Life, 1920-03-11 · page 39 of 40
Life — March 11, 1920 — page 39: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a **commercial advertisement**, not satire or political commentary. It promotes the Marmon 34 automobile, manufactured by Nordyke & Marmon Company in Indianapolis. The ad claims the Marmon 34 represents a technological breakthrough—a car built with aircraft-engine precision, making it exceptionally smooth and reliable. The key selling point references **World War I aircraft engine manufacturing** for the U.S. government, positioning the car as embodying cutting-edge engineering lessons from military aviation. The accompanying illustration shows a side-view drawing of the automobile itself. For modern readers: this appeal to military-industrial expertise was a common 1920s marketing strategy, leveraging patriotic associations with wartime production to suggest superior quality and American innovation.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
MARMON 34 | A motor car built to a new degree of accuracy—so smooth in operation, so im- mune to trouble and wear as to be an entirely new experience for the motor- ing world. A motor car that truly reflects the great lessons we learned in build- ing aircraft engines for the government — that is the new series Marmon 34. Norpyke Marmon Company Established 1851 4 INDIANAPOLIS comicbooks.com