Oldsmobile's Rocket of the Past

Oldsmobile Rocket 88 Advertisement: Life Magazine, January 19, 1953

Although NASA was still five years away from the public's collective conscience, rockets were already streaking across the cultural stratosphere in 1953.  Buck Rogers and his 25th Century exploits had been around for twenty-five years.  More than fifty years had already come and gone since Georges Méliès had taken that first Trip to the Moon.  And the grim, technological warfare that engulfed the world ten years before had been filled with the shriek of the German Army's nebelwerfer, the flash of the American Bazooka rocket launcher, and the terror inducing scream of the V-1 rocket and its supersonic cousin the V-2.  So it is not surprising that rockets, which have been around far longer than you might imagine, carried a great portion of Oldsmobile's advertising payload in the 1950's.

How long have rockets been around?
Just ask Alexander the Great,
as depicted by Conrad Kyser in
his "Bellifortis".  (circa 1405 AD)

Oldsmobile introduced the Rocket V8, the first mass-produced overhead valve V8 engine, in 1949.  (Plans were made to call it "Kettering Power", in honor of the project's chief engineer Charles Kettering, but the plans never made it off the launchpad, so to speak.)  The Rocket V8 would continue to be produced in some form until 1990.

But we're rocketing too far into the future.  Let's get back to to 1953.

If you were thinking of buying a new car that year, Oldsmobile wanted to get your attention.  And what better way to do it than a three-page spread in a January printing of Life Magazine?  Christmas has come and gone.  The kids are back in school.  It's cold outside and you're stuck indoors with the latest magazine, one of the few windows on the world at large available to you.  You turn the page, and there it is, streaking across the page: a golden rocket on a black and white background.  How could it fail to grab you by your imagination?

Can you believe it?  The Rocket you've been hearing your pals talk about, that wonder of the driving world, the Rocket V8, now has higher-power, higher compression and higher-voltage?  A full-on 165 horsepower?  (And that jerk co-worker was bragging about his '49 Rocket with a measly 135 HP!)  Maybe driving dad's '42 Ford Rattletrap for the last few years was worth it.  After all, the war's been over for eight years now, and money's not as tight as it was...and that is a really cool, sleek rocket...

You want a rocket.  Guys want rockets.  We all want a rocket!

And why wouldn't you?  Look what it says: the new "Ruling Power of the Road"...latest and greatest version of the most famous engine in automobile history.  Hey, it also says "see next page".

So turn the page already!

Oh yeah, you gotta buy this car.  And look what it says: it's the car you've been waiting for...most beautiful, most powerful ever built!  And it has the new Pedal-Ease Power Brakes (for quicker, surer stopping power!).  New Power-Ride Chassis?  New Power Styling?  That is crazy, as the kids are saying nowadays.

And boy does that hood look better than dad's Ford?  No contest.

Now, if only the wife won't complain too much when you use all your savings to get this baby.  But I'm sure she'd be happy if you bought one.  Just look at how happy that couple is:

The only real question is which model to buy?  The featured model in the ad is a "88 Holiday Coupe".  If its $2,673 price is a little high, you could grab the base model, which was re-christened for '53 as the "DeLuxe 88" for only $2,262.  But why settle for the base model when you could spend just a bit more, $2,395 for the "Super 88"?    Doesn't that sound...super?  Hey, just a wee bit more, $2,853, gets you in that convertible coupe.  Of course, there's always the step-up to the classic 98 series...but that's gonna cost you closer to three thousand dollars.

What the ad doesn't tell you is what Oldsmobile couldn't know at this time.  Due to a fire at GM's Livonia, Michigan Hydra-Matic transmission plant later in the year, thousands of the '53 Oldsmobile 88s would be built with the Buick two-speed Dyna-Flow transmissions.  Which one was a better transmission?  I'll let you readers debate that below.

All I know is I want a rocket.  A Rocket 88.  Don't you?

(Sales prices and production numbers found at HowStuffWorks.)

A Look back at Life, August 21, 1950

The best way to get a feel for what people were like in times gone by is to look at the advertisers of that given period.  We love to protest that ad-men are slimy, unethical leeches who write copy for a public they know nothing about.  But the fact is, they know a lot about the public--their target audience.  They study people, study their habits, study their desires, and study their insecurities.  In truth, they know us better than we know ourselves.  So when I look through old magazines, I don't really read the articles much.  Not if I want to get an idea of what sort of people were around at the time it was printed.  I go right for the ads.

  And so as I perused a copy of Life from 1950, I made note of a few ads that caught my attention.  Let's have a look:

Okay, you know I'm a vintage car ad guy.  So I had to start with this great shot.  We know that the space frenzy would hit the United States in the late Fifties.  NASA, after all, was formed in 1958.  However, back in 1950, these Oldsmobile 88s had rocket engines, and the amazing Hydra-Matic!  You might think that at this point the public still thought of Wernher Von Braun's rockets, as well as those seen in the old Flash Gordon serials.  But in 1950, movie screens were already filled with rocket ships zipping across theaters in such exciting movies as Destination Moon and Rocketship X-M, both of which were released before August of that year.  

