司在这篇文章中仿佛扮演了经典美国家庭情景喜剧中的"爸爸"的角色，尽管有些笨拙，但却让人心生好感。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The Wall Street Journal's obituary of the Edsel made a point that was probably sounder and certainly more original. Large corporations are often accused of rigging markets, administering prices, and otherwise dictating to the consumer, it observed. And yesterday Ford Motor Company announced its two-year experiment with the medium-priced Edsel has come to an end, for want of buyers. All this is quite a ways from automakers being able to rig markets or force consumers to take what they want them to take, and the reason simply is that there is no accounting for tastes. When it comes to dictating, the consumer is the dictator without peer. The tone of the piece was friendly and sympathetic. The Ford Company, it seemed, had endeared itself to the journal by playing the great American Situation Comedy role of Daddy, the bungler.
对于前 Edsel 高管们就公司惨败所给出的事后解释，值得注意的是他们反思的语气，这种语气就像一个被击倒的拳击手，睁开眼睛发现已有人把话筒递到脸前一样。实际上，Kraphe 就像许多被击倒的拳手一样，将失败归咎于自己的时机不佳。他认为，如果他能够打破底特律固定的机械和经济规律，成功在 1955 年或 1956 年推出 Edsel 的话，那时股市和中档车市场正繁荣，汽车本可以大获成功，并且至今仍会保持良好表现。也就是说，如果他当时看到了危机来临，就会及时规避。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
As for the post-mortem explanations of the debacle that have been offered by former Edsel executives, they are notable for the reflective tone, something like that of a knocked-out prizefighter, opening his eyes to find an announcer's microphone pushed into his face. In fact, Kraphe, like many a flattened pugilist, blames his own bad timing. He contends that if he had been able to thwart the apparently immutable mechanics and economics of Detroit and had somehow been able to bring out the Edsel in 1955, or even 1956, when the stock market and the medium-priced car market were riding high, the car would have done well, and would still be doing well. That is to say, if he had seen the punch coming, he would have ducked.
Kraphe拒绝赞同一大群外行的看法，这些人倾向于将公司的倒闭归因于汽车被命名为Edsel，而不是给它一个更轻快、更容易传唱的名字，或一个可以简化成Ed或Eddy以外的昵称的名字，并且不带有王朝色彩。在他看来，Kraphe仍然坚称Edsel这个名字对其成败没有影响。布朗同意Kraphe的看法，即糟糕的时机是主要错误。他后来坦率地表示，汽车的设计风格与其失败的关系微乎其微，如果有的话。他的坦率态度很可能不会受到质疑。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Kraphe refuses to go along with a sizable group of laymen who tend to attribute the collapse to the company's decision to call the car the Edsel, instead of giving it a brisker, more singable name, reducible to a nickname other than Ed or Eddy, and not freighted with dynastic connotations. As far as he can see, Kraphe still says the Edsel's name did not affect its fortunes one way or the other. Brown agrees with Kraphe that bad timing was the chief mistake. I frankly feel that the styling of the automobile had very little, if anything to do with its failure, he said later, and his frankness may pretty safely be left unchallenged.
埃德塞尔项目，就像其他面向未来市场的项目一样，都是基于当时决策所能获得的最佳信息来制定的。但往往好心办坏事。多伊尔，作为一个天生的销售人员，对客户怀有强烈的个人情感，他对美国公众的态度如同被朋友背叛了一样。他说这是买家的抵制，人们对埃德塞尔没什么兴趣。为什么会这样对他来说是个谜。几年来，他们一直在买的那些东西让行业觉得应该制造这种车。可是我们把车给他们了，他们却不买。他们不该这么做。你不能某天早上醒来就对别人说，你已经走错方向了。无论如何，他们为什么这么做？多年来，业界一直在努力，取消了换挡，提高了车内的舒适度，还提供了在紧急情况下的强劲性能，而现在公众却喜欢这些小甲壳虫车。我真搞不懂。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The Edsel program, like any other project planned for future markets, was based on the best information available at the time in which decisions were made. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Doyle, with the born salesman's intensely personal feeling about his customers, talks like a man betrayed by a friend, the American public. It was a buyer's strike, he says. People weren't in the mood for the Edsel. Why not is a mystery to me. What they'd been buying for several years encouraged the industry to build exactly this kind of car. We gave it to them, and they wouldn't take it. Well, they shouldn't have acted like that. You can't just wake up somebody one day and say, that's enough. You've been running in the wrong direction. Anyway, why did they do it? Golly, how the industry worked and worked over the years, getting rid of gear shifting, providing interior comfort, providing plus performance for use in emergencies, and now the public wants these little beetles. I don't get it.
