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It's down to $1.99 here. Quite a remarkable drop in price.

Pat Holscher wrote:It's down to $1.99 here. Quite a remarkable drop in price.

Even lower now.

I bought diesel at $2.87 last night. Does anyone know for certain why diesel costs more than gasoline?

Funny thing was that I managed to fill up my entire tank for about $80.00. When I got home, I told my wife that "I was able to fill it up for only $80.00". We both paused, and realized that only a year or so ago, it seemed outrageous when it cost $80.00 to fill the tank up.

Advertising from the early automobile era. Not the super early era, just early. This is from the early 20s.

Pat,
Thats the most famous automobile poster of all time. Its considered to have permanently altered automobile advertising and introduced something we take for granted today but didn't exist at all until then. It says absolutely nothing about the car. It doesn't even show us what the car looks like...its all "image" as opposed to substance. Even the car's name tells us nothing. Most cars had Model Numbers or Letters. (i.e. Model T, Model R etc). I think this was the first car to have just a name (If memory serves the ad was published in 1922). The Jordan Playboy was an assembled car, made from components purchased from different manufacturers. Its sole claim to fame was its very sexy roadster body although it was nowhere near as fast as its appearance suggested. It was a very ordinary, uninspired car with brilliantly inspired advertising.

Sound familiar?

Joe P

I bought diesel at $2.87 last night. Does anyone know for certain why diesel costs more than gasoline?

I know about 8 cents of the difference is in tax. Here in Tucson there is about a 24 cent diference

fuel tax rates:
http://www.taxadmin.org/fta/rate/motor_fl.html

JV Puleo wrote:Pat,
Thats the most famous automobile poster of all time. Its considered to have permanently altered automobile advertising and introduced something we take for granted today but didn't exist at all until then. It says absolutely nothing about the car. It doesn't even show us what the car looks like...its all "image" as opposed to substance. Even the car's name tells us nothing. Most cars had Model Numbers or Letters. (i.e. Model T, Model R etc). I think this was the first car to have just a name (If memory serves the ad was published in 1922). The Jordan Playboy was an assembled car, made from components purchased from different manufacturers. Its sole claim to fame was its very sexy roadster body although it was nowhere near as fast as its appearance suggested. It was a very ordinary, uninspired car with brilliantly inspired advertising.

Sound familiar?

Joe P

Wow, how interesting.

I'd never even heard of this car brand before running across this advertisement, and I didn't know the advertisement was revolutionary. I also didn't know that anyone made cars by purchasing components from other outfits.

After reading this, I looked a few things up, as it was so interesting. It turns out that the Jordon of the Jordon Motor Car Company had previously been an advertising executive, and man does it show. This advertising is still pretty attractive, and we're used to it. It's enigmatic, and attractive.

It's also aimed at women, which says something about what was going on in the culture at the time. This ad clearly hopes to appeal to young women.

I guess this version of the ad is the most well known. Another in this same campaign also used this them, but without the color illustration, and more text. That text read:

SOMEWHERE west of Laramie there's a bronco-busting girl who knows what I’m talking about. She can tell what a sassy pony, that’s a cross between greased lighting and the place where it hits, can do with eleven hundred pounds of steel and action when he's going high, wide and handsome. The truth is - the Playboy was built for her. Built for the lass whose, face is brown with the sun when the day is done of revel and romp and race. She loves the cross of the wild and the tame. There's a savor of links about that car - of laughter and lilt and light - a hint of old loves - and saddle and quirt. It’s a brawny thing - yet a graceful thing for the sweep o' the Avenue. Step into the Playboy when the hour grows dull with things gone dead and stale. Then start for the land of real living with the spirit of the lass who rides, lean and rangy, into the red horizon of a Wyoming twilight.

Wow, what great ad copy, even if its all baloney.

Note the interesting reference to horses, which appears in both versions, one way or another.

Here's another Jordan ad for the same model of car, also directly aimed at women:

http://www.adoasis.net/images/5428-jordan.jpg

This one isn't as enigmatic or subtle, but the reference to horses shows up again. And in this one, the parents of the young women are urged to go out and buy a roadster.

