Life, 1921-02-10 · page 35 of 42
Life — February 10, 1921 — page 35: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is **not a cartoon or satire page**—it's a **Packard automobile advertisement** from Life magazine's early 20th century. The page features a front-view photograph of a Packard Twin-Six automobile and marketing copy praising the car's engineering over "twenty years." The ad emphasizes quality, incremental improvement, and the integration of luxury features (beauty, comfort, silence) with performance (strength, speed, power, safety). The famous closing line—"Ask the man who owns one"—became one of advertising's most iconic slogans, implying that satisfied owners would vouch for the product's quality. This represents **luxury car advertising during the early automotive era**, when Packard competed with other prestigious manufacturers. The prices listed ($6,300 and $2,975) reflected significant wealth required for ownership, positioning Packard as an elite brand for affluent Americans.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
PACKARD a i 1 PAC K A ROD TWwitn-estx srpPeEctrAL HIS to the honor of Packard men: through all of twenty years, their work has held true to Packard’s standard. Perennially, they have made the Packard Car as good as it could be made, each year improving a little on what had been done before. Under their hands, beauty has been joined to strength, speed to safety, comfort to utility, and to power, silence. PACKARD MOTOR CAR COMPANY : DETROIT The Packard Twin-Six Special . The Packard Single-Six Touring $6300 at Detroit $2975 at Detroit Ask the man who owns one comicbooks.com