In 20th Century automobile print advertising, automakers often depicted their new models in settings that attracted the attention of potential customers and instilled a positive sentiment. Consequent...
1978 Corvette print advertising. Magazine ads and brochure images courtesy Lov2XLR8.no. In 1978, Chevrolet marked a milestone anniversary for its celebrated sports car: The Corvette turned 25 years o...
Can you imagine buying tires for your car knowing that they are only guaranteed to last 5,000 miles? Considering that the average American motorist drives 12,000 to 15,000 miles every year, that mean...
1964 Pontiac ad. Images courtesy of the Automotive History Preservation Society. Ads from automakers today tout things like fuel economy, display screen size, and cargo space. In 1964, Pontiac took a...
Art courtesy of the Automotive History Preservation Society. I wonder how many muscle car devotees conjured up their ultimate 1972 GTO from this ad during the model year. For anyone who construed the...
1969 Mercury Marauder X-100 brochure courtesy of Lov2XLR8.no. Life is all about compromise. For maximum velocity, weight is the enemy, which typically means that smaller is favorable to larger. Not e...
Vintage advertisements courtesy Lov2XLR8.no. Introduced for the 1967 model year, Chevrolet’s Camaro was designed to go head-to-head with the phenomenally successful Ford Mustang. By the Camaro’s thir...
Vintage ads courtesy of the Automotive History Preservation Society. Many automakers diversified their advertising content for the same car to reach more potential buyers, and Pontiac was no differen...
Photo by author. Longtime readers of the Hemmings Daily will recall me mentioning that my parents owned a 1965 GTO when I was very young. It was Burgundy with a black interior, the 360-hp Tri-Power e...
Art courtesy of the Automotive History Preservation Society. Here’s an ad that will get you thinking. GM’s redesigned muscle cars from each division are all in one place and all with one owner — cert...
Marketing automobiles has certainly come a long way since the days prior to World War II. Back then, when a dealer wanted to get the word out about the cars that he was selling, he would either adver...
Still image from video below. I grew up in the 1970s and recall having Aurora AFX and Tyco slot car sets and later slotless car sets like Lionel’s PowerPassers, where the cars could change lanes. Tra...
1966 Buick Skylark GS. Artwork provided by the Automotive History Preservation Society. I believe that this advertisement really stands out among other Buick GS ads of its era for evoking emotion and...
1954 De Soto Coronado. Brochure and ad scans from author’s collection. During the boom years of the immediate postwar era, auto manufacturers were doing their best to create ads that touted their new...
Ads courtesy of the Automotive History Preservation Society If you’ve ever noticed that sometimes the car in the ad looks a bit different from the car that you buy, you may find this blog entertainin...
1966 Mercury Comet Cyclone GT brochure from the author’s collection. Most of us wouldn’t likely equate the Comet Cyclone GT with Russian spies, but it appears that Mercury wanted viewers of this film...
Brochure images courtesy The Old Car Manual Project. If you remember the 1970s, the saying goes, you weren’t there. For those that have forgotten the start of the decade that saw the death of the mus...
Used car pricing from a May 1948 Minneapolis Sunday Tribune. Old newspapers have always been a great window into seeing what life was like at a time many of us weren’t even a glint in our father’s ey...
Image courtesy The Old Car Manual Project. The picture tells a thousand words. Dad grins knowingly as his India Ivory over Matador Red Bel Air Sport Sedan pulls the steep grade. His wife and daughter...
All photos are frame grabs from video below. By the mid-1940s, it seems to us that most of the obvious period catch phrases had already been used up due to the prodigious number of film shorts being ...
All photos are frame grabs from video below. Who says Jam Handy couldn’t produce a straight-forward advertisement for Chevrolet? We can debunk that myth right here: This is an eight-and-change-minute...