Automotive Ads and Brochures

texases · December 2018

I wonder if Mercury was fighting some perception that the Cougar was more of a woman's car?

berri · December 2018

That's an interesting question really. Wonder the same about the early 70's Dodge Challenger since it had softer lines in a way than the Barracuda.

omarman · December 2018

Originally the Mustang was the secretary's car so maybe Mercury felt they needed 6 degrees of separation.

ab348 · December 2018

berri said:
That's an interesting question really. Wonder the same about the early 70's Dodge Challenger since it had softer lines in a way than the Barracuda.

The previous-generation Barracuda wasn't such a tough car in terms of looks, and it seemed to appeal to the female buyer, especially in '69 with this option:

Picture is from a Plymouth press release. Far out, man!

Mr_Shiftright · December 2018

MUSTANG SALLY (Wilson Pickett) (1965)

I bought you a brand new mustang
It was nineteen sixty-five
Now you come around signifyin' a woman
Girl, you won't, you won't let me ride
Mustang Sally, now baby
Guess you better slow that mustang down
Alright
You'd been running all over town
Oh! Guess I gotta put your flat feet on the ground

All you want to do is ride around Sally (ride, Sally, ride)

ab348 · December 2018

BTW, on the '69 Barracuda Mod Top, here is an interesting article on it. Take a look at that interior. Not something a macho man would like, I suspect.

https://www.hemmings.com/magazine/hcc/2011/11/Flower-Power---1969-Plymouth-Barracuda/3704981.html

Mr_Shiftright · December 2018

If he was high, he might have, back then.

omarman · December 2018

My junior high English teacher who loved Simon and Garfunkel and she drove a '69 Barracuda. But I don't think her car had the mod top/interior option. I would have remembered that. And flowers never bend with the rainfall.

Mr_Shiftright · December 2018

"So I'll continue to continue to pretend
My life will never end,"

Yeah, well, good luck with that Garfunkel!

benjaminh · December 2018

1924 Is the Packard "Fuelizer" a carburetor?

benjaminh · December 2018

1924. The cars of this era are not far off from the proportions and dimensions of SUVs today. Functional shape. A 7 passenger Cadillac of 1924 is a little like a 3-row suv without the awd.

benjaminh · December 2018

1924. With hydraulic brakes stopping distances were dramatically lower. Interesting how people of the 20s liked to look back at the cars of years gone by with nostalgia.

benjaminh · December 2018

1924. Drinking milk in the back seat with the smooth ride of the Paige. To be seen in a Rickenbacker was to be part of the "cognoscenti"—maybe the first and last time that word was used in a car ad? I like the blue.

texases · December 2018

That Cadillac doesn't look that different from the Chevy in the adjacent ad. I'm sure it'd be apparent side-to-side.

ab348 · December 2018

texases said:
That Cadillac doesn't look that different from the Chevy in the adjacent ad. I'm sure it'd be apparent side-to-side.

I noticed that plain look in a number of Cadillac ads from this era that were posted. The main exterior difference from low-priced cars was the size. I guess the use of lots of nickel and chrome plating came later.

Mr_Shiftright · December 2018

I think that Packard carburetor heated up the intake air somehow.

The lead character in the Twilight Zone episode Mr Bevis drove a Rickenbacker.

The Rickenbacker was a nicely made car, but way too pricey for the times in which it was produced. (1922-1927). It certainly would have perished in the Great Depression anyway.

benjaminh · December 2018

1924 Studebaker tells a detailed story of why they should be on your list if you are shopping for a quality car. Studebaker was having big success at this time, but reading between the lines I think they were probably worried about GM's Oldsmobile, Buick, and Oakland.

benjaminh · December 2018

1924....That's a shock absorber? Hupmobile dealers all had displays of parts to show the quality of their cars.

benjaminh · December 2018

1924

benjaminh · December 2018

1924

Mr_Shiftright · December 2018

That shock absorber is a "friction shock".

benjaminh · December 2018

I'd forgotten that Studebaker started out building covered wagons and the like. The Studebaker museum is about a four and a half hour drive from me, and now I'm thinking of trying to visit it someday.

