Life, 1928-10-19 · page 39 of 40
Life — October 19, 1928 — page 39: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a **Packard automobile advertisement**, not political satire. The page promotes the Packard Eight 633 luxury sedan through a testimonial format. The advertisement uses a common early 20th-century sales technique: the "Ask the Man Who Owns One" slogan (visible top right). The text presents an affluent owner's argument that Packards, while expensive initially, prove economical long-term because they require fewer replacements and minimal maintenance compared to cheaper cars. The photograph shows well-dressed men examining or discussing the vehicle, reinforcing the aspirational, upper-class positioning. The illustration displays the elegant seven-passenger sedan. For modern readers: this represents pre-Depression era luxury marketing that emphasized reliability and value-retention—appealing to wealthy buyers justifying premium prices through total cost-of-ownership logic rather than mere prestige.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
++ my experience is that the best is always the cheapest in the long run—in any line— clothes, automobiles, or shot- guns. If you keep a Packard, say four years, it won't cost you any more than your present car. You buy two cars now to my one, pay as much deprecia- tion as I do and then don't have the car you want. And I'll bet you a good dinner that the expenses of running my Packard, gas, oil, repairs, and so on, aren't a bit more than you are paying. Ilustrated above is the Packard Eight 633 Seven-Passenger Sedan ASK THE MAN WHO OWNS ONE comicbooks.com