Life, 1917-04-19 · page 3 of 42
Life — April 19, 1917 — page 3: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is **not political satire or comics**, but rather a **luxury automobile advertisement** from *Life* magazine (page 663). The Pierce-Arrow Motor Car Company uses a tiger as a metaphor for their vehicle, emphasizing "grace"—defined as power combined with elegant proportions and effortless performance. The advertisement compares the car's design to the tiger's natural beauty: strength without awkwardness. The text appeals to early 20th-century automotive buyers by suggesting the Pierce-Arrow offers both mechanical superiority and an almost spiritual driving experience—"a feeling far beyond propulsion by machinery." This represents typical high-end advertising strategy: associating a luxury product with natural elegance and refined power rather than mere technical specifications.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
The shape of the Pierce-Arrow car—its natural silhouette— expresses power in lines of grace which half reveal and half conceal the strength within. That gracefulness is the gracefulness of proportion, of design, of appropriateness. It is graceful, not with the attenuated slimness of the greyhound, but rather with the light yet powerful grace of the tiger—power without awkwardness, Tt 1s a grace of feeling as well as of form. In its operation the car gives you a soaring sense of lightness which almost spurns the prosaic roadway and gives to the act of riding in it a feeling far beyond propulsion by machinery. THE PIERCE‘-ARROW MOTOR CAR CO-~ Burrato N Y Mponvart comicbooks.com