Life — January 6, 1916 — page 6: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Explanation for Modern Readers This is an advertisement for the Chalmers automobile, specifically its new 3400 r.p.m. (revolutions per minute) engine model. The text celebrates the car's popularity—100,000 people visited showrooms in two months following its $22,000,000 launch. The key appeal was **acceleration and speed**. The advertisement emphasizes that 3400 r.p.m. represented the highest engine speed available for American stock cars, contrasting with European vehicles that used smaller, less powerful engines due to high fuel costs and tax structures based on horsepower. The simple line drawing shows a car on a country road, illustrating the "great treat of a run in the open country" promised by the accelerator. This is straightforward automotive marketing, not political satire—it's celebrating American engineering superiority and the consumer appeal of a powerful, fast automobile.