华莱士的“斯普特尼克理论”对多伊尔提出的“为何人们没有动力”的问题给出了一个答案，而且这一理论的宇宙视野足够宽广，恰到好处。可以称作是一个“半脑信任”的理论。该理论还使得华莱士能够继续为他们在当时进行的动机研究的有效性辩护。华莱士表示，我们并没有真正理解首次人造卫星发射对我们所有人的心理影响有多深。他提到，有人领先我们达成了重要的技术成就，随后立即有人开始撰文批评底特律生产的产品糟糕，尤其是那些装饰繁杂、象征地位的中档车。1958年，当时除了兰布勒和雪佛兰外，还没有其他的小型车上市，但雪佛兰几乎主导了市场，因为它的车款是最简洁的。美国人自发地进入了一种节俭模式，不买埃德塞尔车就是他们的“苦修衬衣”。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Wallace's Sputnik theory provides an answer to Doyle's question about why people weren't in the mood, and furthermore, it is sufficiently cosmic to be fit. A semi-brain truster. It also leaves Wallace free to defend the validity of his motivational research studies as of the time when they were conducted. I don't think we had no the depths of the psychological effect that that first orbiting had on us all. He says, somebody had beaten us to an important gain in technology, and immediately people started writing articles about how crummy Detroit products were, particularly the heavily ornamented and status symbolic medium price cars. In 1958, when none of the small cars were out except the Ramblur Chevy almost ran away with the market because it had the simplest car. The American people had put themselves on a self-imposed austerity program. Not buying edsels was their hair shirt.
为了进入这家公司的办公室，我们可以看到这是一家非常好的公司。但这个办公室对他们来说也是一种负担。对于那些对19世纪美国工业的艰苦搏斗年代有所怀念的人来说，看到华莱士能够悠闲地抽着烟斗并友好地分析大屠杀，这一幕可能显得很奇怪。Edsel的故事中显而易见的一点是，一个汽车巨头的失败。但同样令人惊讶的是，这个巨头并没有在失败中解体，甚至没有受到严重伤害。由于其旗下的其他四款车——福特、雷鸟，以及后来的小型Falcon和Comet，以及之后的野马——取得了成功，作为投资对象，福特公司反而繁荣地生存了下来。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
To enter the company's office, the company was a very good company. The company's office was their hair shirt. To any relics of the sink or swim 19th century days of American industry, it must seem strange that Wallace can afford to puff on his pipe and analyze the Holocaust so amiably. The obvious point of the Edsel's story is the defeat of a giant motor company. But what is just as surprising is that the giant did not come apart, or even get seriously hurt in the fall. The majority of the people who went down with him, owing largely to the success of four of its other cars, the Ford, the Thunderbird, and later on the small Falcon and Comet and then the Mustang, the Ford company, as an investment, survived gloriously.
确实，1958年公司经历了一段困难时期，部分原因是埃德塞尔汽车（Edsel），导致每股净收入从5.40美元降到2.12美元，每股股息从2.40美元降到2美元，股票市场价格从1957年的高点约60美元跌至1958年的低点，不足40美元。但是，所有这些损失在1959年都得到了补偿，当年每股净收入达到了8.24美元，每股股息为2.80美元，股票价格达到了大约90美元的高点。1960年和1961年公司情况更加好转。因此，1957年公司账面上登记的28万名福特股东几乎没有什么可抱怨的，除非他们在恐慌最高峰时卖出了股票。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
True it had a bad time of it in 1958, when, partly because of the Edsel, net income per share of its stock fell from $5.40 to $2.12, dividends per share from $2.40 to $2, and the market price of its stock from a 1957 high of about $60 to $19.58 low of under $40. But all these losses were more than recouped in 1959, when net income per share was $8.24, dividends per share were $2.80, and the price of the stock reached a hive around $90. In 1960 and 1961 things went even better. So the 280,000 Ford stockholders listed on the books in 1957 had had little to complain about, unless they had sold at the height of the panic.