I'd forgotten that Jordan was in the advertising business. The car was a flop but he literally changed almost everything about automotive advertising. It wasn't the first ad aimed a women but I think that is was the first one for a gasoline car aimed at the woman "owner-driver" (in the period term) Ads for electric cars were often aimed at the wealthy matron class and, of course, ads for big limosines could be aimed at ladies but it was assumed they would have a chauffeur.
An early ad for Visine...for "Auto Eye" reads "Charles the chauffeur and milady Juliette, the dashingest pair of the autoist set..." This was around 1908.

Assembled cars are very under rated. It was a way to get into production without the capital expenditure needed to build an automobile factory and it offered the advantage of literally being able to select the best components without having design them or to worry about patent infringement. Its still common on a smaller scale. In fact, things like Champion spark plugs and Delco starters began that way and were absorbed by the big car companies later. Before 1914 probably 80% of cars fell into this category. The famous Mercer Raceabout, for instance, was one. Early automotive trade magazines are full of advertisements for finished frames, transmissions, engines and radiators etc. In the early years all of Ford's engines were made by John and Horace Dodge. Henry Leland, who created the Cadillac, started in the motor business building engines for R.E. Olds. There were even companies that made improved engines for common models, not much different than today. Lycoming made engines for many cars but unlike most others stayed in the engine business, where they still are, and weren't absorbed by one of the car companies.

Joe P

Pat Holscher wrote:

JV Puleo wrote:Pat,
Thats the most famous automobile poster of all time. Its considered to have permanently altered automobile advertising and introduced something we take for granted today but didn't exist at all until then. It says absolutely nothing about the car. It doesn't even show us what the car looks like...its all "image" as opposed to substance. Even the car's name tells us nothing. Most cars had Model Numbers or Letters. (i.e. Model T, Model R etc). I think this was the first car to have just a name (If memory serves the ad was published in 1922). The Jordan Playboy was an assembled car, made from components purchased from different manufacturers. Its sole claim to fame was its very sexy roadster body although it was nowhere near as fast as its appearance suggested. It was a very ordinary, uninspired car with brilliantly inspired advertising.

Sound familiar?

Joe P

Wow, how interesting.

I'd never even heard of this car brand before running across this advertisement, and I didn't know the advertisement was revolutionary. I also didn't know that anyone made cars by purchasing components from other outfits.

After reading this, I looked a few things up, as it was so interesting. It turns out that the Jordon of the Jordon Motor Car Company had previously been an advertising executive, and man does it show. This advertising is still pretty attractive, and we're used to it. It's enigmatic, and attractive.

It's also aimed at women, which says something about what was going on in the culture at the time. This ad clearly hopes to appeal to young women.

I guess this version of the ad is the most well known. Another in this same campaign also used this them, but without the color illustration, and more text. That text read:

SOMEWHERE west of Laramie there's a bronco-busting girl who knows what I’m talking about. She can tell what a sassy pony, that’s a cross between greased lighting and the place where it hits, can do with eleven hundred pounds of steel and action when he's going high, wide and handsome. The truth is - the Playboy was built for her. Built for the lass whose, face is brown with the sun when the day is done of revel and romp and race. She loves the cross of the wild and the tame. There's a savor of links about that car - of laughter and lilt and light - a hint of old loves - and saddle and quirt. It’s a brawny thing - yet a graceful thing for the sweep o' the Avenue. Step into the Playboy when the hour grows dull with things gone dead and stale. Then start for the land of real living with the spirit of the lass who rides, lean and rangy, into the red horizon of a Wyoming twilight.

Wow, what great ad copy, even if its all baloney.

Note the interesting reference to horses, which appears in both versions, one way or another.

Here's another Jordan ad for the same model of car, also directly aimed at women:

http://www.adoasis.net/images/5428-jordan.jpg

This one isn't as enigmatic or subtle, but the reference to horses shows up again. And in this one, the parents of the young women are urged to go out and buy a roadster.

I too was unfamiliar with the ad or auto before today but can well believe Joe's comments on it. My first thought on reading the ad was how much it sounded like something out of a J. Peterman catalogue- same tone, style, and projected audience.

On assembled cars, wasn't the Dusenberg built onto purchased parts to some extent?

Sandy

Philip S wrote:fuel tax rates:
http://www.taxadmin.org/fta/rate/motor_fl.html

That's interesting. The added tax to diesel is only about .06. so the price difference isn't tax.