  I'm presently in the market for a new car.  And if someone out there made a car this beautiful, I would grab it.  Go ahead, take a moment to just gaze at it.  I'll wait.

Okay, this one has me scratching my head.  Let's think about this fine looking ad.  At first blush, it seems to be an ad for a kid's drink.  Certainly it is at least a kid's cough medicine.  However, it clearly says--

   Million of bottles are bought by men who like that clear clean taste.

  Okay, that leaves the kids out of it.  And judging by the jaunty looking waiters in the bottom corner, it would appear to be a liquor ad.  But surely now, since the main image here is a child-like giraffe.  Let's take a look at the fine print.  It reads:   

   Even if Joe Giraffe can't talk, his actions speak louder than words.  And if you'll notice that delighted sparkle in his eyes at the clear, clean taste of his jungle lunch, you'll understand what we mean by PM's clear, clean taste.  Drink PM this p.m. and see why so many millions of men keep on ordering it.

  So Joe Giraffe is ordering an evening drink for his jungle lunch.  And if you look at the really small print, you'll see this blended whiskey is 86 proof, and a whopping 67 and 1/2% Grain Neutral Spirits. Yeah, I guess that does explain that sparkle in the little nipper's eye.

I love New Orleans more than most people, and our family enjoys a good gumbo now and then.  And as you can see, Campbell's soup made Gumbo famous, not New Orleans.  Fair enough.  I'll buy that, since it takes a national ad campaign to really get an unusual regional food nationally recognized.  We'll give them good marks for this bold assertion.

  They even get the main ingredients right: green okra, tomatoes, rice, and not least, those tender pieces of chicken.  (Okay, the tomato thing doesn't make sense.  I've eaten a lot of gumbo, and never really seen chunks of tomatoes or anything, but we'll let this go.  They're confused about the roux base, I guess.)  I even think they get points for adding a bit of poetry:

    I dance the night/In gay cotillions,/Then serve this soup/That pleases million!

  Not too bad.

  But let us look at the always troublesome fine print.  See it there, next to the picture of the lady in the kitchen?  No need to squint.  I'll type it out for you:

   Typical New Orleans courtyard kitchen

  Now, I'm willing to concede that in 1950, some older kitchens were still around, but I doubt the typical New Orleans kitchen looked like a scene from Mount Vernon circa 1788.  But I've always been a bit on the cynical side, so perhaps I'm not to be trusted.

  Okay, let's finish with a curiosity.  This one requires audience participation.  So get your fingers ready to offer suggestions.  Let's see what we have:

  First of all, let's momentarily ignore the lady in the bath water.  (Come on, guys, play along.)  At the top we see this is a Listerine ad.  In fact, it is a Listerine tooth paste ad.  Okay, that's cool.  I would never have thought of brushing my teeth with Listerine, since I associate it with the worst form of childhood torture my parents ever inflicted on me.  (And yes, it beat out holding a bar of soap in my mouth as the worst torture, even though it was supposed to actually help us and it wasn't a form of punishment like the soap in our mouths.)  Now, here's hoping the tooth paste here does not taste like the original Listerine flavor, which, I think is essentially the flavor it had when they first mixed the gasoline, turpentine, and peroxide to create their wonderful product.  (I don't really know what is in that awful stuff, but my guess seems highly likely, wouldn't you agree?)

  Now at the bottom we also see that this tooth paste cuts tooth decay way down!  (This is obviously the conclusion after a great deal of scientific study.  I mean, just consider how authoritative that sounds: tooth decay cut way down!  Swell!)

  And since we all know how important saving money is, I can get excited about their assertion that...Every time you buy a "Thrift-Pak" (two regular 45¢ tubes for 59¢!) you save yourself 30¢.  Within a year the average family's bound to save as much as $3.00 or more.

  And they even put the word "bound" in italics, as if they realize it's a little silly to be so wishy-washy with their ad-copy.  But still, I like that they're pointing out how a family will save money.

  But now let's go back to the girl in the bathtub.  Can anyone tell me what this lovely creature is doing with a bar of soap in her hand as the caption boldly states "Treat yourself to your Favorite Bath Salts!"?  Please don't tell me she's putting Listerine in her bath water.  Though that might explain why she's trying to wipe the suds and water from the corner of her eye.  Or maybe they're just tears.  I know I cried many tears when mom forced me to gargle with Listerine.  

Bonus Question

Anyone ever heard of Veedol?  I could just look it up on the web, but I'd rather see if any of you...more experienced guys (or even gals!) remember this fine looking motor oil.  I have to say, I love the elegant yet simple design of the ad.  So if you remember your dad buying Veedol, or you bought it once and it totally ruined your engine, or you fell in love with the girl you first saw standing by a stack of Veedol cans at the gas station, jump in and let me know.  I'd love to hear from you!