另一方面，由于水星、爱德赛尔和林肯的合并，6,000名白领员工被迫失去工作，福特员工的平均人数从1957年的191,759人下降到140,000人。当然，那些放弃了盈利品牌及其他车型的经销商，在试图出售爱德赛尔失败而破产后，可能对此经历感到非常不满。在林肯、水星和爱德赛尔三个部门合并的条款下，这三个品牌的大多数经销商也被合并了。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
On the other hand, 6,000 white collar workers were squeezed out of their jobs as a result of their Mercury Edsel Lincoln consolidation, and the average number of Ford employees fell from $191,759 in 1957 to $140,000. And of course, dealers who gave up profitable franchises and other makes, and then went broke trying to sell Edsels weren't likely to be very cheerful about the experience. Under the terms of the consolidation of the Lincoln, Mercury, and Edsel divisions, most of the agencies for the three makes were consolidated too.
在这一整合过程中，一些Edsel汽车的经销商被淘汰了。对于那些最终破产的经销商来说，后来得知福特公司停止生产Edsel汽车时，愿意支付那些挺过危机的前同事们一半的Edsel招牌原价，可能也没有多少安慰。同时，公司还给予他们在停售时所有库存Edsel汽车的大幅折扣。然而，即使是销售最受欢迎车型的时候，有些汽车经销商依然可能破产，因为他们的利润率有时像迈阿密酒店运营商一样微薄。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
In the consolidation, some Edsel dealers were squeezed out, and it can have been small comfort to those of them who went bankrupt to learn later that when the Ford company finally discontinued making the car, it agreed to pay those of their former colleagues who had weathered the crisis, one half of the original cost of their Edsel sign. And was granting them substantial rebates on all Edsels in stock at the time of discontinuance. Still automobile dealers, some of whom work on credit margins as slim as those of Miami hotel operators, occasionally go broke with even the most popular cars.
在汽车销售这个充满竞争和挑战的世界里，那些以此为生的人中，很多人会承认，福特公司一旦发现自己遇到了麻烦，尽其所能支持那些与“埃德塞尔”共命运的经销商们开始相对满意。即使在底特律，福特也未必总是受到垂青。美国全国汽车经销商协会的一位发言人曾表示，据我们所知，埃德塞尔的经销商们普遍对他们所受到的待遇感到满意。此外，负责埃德塞尔广告业务的Footcone and Belding公司最终在这笔业务上也损失了资金，因为广告佣金并不足以抵消其雇佣60名新员工和在底特律开设豪华办公室的巨大开支。不过，这些损失并非不可挽回。当没有更多埃德塞尔需要宣传时，该公司立即被聘请宣传林肯。虽然这种安排持续的时间不长，但这家公司欣然度过了难关，并继续为通用食品、联合利华和泛美航空等客户做宣传。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
And among those who earn their living in the rough and tumble world of automobile salesrooms where Detroit is not always spoken of with affection, many will concede that the Ford company, once it had found itself stuck with a lemon, did as much as it reasonably could to bolster dealers who had cast their lot with Edsel. A spokesman for the National Automobile Dealers Association has since stated, so far as we know the Edsel dealers were generally satisfied with the way they were treated. Footcone and building also ended up losing money on the Edsel account, since its advertising commissions did not entirely compensate for the extraordinary expense it had gone to of hiring 60 new people and opening up a posh office in Detroit. But its losses were hardly irreparable. The minute there were no more Edsels to advertise, it was hired to advertise Lincoln's. And although that arrangement did not last very long, the firm has happily survived to sing the praises of such clients as General Foods, Lever Brothers, and Transworld Airways.