Funny, I read something just the other day boldly proclaiming that's what keeps diesel high. That would appear to be incorrect.

selewis wrote:I too was unfamiliar with the ad or auto before today but can well believe Joe's comments on it. My first thought on reading the ad was how much it sounded like something out of a J. Peterman catalogue- same tone, style, and projected audience

The J. Peterman catalog connection didn't occur to me, but that's quite correct. The advertisement operates off of the same set of assumptions that the audience is in on an elite set of ideas and experiences which the common man is not, just like the J. Peterman catalog did. So, by including us, we're in. We're part of the same set, in reading it, that the bronco-busting steer roping girl, somewhere west of Laramie is in, in that we're half wild, and half sophisticated.

Where do I buy my Jordan?

A book on Chrysler's history (which I found on the net) reports that Jordan was inspired to pen his advertisement while traveling by train through Wyoming. He must have been on the UP at the time, and a female horseman rode up along train, cantered a while and rode off. He asked a traveling companion where they were, and the companion replied "oh, somewhere west of Laramie".

Interesting story, but only an advertising genius would have thought to convert that into an automobile ad.

Funny though, in the limited selection of Jordan ads we've discussed, horses, the prior means of cross country transportation outside of towns, figure prominently.

Sandy,
I don't really know much about Dusenbergs. They are one of the few cars I've never had anything to do with but I would be surprised if they didn't have as many bought-out components as most did. Even the American Rolls-Royce used Buffalo wire wheels, American Bosch electrics and Westinghouse starters. That was common and no one would consider a RR an "assembled car". In fact, they had a reputation for making more of their own parts than almost anyone else in the luxury car field.

The Stutz was an assembled car...its slogan was "the car that made good in a day". It came about like this...Stutz manufactured rear axles for the trade. He assembled a car to test his rear axles. It seemed to have really good performance so it was entered in the 1911 Indianapolis 500. It came in 11th but that was good enough, seeing as it was an actual "production" car that anyone could buy, to establish its reputation and the Stutz automobile company was off and running.

Pat Holscher wrote:

Pat Holscher wrote:It's down to $1.99 here. Quite a remarkable drop in price.

Even lower now.

I bought diesel at $2.87 last night. Does anyone know for certain why diesel costs more than gasoline?

I read a while back that in the refining process diesel is in the same "cut of the barrel" as jet fuel, kerosene, and some other high demand products. According that analysis the price differential was purely supply and demand. Developing nations have a voracious appetite for diesel (somewhat less now due to economic conditions) and that demand will only increase over time (the demand curves posted with the piece showed the diesel demand curve steeper than the gasoline demand curve).

So even though gasoline is more expensive to produce it sells for less due to demand. Go figure.

JV Puleo wrote:Sandy,
I don't really know much about Dusenbergs. They are one of the few cars I've never had anything to do with but I would be surprised if they didn't have as many bought-out components as most did. Even the American Rolls-Royce used Buffalo wire wheels, American Bosch electrics and Westinghouse starters. That was common and no one would consider a RR an "assembled car". In fact, they had a reputation for making more of their own parts than almost anyone else in the luxury car field.

The Stutz was an assembled car...its slogan was "the car that made good in a day". It came about like this...Stutz manufactured rear axles for the trade. He assembled a car to test his rear axles. It seemed to have really good performance so it was entered in the 1911 Indianapolis 500. It came in 11th but that was good enough, seeing as it was an actual "production" car that anyone could buy, to establish its reputation and the Stutz automobile company was off and running.

Joe;
According to Wikipedia it appears that I had it exactly backwards. The Dusenberg brothers designed and built the mechanical components and farmed out the custom coach work. Interesting (short) article that outlines their career and association with E.L. Cord:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duesenberg

Sandy

Sandy,
That was the norm at the time. Almost no luxury car makers made the bodies although a few, like Cadillac, bought body companies. I doubt the Duesenberg borthers made starters or electrical stuff but that was not even expected of them. GM bought out the Fisher Brothers and RR bought the Brewster company although in the case of Brewster they continued making bodies for cars other than RRs. Almost all extremely top-end cars like Dusey's had what we would call "custom built" bodies. Packard, Cadillac, Pierce Arrow etc did have "stock" bodies but even those were often only semi finished with the buyer specifying color, upholstery etc. The completely finished high-end automobile, right off the lot, is really a post-WWII development.

Joe P

An interesting aspect of this is the shear number of automobile manufacturers prior to 1950. Man, there were a lot.

