Edsel Ford may be remembered primarily as Henry Ford’s only son and the president of Ford Motor Company, but he was also one of the most influential design advocates in the company’s history. After seeing lightweight European sports cars during his travels, Edsel asked Ford designer E.T. “Bob” Gregorie to create something similarly low and sporting for his own use. An initial 1932 speedster didn’t go far enough for Edsel, who reportedly wanted something lower and racier. In 1934, Gregorie tried again. The result was the one-of-one Ford Model 40 Special Speedster.
Built with help from workers in Ford’s Aircraft Division, the new car barely resembled the mass-produced Ford beneath it. Its aluminum body wrapped around a heavily modified chassis with a dramatically low seating position, tiny Brooklands-style windscreens and exposed cycle fenders. A Ford flathead V8 provided the power. The original nose proved prone to overheating, and after freezing coolant cracked the engine block during the winter of 1939–40, Edsel had a more powerful 239-cubic-inch Mercury V8 installed. Gregorie simultaneously redesigned the front end with a larger lower grille and relocated headlights, giving the Speedster the appearance it carries today.
The car was more than Edsel’s personal toy. Gregorie later described the project as part of the thinking that ultimately led toward the Lincoln Continental, another Edsel-backed attempt to bring European proportions and elegance to an American automobile.
From Edsel Ford’s Garage to a $603 Used Car
After Edsel Ford died in 1943, the Speedster left the family and began an extraordinary journey through a succession of owners. By 1948 it appeared in the pages of Road & Track, advertised for $2,500, but even that failed to find an immediate buyer. Eventually the exotic one-off Ford became simply an aging used car. In 1958, U.S. Navy serviceman James Pallasch reportedly purchased it for just $603. He eventually learned what the strange-looking Ford actually was after contacting Gregorie, but a stalled engine rebuild and military service left the Speedster sitting in storage for decades.
Its disappearance might have continued indefinitely if not for Bill Warner, founder of the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance. Warner tracked the car to Pallasch in Florida in 1999 and persuaded him to sell it. The Speedster had spent years buried beneath the ordinary clutter of a garage, but it remained remarkably complete. Warner got it running and showed it publicly rather than immediately carrying out a full restoration. In 2008 he offered the car through RM Auctions at Amelia Island, where bidding reached an astonishing $1.76 million. Houston collector John O’Quinn emerged as the buyer. The contrast was remarkable: the same unique Edsel Ford automobile that had changed hands for $603 half a century earlier had become a seven-figure piece of American automotive history.
The Speedster Finally Comes Home
O’Quinn died in a car accident in 2009, setting the stage for one final change of ownership. Edsel Ford II, Edsel’s grandson, arranged to acquire the Speedster from O’Quinn’s estate, and it subsequently joined the collection of the Edsel & Eleanor Ford House in Grosse Pointe Shores, Michigan. Beginning in 2010, RM Auto Restoration in Ontario undertook an extensive restoration intended to return the car to the configuration Edsel himself knew around 1940. Researchers even uncovered original paint evidence and period Ford color samples to recreate its distinctive Pearl Essence Gunmetal Dark finish.
Today, the original Model 40 Special Speedster remains with the Edsel & Eleanor Ford House, essentially back where its story began. As of 2026, it is publicly displayed in the estate’s Driven by Design+ exhibition inside the Gate Lodge garage alongside Edsel’s 1932 Model 18 Speedster, the sole 1939 Lincoln Continental prototype and other significant Ford family automobiles. Ford House lists the exhibition as free to visitors.
More than 90 years after Edsel Ford and Bob Gregorie created it, the Speedster has gone from corporate experiment to forgotten used car, garage discovery and million-dollar collectible. Few one-off automobiles have traveled such an unlikely path — and fewer still have ultimately found their way back home.