这段话表达了这样一个感人的现象：这家公司的员工对其以前客户表现出的忠诚。即使在1959年之后的几年里，每个工作日，芝加哥的私人停车场里仍然停满了Edsel汽车。这些忠实的司机并不罕见。如果Edsel车主们没有找到梦想成真的方法，尽管有些人在一段时间内不得不忍受恼人的机械故障，十多年后，他们中的许多人仍像珍惜旧南方纸币一样珍惜他们的汽车。而在二手车市场上，Edsel成了一种稀缺的高价商品，供应极少。总体上，前Edsel的高管们不仅安然无恙，还获得了令人羡慕的职位。显然，没有人能指责福特公司以传统粗糙的方式发泄其不满，比如挥刀砍掉一些高管的职位。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
A rather touching symbol of the loyalty that the agency's employees have for its former client is the fact that for several years after 1959, on every workday, its private parking lot in Chicago was still dotted with Edsels. These faithful drivers incidentally are not unique. If Edsel owners have not found the means to a dream fulfillment, and if some of them for a while had to put up with harrowing mechanical disorders, many of them, more than a decade later, cherished their cars as if they were Confederate bills. And on used car row, the Edsel is a high premium item, with few cars being offered. By and large, the former Edsel executives did not just land on their feet, they landed in clover. Certainly no one can accuse the Ford company of giving vent to its chagrin in the old-fashioned way, by vulgarly causing heads to roll.
克拉夫蒂被分配去协助罗伯特·S·麦克纳马拉，当时麦克纳马拉是福特公司的一位部门副总裁，后来成为国防部长。克拉夫蒂在协助了几个月后，调到公司总部的一个岗位工作，在那里呆了一年左右，然后离开，成为马萨诸塞州沃尔瑟的雷声公司（Raytheon Company）的一位副总裁，这是一家领先的电子公司。1960年4月，他被任命为该公司的总裁。六十年代中期，他离职成为西海岸的一位高价管理顾问。多伊尔也被福特提供了一个职务，但在去国外旅行思考后，他决定退休。他解释说，这是关于我与经销商的关系的问题。他说，我向他们保证公司会始终支持Edsel，而我觉得自己不是适合告诉他们事实并非如此的人。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Crafty was assigned to assist Robert S. McNamara, at that time a Ford Divisional Vice President, and later of course Secretary of Defense, for a couple of months, and then he moved to a staff job in company headquarters, stayed there for about a year, and left to become a Vice President of the Raytheon Company of Walther, Massachusetts, a leading electronics firm. In April 1960, he was made its President. In the middle sixties, he left to become a high-priced management consultant on the West Coast. Doyle too, was offered a staff job with Ford, but after taking a trip abroad to think it over, he decided to retire. It was a question of my relationship to my dealers, he explains. I had assured them that the company was fully behind the Edsel for keeps, and I didn't feel that I was the fellow to tell them now that it wasn't.
在他退休后，Doyle 仍然像以前一样忙碌，他关注于自己帮助建立的各种业务，这些业务由他的朋友和亲戚们负责运作。此外，他还在底特律经营自己的咨询业务。大约在 Edsel 与 Mercury 和 Lincoln 合并的一个月前，负责宣传的 Warnock 离开了该部门，前往纽约担任国际电话电报公司（International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation）的新闻服务总监。他在1960年6月离开了这个职位，成为 McCann-Arrykson 公共关系部门的副总裁。从那里，他又回到了福特，担任 Lincoln 和 Mercury 的东部宣传主管。这表明他不仅没有失去职位，反而更上一层楼。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
After his retirement, Doyle remained about as busy as ever, keeping an eye on various businesses in which he has set up various friends and relatives, and conducting a consulting business of his own in Detroit. About a month before Edsel's consolidation with Mercury and Lincoln, Warnock, the publicity man, left the division to become Director of News Services for the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation in New York, a position he left in June 1960 to become Vice President of Communications Counselors, the public relations arm of McCann-Arrykson. From there, he went back to Ford, as Eastern Promotion Chief for Lincoln, Mercury, a case of a head that had not rolled, but it instead been anointed.
