Tag: Advertising

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Fun Finds from Out on the Trail

Fall is sale season where we live, and we look forward to those events that stretch for miles across the plains, like the Nebraska Junk Jaunt and the Highway 36 Treasure Hunt in Kansas. We did not make it to the Sparks Flea Market over Labor Day weekend, but we did hit Gatherings on the Blue near Milford as well as “Bargains For You on 92,” a collection of antique, estate, and yards sales along Highway 92 in Nebraska. We did not fill the truck, but we did find a few things worth mentioning. The first is an early license plate bracket, and by “early,” I mean it has a 1911 patent date:

The embossed lettering seen above reads as follows:

NEVEROUT PHILA

MODEL 7

PAT MAY 16 1911

OTHER PATS PENDG

Neverout made one bracket that was installed around the top of a lantern-type automobile light, but the one we found was meant to hang in front of the car with the clamp installed around the radiator neck (our bracket is missing one-half of this clamp). This ad from 1912 illustrates both types:

“Neverout” may seem like a strange name for a line of license plate brackets, but the manufacturer, Rose Manufacturing of Philadelphia, started out making bicycle lights and then moved on to making a whole range of accessories for automobiles including lights, radiator heaters, and even an electric hand warmer that fit over the steering wheel as seen in this ad published in 1920:

Another neat find was this vintage oil display cart. The wheels are not original, but they are old, so they do not detract from the retro look. This cart would have contained stacked cans of oil to be wheeled around at a service garage, and it would have had brand signage attached to the top bar. We only had the one pitiful can to demonstrate, so this one definitely needs to go to someone with a collection to show off.

Finally, it is hard to believe these paper cut-outs depicting 1932 Chevrolets are in such good condition considering they are nearly one hundred years old. They were part of a set of fourteen that GM mailed out in a box labeled “Style Packet” as part of that year’s advertising campaign.

On the back of each paper car is printed price and other information about that model.

The Style Packet also contained a booklet entitled, “71 Days of Work. ” Chevrolet, along with the rest of the automobile industry, was suffering losses amid the Great Depression, and it chose that title to encourage members of the public to purchase a new Chevrolet. According to the company, each purchase of a new Chevy Six supplied “a total of 71 days of gainful employment – the equivalent of three months’ working time for one man on the basis of a 5-day week.”

And it was not just workers in the automobile industry that were affected. H. J. Klinger, VP and general sales manager of Chevrolet Motor Co. said in an interview at the time that the automobile industry consumed more than 15 percent of all steel produced, 53 percent of all malleable iron, 68 percent of all plate glass, 18 percent of all hardwood lumber, 14 percent of all cotton, 26 percent of all lead, 30 percent of all nickel, and 83 percent of all rubber. The business of building and selling automobiles was the country’s biggest industry in 1932, and buying a new automobile did supply work and wages for Americans across many industries at a time when work was desperately needed.

1932 Chevrolet
Attribution: Valder137, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

We will hopefully find more notable car parts, accessories, and advertising pieces as we hit the sales over the next six weeks, and if you are also out searching for treasure, we will see you on the trail!

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A Dictator on Ice

So many fun, and occasionally dangerous, advertising gimmicks were utilized in the early years of the automobile industry. This innovative approach from Blue Sunoco Fuel and Studebaker appeared in December of 1933 and featured an ice-covered Studebaker Dictator:

Here in Nebraska, it is not unusual for an automobile to look like an iceberg on wheels when left outside during wintry conditions, but this Studebaker was a brand-new car, driven right off the production line and into the plant’s refrigeration room. There, with Blue Sunoco fuel in the tank and Sunoco motor oil in the crankcase, the car was loaded down with huge cakes of ice. Then the temperature of the room was brought down to 20 degrees below zero and a wind machine, blowing at a rate of 50 mph, sprayed water on the ice-covered car. In this frigid state, the car was left to sit for almost 48 hours.

During the above process, one window of the car was left open. This enabled one Miss Eloise Metz of South Bend, wearing layers of warm clothing, to be placed through the open window along with heating pads and hot coffee. Once she was ensconced in the ice-laden car, that window was sealed tightly with ice. Then the car was towed to the business center of South Bend where a large crowd and several timekeepers had gathered. Miss Metz was told to start that frozen car, and start it did, taking only three-fifths of a second to do so.

That seems like a fairly effective marketing technique. One has to question the approach of christening the car with the distinctly un-American name of “Dictator” in the first place, however. I have heard it said that the term “Dictator” was chosen because it meant that the car was dictating the standard for the industry, but then why were the other cars in the Studebaker stable called the President and the Commander? Also, check out the caption under this 1934 photo:

That relaxed attitude toward authoritarianism did not last long with Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler operating nefariously on the international stage, and people soon realized the Studebaker wasn’t the only dictator that should be put on ice. The Dictator name did not age well, and the Studebaker company quietly retired it a couple of years later.