Automotive Ads and Brochures

benjaminh

The premium air-cooled Franklin gets another color ad in 1926. The nickel plating area for door handles and so on for GM's Fisher Body looks like a tough place to work. And as you can see, GM was advertising its proving ground a lot, since I don't think any other car marker had anything like it.

benjaminh

In 1926 hydraulic shock absorbers were a major innovation that in the next few years would sweep the industry. In the beginning it was a feature for luxury cars, but in a while it would filter down to mid-level cars.

PF_Flyer

Mr_Shiftright said:

That's what they now call "naive aerodynamics"--meaning it looks fast but actually has a lot of drag.

Everything old is new again

benjaminh

In late 1926 Cadillac shifted to color ads. Candy also got color, including for something called an Ostrich Egg. Pontiac pioneered by Sloan was a big hit.

benjaminh

1926

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omarman

Cadillac body styles and colors now have shrunk a bit from the days of 50 body styles and 500 color combos. Today your Cadillac is available as a sedan, crossover and SUV in any color you like as long as it's white, black, silver, blue and red.

But I love the Caterpillar history mystery reveal about the truth of ancient pyramids...

Mr_Shiftright

Learned two things from these ads. One, I now know how the pyramids were built, and Two, the secret to human happiness is to buy a Studebaker.

VERY informative!

fintail

Daring slogan:

Michaell

I'd hate to think what would happen if they decided to use "used" TRX tires on it.

Mr_Shiftright

What would happen is a rapid hissing sound from your bank account as well as the car.

That particular model was not Peugeot's finest effort.

texases

A recent NPOCP Testarossa was downgraded because it had TRX tires in need of replacement (along with needing a timing belt, $$$$$$$$$$).

sda

Our neighbors in France had a 604, with a leather interior. The seats were extremely comfortable and the car rode really well. Dad thought he had a choice between the 604 and the Renault 30 (which used the same V6 as the 604) when his company replaced his Renault 16, but his boss told him to get the R30. The engine was a joint effort between Peugeot/Renault/Volvo, thus the PRV V6. It turned out that the PRV V6 was not a good engine.

texases

sda said:

Our neighbors in France had a 604, with a leather interior. The seats were extremely comfortable and the car rode really well. Dad thought he had a choice between the 604 and the Renault 30 (which used the same V6 as the 604) when his company replaced his Renault 16, but his boss told him to get the R30. The engine was a joint effort between Peugeot/Renault/Volvo, thus the PRV V6. It turned out that the PRV V6 was not a good engine.

All it had to do is get you up to 88 mph...

Mr_Shiftright

sda said:

Our neighbors in France had a 604, with a leather interior. The seats were extremely comfortable and the car rode really well. Dad thought he had a choice between the 604 and the Renault 30 (which used the same V6 as the 604) when his company replaced his Renault 16, but his boss told him to get the R30. The engine was a joint effort between Peugeot/Renault/Volvo, thus the PRV V6. It turned out that the PRV V6 was not a good engine.

That was the Delorean engine, wasn't it? Yep an underpowered turkey.

omarman

Vintage Metal 3-D Peugeot Car Advertisement Sign
(seller insists this a car ad. )

sda

Yep, I think it was around 135hp, rough idle, poor gas mileage and reliability.

Mr_Shiftright

But other than that....?

fintail

I like the 604 design-wise, reminds me of a parallel universe MB W116. When I was a kid, there was one in the neighborhood with a tres exotic "Automatique" badge.

imidazol97

I found an article that discusses advertising at GM. I haven't read the article myself, but someone mentioned the thrust and tone of GM's ads. And I think this may help with understanding that.

https://adage.com/article/adage-encyclopedia/general-motors-corp/98666/

imidazol97

benjaminh said:

Apparently before 1926 cars didn't have crankcase ventilation? And even in 1926 was this was an exclusive engine feature for GM? So people without crankcase ventilation had cars that were maybe poisoning them a little? Yikes.

But that ventilator relied on the air flow as the car moved to suck the vapours from the crankcase using a tube under the bottom of the engine. Those noxious, dangerous fumes were being let loose under the car containing the people. Check the diagram.

Sounds like today's advertising the way the description is hyped up.

benjaminh

1927

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omarman

I really like these Caterpillar ads. The only change I'd make to the last one is to add a line from the Caterpillar web site. Key Offices: Beijing.

texases

Great color schemes on those Caddys - green, tan, yellow, orange. Wilder than the '50s, even.

Mr_Shiftright

That ad predicting prosperity under Coolidge for 1928 sure ended up dead wrong, didn't it?

benjaminh

Mr_Shiftright said:

That ad predicting prosperity under Coolidge for 1928 sure ended up dead wrong, didn't it?

The cartoon by Herbert Johnson was made in very early 1927, and so there were still c. 2.5 years left of prosperity before the crash (and lots of car ads!). When this cartoon was made most people expected Mr. C to run for reelection, but for whatever reason he didn't.

omarman

Here we go again... Last year I received an email from an Edmunds moderator: Posts of a political nature are not allowed in our forums. Your post has been deleted.