I wonder how many large scale coach and wagon manufacturers there were?

The major difference between building coaches and wagons and automobiles is the amount of capital expenditure involved. Assembled cars were popular because they minimized this. Until the 1920s all cars were sold for cash and there was a huge demand so that some of the early companies were literally financed by their suppliers. You could buy the parts on credit, assemble and sell the car and pay for the parts with the money. Of course it wasn't quite that easy but there was a minimal investment in heavy machinery. The "golden age" of this approach probably ended around 1910 as the larger companies realized that controlling their suppliers gave them the potential for more profit. As the big companies took over the independent suppliers, the smaller companies were squeezed out. But it never really ended, you could probably build an assembled car today but it would be very difficult to do it and compete with the big 3 or the Japanese.

Wagon making never had the same expenses. You needed heavy woodworking machinery but the need for foundries and high-precision metal working machines was absent. Thus, the entry level was lower and smaller operators were encouraged to enter the business. Also, building horse-drawn vehicles was a trade that was ancient in 1900. There was a huge amount of collective knowledge about it in the general population which means that the number of people qualified to undertake it was also huge. It was just the opposite for automobiles...the builders were the computer geeks of 1900. Actually, most car makers came from the machine industry, not horse drawn vehicles. I can only think of two that did, the Studebaker Brothers and the Durant-Dort Carriage company (i.e. General Motors).

Ford, Ransome Olds, the Dodge Brothers and Henry Leland (Cadillac) etc were all machinists. Walter Chrysler was a railroad man and railroad machine shops like American Locomotive (ALCO) produced some big, powerful cars. The Pope's in Hartford (Pope-Hartford, Pope-Toledo) were bicycle manufacturers. (They owned Colombia Bicycles). The Stanley brothers were just geniuses...they made their first fortune with the Stanley Dry Plate photographic process which they sold to George Eastman who combined it with his box camera and called it a Kodak.

So no...I don't think that horse drawn vehicles were ever made on the scale of automobiles. (I think I got carried away here!)

Joe P

JV Puleo wrote:The major difference between building coaches and wagons and automobiles is the amount of capital expenditure involved. Assembled cars were popular because they minimized this. Until the 1920s all cars were sold for cash and there was a huge demand so that some of the early companies were literally financed by their suppliers. You could buy the parts on credit, assemble and sell the car and pay for the parts with the money. Of course it wasn't quite that easy but there was a minimal investment in heavy machinery. The "golden age" of this approach probably ended around 1910 as the larger companies realized that controlling their suppliers gave them the potential for more profit. As the big companies took over the independent suppliers, the smaller companies were squeezed out. But it never really ended, you could probably build an assembled car today but it would be very difficult to do it and compete with the big 3 or the Japanese.

Wagon making never had the same expenses. You needed heavy woodworking machinery but the need for foundries and high-precision metal working machines was absent. Thus, the entry level was lower and smaller operators were encouraged to enter the business. Also, building horse-drawn vehicles was a trade that was ancient in 1900. There was a huge amount of collective knowledge about it in the general population which means that the number of people qualified to undertake it was also huge. It was just the opposite for automobiles...the builders were the computer geeks of 1900. Actually, most car makers came from the machine industry, not horse drawn vehicles. I can only think of two that did, the Studebaker Brothers and the Durant-Dort Carriage company (i.e. General Motors).

Ford, Ransome Olds, the Dodge Brothers and Henry Leland (Cadillac) etc were all machinists. Walter Chrysler was a railroad man and railroad machine shops like American Locomotive (ALCO) produced some big, powerful cars. The Pope's in Hartford (Pope-Hartford, Pope-Toledo) were bicycle manufacturers. (They owned Colombia Bicycles). The Stanley brothers were just geniuses...they made their first fortune with the Stanley Dry Plate photographic process which they sold to George Eastman who combined it with his box camera and called it a Kodak.

So no...I don't think that horse drawn vehicles were ever made on the scale of automobiles. (I think I got carried away here!)

Joe P

Thanks Joe, very insightful comments.

Today, as I was drying one of the vehicles made by the company started by the Dodge Brothers, all the news was about the Big Three, and mostly on the company descendant from Durant-Dort. Until I read this, I had no idea General Motors had started off as a carriage company.

Interesting example of how the car allowed greater access to the country. Bird hunters in 1905 and 1906.