Life, 1914-01-15 · page 6 of 40
Life — January 15, 1914 — page 6: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page is **not satirical or political**—it's an advertisement for Locomotile automobiles. The illustration shows a "Locomotile Opera Berlina," a luxury closed automobile parked before an elegant urban building, with well-dressed passengers and pedestrians. The accompanying text emphasizes that Locomotile closed cars offer home-like comfort and luxury. The company argues their vehicles receive "intimate personal attention and supervision," limiting production to "not more than Four Cars a Day" to maintain quality. They stress aesthetic refinement without "conspicuous features" that would advertise the car's expense. This is early automotive marketing targeting wealthy consumers seeking discretion and elegance. There is no satire or political content—simply a straightforward luxury goods advertisement from Life magazine's advertising pages.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
M4 <= “‘ Locomobile Opera Berline”* Locomobile Closed Cars The Locomobile owner spends more time in his closed car than on train or shipboard. In fact, the closed. car is used almost as much as the home. . To make the ideal closed car like the ideal home has been our endeavor. We have aimed to surround our closed cars with the luxury and repose of the home, to build into them the same comfort and safety that is built into the home. Realizing the difficulty of achieving this, ideal, we ex- tended our Organization to include artistic ability of na- tional reputation. We felt that in order to proceed equally along mechani- cal and aesthetic lines, extra effort and special develop- ment were necessary. We felt that the roles of architect, builder and decorator should be combined in one organi- zation. Another method adopted to achieve our ideal has been to eliminate distinguishing features that would advertise the car at the owner’s expense. As in the home, we have endeavored to create distinction without any savor of com- mercialism. Locomobile cars are essentially beautiful privately owned cars, first of all. The Locomobile carries no label. It acquires distinction through a lack of con- spicuous features. Our policy to build the Locomobile in limited quantities, not more than Four Cars a Day, has been a potent in- fluence in working out our ideal of the closed car. Only one Locomobile in seven is a closed car, It re- ceives intimate personal attention and supervision, which gives a distinct atmosphere to the completed product. The result of all these efforts hasbeen an increase in the sale of Locomobile closed cars over any previous year. As our output is limited we have fewer closed cars on hand at this time than ordinarily. Locomobile closed cars are illustrated in a color book, which we will forward on application, together with photographs from the Locomo- bile Studio, if the writer will kindly specify in which type of closed body he is particularly interested. The Locomobile Company of America Bridgeport, Conn. comicbooks.com