Life, 1920-05-13 · page 37 of 52
Life — May 13, 1920 — page 37: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is **not a cartoon or satire**—it's a straightforward automobile advertisement from *Life* magazine (page 903). The page promotes the Lafayette automobile, manufactured by Lafayette Motors Company in Indianapolis. The text uses elevated, almost poetic language to market the car to different audiences: to technically-minded owners, it emphasizes engineering precision (eight-cylinder engine, oil-cooled crankshaft, five-bearing design); to average buyers, it promises reliability and durability. The small oval portrait at top appears to be a historical figure (possibly the Marquis de Lafayette, namesake of the brand), and a photograph of the actual car is displayed in a decorative circular frame at the bottom. This represents typical early 20th-century automotive advertising strategy: using technical jargon and appeals to both sophistication and practical value to justify the car's purchase price and quality.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
BK LAFAYETT. ONTEMPLATING the LaFaverre, the man of tech- nically practiced eye reads its mech- anism with the professional delight of a composer scanning the score of a distinguished opera. Here, too, is perfect concord of parts; an unerring harmony of composition ; differing chiefly in that its expression is in steel, instead of sound. What to the layman's view is a compactly powerful eight-cylinder engine of clean and unencumbered design, he sees as a simplified and advanced product of modern engi neering science. What to the casual glance, again, isa five-bearing oil-cooled crankshaft, to him is the source of a durability and steadiness in action to which the earlier motor car is stranger. Throughout LaFayerre’s whole low- swung structure, so surely has it been conceived and ably realized, there is nota single bent rod nor like mechan- ical compromise. To you, as an owner of LaFayette, these separate factors in its excellence will appear not primarily in them- selves, but in the fine character of service the car will give you over many years. LAFAYETTE MOTORS COMPANY at 2ers Hid! Ino comicbooks.com