https://studebakermuseum.org/

According to wikipedia, some early engineering failures inspired Studebaker to build very rugged cars. Hupmobile too seems to have had a good engineering team that build well-engineered cars for the time made of quality parts. There's a whole series like the one I already posted that shows individual parts of the Hupmobile and describes why they are such good parts.

benjaminh · December 2018

As @Mr_Shiftright said there's an episode of the original Twilight Zone episode where the character James B. W. Bevis owns a 1924 Rickenbacker as a sign that he's hopelessly eccentric and old fashioned. A guardian angel gives him what I think is a Triumph instead, which no doubt was more fun to drive! Here's a 1 minute clip that doesn't show the Rickenbacker but the other car instead....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPR9_RjW1MM

I watched this episode as a kid, and so the even-then extremely obscure Rickenbacker car was put into the back of my mind.

benjaminh · December 2018

After avoiding advertising for several years Ford suddenly in 1924 launched into a series of expensive ads that were more about the Ford Rouge plant as almost a modern-day temple then they were about trying to sell the Model T. You can see how from ads like this how Aldous Huxley made Ford a key part of his famous utopian/dystopian novel Brave New World. Imho it's worth enlarging the Ford ads to read the text of these almost quasi-religious ads about Ford manufacturing processes—and how Ford is vertically integrated.

benjaminh · December 2018

1924: The Norman Rockwell cover takes a humorous look back at how 20 years earlier going 15 mph in a car was being a speed demon, while now in the mid-1920s a fair number of people were getting up to as high as 60—and a few 70—if they could find a clear stretch of road. The Overland ads shows the middle-class family planning their family vacation with maps. That's something my family used to do back in the 1970s.

benjaminh · December 2018

1924

benjaminh · December 2018

1924: Pierce Arrow was rather bold to incorporate their headlights into the fenders, which I think looks quite nice. It might also have given better illumination of the road. Were they the first to do that? The Overland only costs a modest amount more than a Ford Model T, and seemingly was a nice step up in terms of features, power, and size.

benjaminh · December 2018

By the 1920s gas stations were giving out free maps to customers, since encouraging driving obviously boosted the sales of gasoline. Each major oil company that had gas stations by the mid-1920s had their own first-class cartographic division to make these maps. The Road Map Collectors Association is a club that has meetings that encourages appreciation of these old maps:

https://roadmaps.org/

fintail · December 2018

The Twilight Zone car is an Austin-Healey 100/6.

Interesting to see Pierce-Arrow touting their cheaper car, and the huge gap in price between touring car and sedan.

ab348 · December 2018

.

Mr_Shiftright · December 2018

fintail said:
The Twilight Zone car is an Austin-Healey 100/6.

Interesting to see Pierce-Arrow touting their cheaper car, and the huge gap in price between touring car and sedan.

Well back then closed sedans were practically hand-built, so it makes sense they would cost more.

benjaminh · December 2018

1924: Dodge and a few others already had all steel bodies even before 1924, but this year Budd made a major push to convert the others—and started making headway.

benjaminh · December 2018

1924

benjaminh · December 2018

1924

benjaminh · December 2018

1924

benjaminh · December 2018

1924: This year Mobil says that the average car only about 7 years or so. Dalton says it has invented a machine with a "memory" fulfilling a long held dream. The beginnings of the computer? There are lots of ads for radios in these years, here's just one.

ab348 · December 2018

It is a common complaint these days about '50s cars at shows sporting Continental kits. But here is the source of all that angst, an ad from the '50s offering all sorts of them:

benjaminh · January 2019

The Post had been doing full color covers for maybe twenty years, but all the ads inside were either black and white or one or two color until this year. In 1924 once-in-a-rare-while there starts to be a full color ad—like this one for chocolate. Unfortunately full color car ads aren't showing up yet. Ford continues with its series on the incredible economies of scale at its huge factories. At this point a brand-new Model T could be purchased for about $300, which even adjusting for inflation is only about $4500 today. And although the Model T was behind some other cars technologically and in terms of styling and power, it was still a well-engineered machine built out of quality parts. Paige made some good cars, but like Rickenbacker they were also gone even before the Great Depression hit. GM was growing rapidly in the 1920s, and even as the Model T was still selling in huge numbers my guess is that in total dollar sales GM was passing Ford around this time.

benjaminh · January 2019

In 1924 a cartoon warns Americans about the spider web of European politics, while Willys-Knight makes strides against vibration—which was a serious problem in many cars at this time.

benjaminh · January 2019

Just as cars were taking over transportation the movies—according to Paramount—was having a big impact on people's minds from coast to coast. People saw fashions, products, cars, interior designs, and so on in the movies that then sometimes they wanted.