布朗，这位备受争议的设计师，在底特律继续担任了一段时间福特商用车辆的首席设计师，然后前往英国福特汽车公司。在那里，他再次担任首席设计师，负责设计控制台、安格利亚车型、卡车和拖拉机。他坚决表示，这个职位并不意味着福特把他发配到了边缘地带。布朗在从英国写来的一封信中坚定地表示：“我发现这段经历非常令人满意，是我职业生涯中做出的最佳选择之一。我们正在建立一个在欧洲首屈一指的设计办公室和设计团队。”
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Brown, the embattled stylist, stayed on in Detroit for a while as Chief Stylist, a Ford commercial vehicles, and then went with the Ford Motor Company Limited of England, where again as Chief Stylist, he was assigned to direct the design of consoles, anglias, trucks, and tractors. He insisted that this post didn't represent the Ford version of Siberia. I have found it to be a most satisfying experience, and one of the best steps I have ever taken in my career. He stated firmly in a letter from England, we are building a styling office in a styling team second to none in Europe.
华莱士，这位半吊子的智囊团成员，被要求继续为福特公司出谋划策。由于他仍然不喜欢住在底特律或附近，因此他成了福特的大好朋友。他说，在福特汽车公司的名义下，他被允许搬到纽约，只需每周在总部待两天。他谦虚地表示，他们似乎不再在乎我在哪里工作。在1958年底，他离开了福特公司，终于实现了他成为全职学者和教师的心愿。他在康涅狄格州的韦斯特波特撰写关于社会变迁的论文，通过勤奋地询问当地居民进行调查研究。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Wallace, the semi-brain truster, was asked to continue semi-brain trusting for Ford, and since he still didn't like living in Detroit or near it, he was a great friend. He said that the design of the Ford Motor Company, in the name of the Ford Motor Company, was permitted to move to New York and to spend only two days a week at headquarters. They didn't seem to care anymore where I operated from, he says modestly. At the end of 1958, he left Ford, and he has since finally achieved his heart's desire to become a full-time scholar and teacher. Writing his thesis on social change in Westport, Connecticut, which he investigated by busily quizzing its inhabitants.
同时，他在格林威治村的新社会研究学院教授了一门关于社会行为动态的课程。有一天，当汤姆拎着一捆问卷登上开往韦斯特波特的火车时，他被听到满怀满意地宣称自己已厌倦了行业。1962年初，他成为了华莱士博士。这些前爱德赛尔员工的兴奋不完全来源于他们在经济上的生存。他们似乎在精神上得到了充实。除了那些仍在福特任职的人尽量避免谈论以外，他们倾向于以一种老战友回忆最刺激战役的激情和愉快来谈论他们的爱德赛尔经历。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Meanwhile, he taught a course on the dynamics of social behavior at the New School for Social Research in Greenwich Village. Tom Threw with industry, he was heard to declare one day with evident satisfaction as he boarded a train for Westport, a bundle of questionnaires under his arm. Early in 1962, he became Dr. Wallace. The subsequent euphoria of these former Edselmen did not stem entirely from the fact of their economic survival. They appear to have been enriched spiritually. They are inclined to speak of their Edsel experience, except for those still with Ford, who are inclined to speak of it as little as possible, with the verve and guerillaity of old comrades in arms, hashing over their most thrilling campaign.
在小组中，Doyle 也许是最热情回忆往事的人。他在1960年时告诉一位来电者，那段时光比他过去或之后的任何时候都更有趣。我想那是因为我们当时都非常努力。大家都是如此。这是一个很棒的团队。跟随Edsel一起工作的人都知道自己在冒险，而我喜欢愿意冒险的人。是的，尽管发生了一些不幸的事情，那段经历依然很美好。而且我们当时做的事情方向也是对的。就在退休前，我去了趟欧洲，亲眼看到那里的情况。满大街都是小型汽车。但是，他们那里依然有交通堵塞，停车问题也依旧存在。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Doyle is perhaps the most passionate reminiscer in the group. It was more fun than I have ever had before or since, he told a caller in 1960. I suppose that's because I worked the hardest ever. We all did. It was a good crew. The people who came with Edsel knew they were taking a chance, and I like people who will take chances. Yes, it was a wonderful experience in spite of the unfortunate thing that happened. And we were on the right track too. When I went to Europe, just before retiring, I saw how it is there. Nothing but compact cars. Yet they've still got traffic jams over there. They've still got parking problems.
