Life, 1929-08-16 · page 29 of 36
Life — August 16, 1929 — page 29: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a **car advertisement**, not a satirical cartoon. The page promotes the Dodge Senior automobile, a Chrysler Motors product. The advertisement's primary pitch is a **value proposition**: the car looks and performs like a luxury vehicle costing over $2,000, yet sells for $1,500—presenting this price gap as a "manufacturing triumph." The accompanying photograph shows well-dressed men examining the vehicle, suggesting prestige and quality inspection. The text emphasizes comfort, road performance, and convenient financing terms to appeal to middle-class buyers. The bottom illustration displays the Dodge Senior Brougham model with wire wheels. For modern readers: this represents early-20th-century automotive marketing, when such price differences were genuinely remarkable and manufacturers touted affordability as revolutionary achievement. The aspirational messaging—that buyers could afford luxury—was itself a significant sales innovation.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
e An outstanding triumph of a pre-eminent firm JUDGING by its appearance, you would instantly classify the Dodge Senior as a car selling for well over $2,000. Careful inspection of its appointments sustains this first impression and behind the wheel its sparkling perform- ance serves to strengthen the belicf that no car selling for less than $2,000 could possibly offer so much in comfort, in luxurious motoring case and road mastery. Yet the unique facilities of Dodge Brothers, fortified by the well-nigh unlimited resources of Chrysler Motors, make it possible to produce this marvelous car to sell in the $1,500 class. The Dodge Senior is undeniably one of the greatest manufacturing triumphs just as it is one of the most impressive values of all automotive history. Three or four-speed transmission. Convenient Terms. ° DODGE BROTHERS SENIOR @® cuRYSLER MOTORS PRODUCT ocs DODGE SENIOR BROUGHAM (wire wheels extra) comicbooks.com