Life, 1923-03-29 · page 33 of 40
Life — March 29, 1923 — page 33: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a 1923 advertisement, not a cartoon or satire. It promotes Royal Cord tires manufactured by United States Tire Company. The ad addresses new tire buyers (claiming approximately one million in 1923) and uses an unusual sales approach: it explicitly invites customers to test a Royal Cord on "the right hind wheel" of their vehicle. The text acknowledges this breaks conventional advertising rules against asking people to "buy a thing and try it." The ad's messaging emphasizes quality, simplicity, and leadership rather than exaggerated claims about mileage or discounts. It positions Royal Cords as the market standard against which other tire values are measured. The large tire image displays the product prominently with the brand name visible on the sidewall. The US Tire Company logo appears in the upper left corner. For modern readers, this reflects early automotive-era marketing and the novelty of consumer tire-testing practices in the 1920s.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
‘To the new users of Royal Cords — probably a million‘ in 1923 Mo rules are all the better for being broken once in a while. There’s an advertising rule, for instance— never to ask anyone to buy a thing and try it. When the makers ask you to try a Royal Cord on your right hind wheel they may be breaking the rule, but you will benefit thereby. The makers of Royal Cords, for their part, can’t see why making friends should ever go out of fashion. The more quality a tire has—and the more leadership—the greater its obligation to be simple and direct. Royal Cords earned their position of high regard by simple things. You can easily see that people’s confidence in Royal Cords couldneverhave been won by quoting a lot of big mileages, talking big dis- counts, or going through all those other kinds of gestures with the idea of registering big. The makers of Royal Cords devote them- selves to guarding quality and have no desire to dazzle customers. Their ideas seem to be right, because U.S. Royal Cords are the measure of all tire val- ues today. United States Tires are Good Tires © 1923, U. S. Tire Co., N. ¥. comicbooks.com