First Car Ad

Volt-Electric-Car-at-LA-Auto-show-2Saturday, July 29 — The nation’s love affair with automobiles is generations old. Our devotion can be traced down through the decades by looking at advertising, as cars progressed from romantic if noisy new playthings to a near necessity in our vast country. The first known national ad promoting a car appeared in late July 1898 in the Scientific American magazine. It was for the now forgotten Winton Motor Carriage with the headline “dispense with a horse.” Americans did just that, and by 1906, 57 car companies spent over a half-million dollars advertising in 12 national magazines. Today, joining auto manufacturers in advertising the latest models are many of the country’s more than 21,400 new car dealers.

You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau online here.

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