This series about Ford's production methods is about to come to a close. But it's interesting to me that Henry Ford, like Elon Musk today, would tour his factories over and over looking for production problems at every stage and working with his teams of people to solve them.

My Acura and some other newer cars have slightly thinner front pillars and better visibility there because of high-strength steel. But this goes back all the way to the dawn of the all-steel car.

benjaminh · January 2019

In 1924 an "automatic windshield wiper" (just one) was a deluxe feature on the Dodge Special, which must mean that the standard model got a manual one—or perhaps none at all? I once saw a car from this era where the windshield wiper was done with human power. There was a little lever you used to move it back and forth with your hand while driving in the rain. The Buick shows how the engineering muscle of General Motors was paying off at this point. GM was building into its cars features that made them longer-lasting and better performing. But Chrysler was sometimes even more technologically advanced, even thought the performance information for Chrysler's low-priced 4-cylinder Maxwell in huge letters does not seem at all impressive to us today.

PF_Flyer · January 2019

ab348 said:
Mercury seemed to lead the industry in what would today be politically-incorrect advertising in the 1960s. First the one I posted earlier with the woman smoking in the rear seat. Now this, where apparently no women need apply at all:

I do wonder if anybody at the company or the ad agency even thought of how perhaps they were limiting their marketplace appeal by using this slogan.

I always thought the '67 and '68 Cougar was one of the best-looking cars of the time. I found the styling to be very well done. I would have loved to own one but alas, I wasn't yet old enough to drive!

I would respond simply that you can't apply how the world is today to the past. It would be like looking at an old fashion ad and wondering why they think THAT would appeal to anyone NOW

MY elephant bell jeans were pretty cool though

ab348 · January 2019

PF_Flyer said:

I would respond simply that you can't apply how the world is today to the past. It would be like looking at an old fashion ad and wondering why they think THAT would appeal to anyone NOW

I dunno if it is the same though. Back in '67 would many women in the market for a vehicle see that tagline and decide they wanted to buy a Cougar? Some maybe, but I suspect not many, and far more would rule it out quickly. Just not a very smart move.

It reminds me of when British Leyland brought out the Austin Princess in the '70s. How many men wanted to drive around in a car covered in "Princess" badges?

fintail · January 2019

Funny thing, I kind of like the Princess, as a wedge shaped piece of BL kitsch. Or I should say I like that it exists, but I don't plan to own one. Guilty pleasure.

Another funny thing, Mercury touting itself as a car for men, when in the last days of the brand, it was kind of a Ford for women.

No discussion of ads would be complete without the extremely courageous Granada campaign:

They even kept up a similar line of thought with the next gen:

PF_Flyer · January 2019

It's JUST like a Benz... un huh

PF_Flyer · January 2019

I had a '66 Newport. Guess I was classy

texases · January 2019

Not Mr. Steed!!!

My 8th-grade self got a laugh out of the Champion spark plug and its 'semi-petticoat tip'...

PF_Flyer · January 2019

I wonder if this is part of what led to elephant bell blue jeans?

berri · January 2019

Irony of it all is that all the domestic popular and premium brands stretching their price points wider may have ultimately helped the Europeans establish a luxury base here.

ab348 · January 2019

fintail said:
Funny thing, I kind of like the Princess, as a wedge shaped piece of BL kitsch. Or I should say I like that it exists, but I don't plan to own one. Guilty pleasure.

Another funny thing, Mercury touting itself as a car for men, when in the last days of the brand, it was kind of a Ford for women.

No discussion of ads would be complete without the extremely courageous Granada campaign:

Did you know that with the Granada campaign, Ford merely picked up where Audi left off just a few years previously? To wit:

I was waiting for a Granada ad post to set this up. I appreciate it.

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