他们仍然会发生事故。试着在那些低矮的出租车里进进出出，不碰到头就不容易。或者试着在北极小径上行走时不被刮到。这种小车的热潮不会持续太久。我觉得美国司机不会长时间对手动挡和有限的性能感到满意。趋势会逆转的。沃诺克，像很多公关人员一样声称，他们的工作给他带来了胃溃疡，这是他的第二次。但他说他已经克服了，它，这支伟大的Edsel团队，他只是想看看如果他们在正确的时间有了合适的产品，会发生什么。他们本可以赚到数百万。就是这样。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
They've still got accidents. Just try getting in and out of those low taxi cabs without hitting your head. Or try not to get clipped while you're walking around the arctic trail. This small car thing won't last forever. I can't see American drivers being satisfied for long with manual gear shifting and limited performance. The pendulum will swing back. Warnock, like many a public relations man before him, claims that his job gave him an ulcer. His second. But I got over it, he says, that great Edsel team, I just like to see what it could have done if it had had the right product at the right time. It could have made millions. That's what.
这整件事情占据了我人生中的两年，我永远不会忘记。这是正在铸就的历史。这是否告诉你一些关于美国五十年代的事情？那是个充满希望的时代，但这些希望并不完全实现。机智的K团队领袖完全可以证明，他的前下属们的话不仅仅是老兵的浪漫回忆。他不久前说道，这是一个很棒的团队，他们真的全心全意投入到工作中。我对如此富有动力的团队感兴趣，他们就是这样的一个团队。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
The whole thing was two years out of my life that I'll never forget. It was history in the making. Doesn't at all tell you something about American the 50s. High hopes. And less than complete fulfillment of them. Crafty, the boss of the great team on K, is entirely prepared to testify that there is more to his former subordinates talk than just the romantic vaporings of old soldiers. It was a wonderful group to work with, he said not long ago. They really put their hearts and guts into the job. I'm interested in a crew that strongly motivated, and that one was.
当事情变得糟糕时，Edsel团队的人本可以抱怨说，他们为了跟随我们放弃了多么好的机会。但如果有人这样做，我也从未听说过。我不惊讶于他们大多数人现在都过得不错。在行业中，你偶尔会遇到一些挫折，但只要内心不被打败，你就会重新振作起来。我喜欢时不时和某个人，比如盖尔·沃诺克或其他人聚在一起，回顾那些有趣的事件，还有那些悲惨的事件。
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
When things went bad, the Edsel boys could have cried about how they'd given up wonderful opportunities to come with us. But if anybody did, I never heard about it. I'm not surprised that they've mostly come out all right. In industry, you take a bump now and then, but you're bounced back as long as you don't get defeated inside. I like to get together with somebody once in a while, Gail Warnock or one of the others, and go over the humorous incidents. The tragic incidents.
"对于那些对埃德塞尔汽车怀有怀旧之情的人来说，无论这种怀旧是带有幽默感还是悲剧意味，都是一个值得深思的现象。也许，这只是表明他们怀念自己曾经备受瞩目的时光——最初是愉悦，后来则变得尴尬。或者，这可能意味着一个时候已经来临——就像在伊丽莎白时代的戏剧中那样，但在美国商业中却很少见——失败可以带有一种成功永远无法拥有的庄严感。"
▶ 英文原文 ⏱
Whether the nostalgia of the Edsel boys for the Edsel runs to the humorous or to the tragic, it is a thought-provoking phenomenon. Maybe it means merely that they miss the limelight they first basked in and later squirmed in. Or maybe it means that a time has come when, as in Elizabethan drama but seldom before in American business, failure can have a certain grandeur that success never knows.