My deleted post included a trophy winning street rod displaying a Chucky doll, Hilary dummy, and a Trump pic and was awarded Best Presentation at the Burger Fest in Hamburg in 2016.

No I'm not making this up. I'll try to find the link for the Burger Fest car show.

benjaminh

To stay focused on car advertisements I've deleted myself that cartoon from 1927. Here's another car ad instead, for the new 1927 LaSalle. Below that is Harley Earl in his own 1927 LaSalle, as well as some modern restored examples.

Mr_Shiftright

Well the Wall St. collapse was circa Sept 1929, so yeah, about 2.5 years after the cartoon was published. True, true, that's an eternity for an economic prediction. I guess there weren't all that many warning signs in 1928 under Coolidge, although I think a few smart rich people realized that stock market speculation was out of control and market saturation for goods was certainly in the offing.

Hoover took the brunt of it, and in retrospect, he did little to address it.

As someone once said: "Want is infinite, but the wealth to satisfy it is not".

benjaminh

To get us back on track, here are a few more car ads from early 1927....Was LaSalle the first car styled by Harley Earl? Chrysler moved from 27th place to 4th place in just 4 years—and soon of course it would become one of the Big 3.

PF_Flyer

I love all of this stuff and looking back at how they marketed their brands, and what they thought the public would buy. I was behind a fairly new car today, and it looked like the owner did THIS on purpose. No sign that the letter had simply fallen off. Made me think of this discussion and really how they make up names for drugs now that are supposed to make you think they're effective.

Wouldn't your really rather have a Buic??

Mr_Shiftright

The LaSalle was Earl's first design for an automaker per se, but he had been designing custom bodies for Cadillac through dealerships.

texases

These ads provide a good window into how GM created new brands (Pontiac and LaSalle). There were earlier ones, and of course later ones.

benjaminh

And here are a few more from early 1927....

Mr_Shiftright

A lot of women of leisure in these ads, and a lot of horses.

benjaminh

The Oldsmobile ad is surprisingly technical. And already seemingly almost all of Buick's technical advancements have filtered down to the lower-priced Olds.

benjaminh

In 1927 green was a popular car color—and GM had an absolutely huge advertising budget. In some issues of the Post starting in the mid to late 1920s there are more ads for GM and its many brands than for all of the rest of the car brands in that issue combined. In one of the ads in this set GM says something kind-of like "what's good for GM is good for the country"—saying that money and jobs connected to GM are flowing through the economic veins of the country. And it's true that by 1927 and for many decades afterward GM had a positive impact on the economies of many cities....Test miles are a lot easier than real world miles, but I'm still slightly impressed that an Oakland could go 100,000 miles even in a test back in 1927.

benjaminh

The language the admen/mad-men use about the LaSalle in relation to the Cadillac is a bit over-the-top: "The LaSalle is bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh to a Cadillac" etc.

benjaminh

I've just started a newly published book called Fins: Harley Earl, the Rise of General Motors and the Glory Days of Detroit by William Knoedelseder. Seems good so far....

benjaminh

1927....I didn't know the US had double decker buses in the 1920s as shown in this tire ad. These double-decker buses were used by the Philadelphia Rapid Transit system. Service for the less-than-fully-reliable automobile was obviously important in these decades, and Chevrolet's vast dealer and service network was obviously an advantage.

benjaminh

1927....

benjaminh

1927

omarman

Cadillac ads were impressive for 1927. Color and imagery and attention to detail. Even the text arranged in the shape of a medallion.

ab348

While we're in another lull for the 1920s, here's another example of the Fitz and Van school of "longer, lower, wider" brochure art, this one for the '59 Pontiac Safari. Talk about space-age!

benjaminh

That is a fantastic Pontiac wagon above. My first car was a green 1969 Pontiac Catalina Safari wagon—and so that very car a decade later. The art exaggerates it a little, but really they were huge almost beyond belief. In my Safari each bench seat could easily fit three people, so easily that if a kid wanted to fit in too on the same seat well then with a little squeezing that could happen. Just looked it up, and my 69 Pontiac was 220.5 inches long and 79.8 inches wide. I can't believe I drove that thing. With a purchase price of $980 in Dec. of 1985 it was no doubt the cheapest car I ever bought in terms of how much it was per inch of length or per pound.

****

In the book on Harley Earl that I'm listening to as an audio book it says that offering 500 color combinations for Cadillacs in early 1927 was Earl's idea. He had just been hired and didn't have any time to do anything in terms of metal work, but color would add an immediate wow factor. And at this time, as we've seen, Packard was really using color too, and the sales race between these two luxury brands was quite intense at this time. Fisher the president of Cadillac at the time wanted to put Packard in his rearview mirror and he saw Harley Earl's new Art and Color Section at GM as a way to start doing that.