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Plenty of 1950s cars experimented with push-button shifting, but Ford's 1958 Edsel moved the buttons into the steering wheel hub itself. This red-and-white 1958 Edsel Pacer convertible is live on eBay, listed by private seller classic$seeker in Carroll, Iowa, and according to the listing its original Teletouch transmission "shifts well." That means Drive is still selected by pressing a button in the middle of the wheel, not by moving a lever.
What Teletouch Drive Did
Teletouch Drive was an electro-mechanical shift system. The driver pressed buttons arranged in a ring at the center of the steering wheel, in a pod that stayed put while the wheel turned around it. Planetary gears inside the steering column kept the buttons oriented with Neutral at the top, and electrical current reached the pod through slip rings and brush contacts. A servo motor mounted at the transmission then physically moved the shift controls.
There was also a safeguard. The horn button lived in the same hub, so an inhibitor switch operated by transmission fluid pressure was designed to keep a stab at the horn from changing gears.
Why Ford Offered It
Edsel arrived in late summer 1957 and needed to look like the future. The mid-1950s were the push-button age, and rivals had already tried their own versions. Chrysler put mechanical pushbuttons in pods to the left of the steering wheel in 1956, and Packard offered an electric Touch Button Ultramatic the same year. Mercury and Lincoln had their own Keyboard Control and Multi-Drive setups. Edsel's twist was putting the controls where the driver's hands already were.
It was standard on the top Corsair and Citation. On cars like this Pacer it was optional, with a conventional gear selector available as the lower-cost alternative, so a Pacer wearing Teletouch is one whose original buyer ticked the more adventurous box.
Why It Disappeared
Teletouch had a reputation problem. Reviewers and buyers often saw it as a gimmick, and pressing a button meant taking a hand off the wheel rim. The weak link was the servo motor, which sat in a hot, wet, dirty spot near the bell housing and exhaust, along with the relays, switches and wiring that supported it. Selecting Neutral and then Reverse or Park at speed could also damage the transmission. Edsel dropped Teletouch as an option for 1959, and the brand itself was gone by the end of that year. Motorious has followed other survivors from the marque, including a 1959 Edsel wagon and an ugly-duckling 1958 Villager, but a car with a working Teletouch system is the rarer thing to find.
The Edsel on eBay
The seller describes the car as a nice, running and driving '58 convertible with an original interior in great shape, color-coded spinner hubcaps and good brakes. Power comes from the original E-400 361-cubic-inch V8 with dual exhaust, and the seller lists the top, lights, turn signals, gauges, heat and defrost, and "pushbutton trans" among the working items. Honest caveats are in the listing too: the passenger door glass has a crack, and the car is being sold as-is. The seller's text cites 44,584 miles while the eBay item specifics show 47,192, so ask which figure is right. The lead photos show the exterior only, so a buyer who cares about the Teletouch should ask for pictures of the steering wheel hub.
For comparison, Motorious has also covered a fully restored Edsel Pacer convertible that headlined a classic car auction, which is a useful reference point for what a top-condition example looks like.
Auction Details
- Platform: eBay Motors, private seller classic$seeker
- Current bid: $20,000 with 1 bid, reserve not met
- Ends: Monday, October 19 at 9:30 PM ET, with extended bidding if a bid lands in the final minute
- Location: Carroll, Iowa
- Title: Clean, sold as-is
Most cars with odd factory features eventually explain why they stayed odd. The Teletouch Edsel explains it in the steering wheel. It is the sort of option that only a company confident about the future would build, and only a company about to lose that bet would drop after one year. Anyone curious about what other mid-century experiments Detroit tried could start with the 1959 DeSoto Adventurer.
