i was going through an old book i have called "Why Did They Name It...?" (printed in 1964) and i found something quite interesting in it pertaining to Nash and Rambler and here is what it says:
The Rambler automobile is a mere sixty years old, but the name itself is one of the oldest in transportation. Thomas B. Jeffery, the English-born inventor of the Rambler automobile, was for many years a very successful manufacturer of bicycles which he sold under the Rambler name. Though he built his fortune in the bicycle and automobile business, he is best known for his invention and manufacturer of the clincher tire in the 1880's.
Jeffery sold his bicycle business, and at America's first automobile race in 1895 he saw the new mode of transportation for the first time. With the proceeds from the sale of his prosperous bicycle company, he bout a vacant plant in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and happily began experimenting with the new "horseless carriage." By the fall of 1900, Jeffery had developed two new "gasoline vehicles" a "runabout" (completely open) and a "stanhope" (with top). These first experimental cars were "radical" in design, with the engine mounted in the front and a steering wheel mechanism on the left. However, in a shrewd gauge of public opinion, when Jeffery introduced the car for sale two years later, the engine was rearmounted and the car steered by a tiller from the right-hand side.
These Rambler "carriages" (Jeffery had retained the trade name) were one-cylinder, 12-horsepower cars. The runabout sold for $750, and the stanhope for $825. They were an instant success. In 1902, when only 23,000 motor cars were registered in the United States, Jeffery turned out 1,500 vehicles to become the world's second mass-producer of automobiles. (A year after Oldsmobile and a year ahead of Ford.)
"Customer relations" might also be said to have been in its infancy as evidence by a priceless 1902 Rambler Instruction Manual which bluntly states:
The easiest way of avoiding trouble is to learn the carriage (automobile) thoroughly and understandingly; it is an incontrovertible fact that fully nine-tenths of the troubles experienced by the operator of motor cars are caused by the ignorance of the former, and not by the defects of the latter.
Early owners were also charged with heavy maintenance responsibilities for keeping their "carriages" in good operating condition: Every point of lubrication should be carefully gone over each morning before commencing the day's work."
Mysteries of the carburetor were explained in detail, and step-by-step instructions provided for adjusting the poppet valve if the one-cylinder engine should begin to smoke or misfire. No claims for gasoline economy were made. In fact, the manufacturer frankly admitted that "ordinarily a great waste occurs."
Nevertheless, most '02 Rambler owners were pleased with their vehicles, but one dissenting voice from Elmira, New York: "It seems to us that this machine is geared to run at too high a speed for our roads. In fact, we know this is the case, unless there is some way of making it run slower than we have yet to found out." (Top speed of the 12-horsepower engine was 25 m.p.h.)
Jeffery's success was due not only to sound engineering, but also to imaginative promotion. His advertising manager, Ned Jordan, covered the countryside with more than 5,000 road signs which indicated the distance to the nearest town or city, and in which direction it lay. this was a master stroke, since the only way to get from one town to another was by asking the nearest farmer for directions. Each sign was, of course, prominently inscribed with the word, Rambler.
Thomas B. Jeffery died in 1910, and the purchaser of his company was Charles W. Nash, who had resigned as president of General Motors to found a new company, and build a car under his own name. In 1918 the first Nash car, powered by a six-cylinder valve-in-head engine, made its bow.
In 1937, Nash merged with the Kelvinator Corporation under the leadership of George Mason who had been Chrysler's works manager at the age of 30. He promptly put Nash engineers to work on a new, economical, lightweight car which appeared in 1940 as the Nash "600" so named because it could go 600 miles on a 20-gallon tank of gasoline. In March, 1050, the Nash company introduced the first modern compact car, and the nostalgic name of Rambler was revived for the new line.
the convenience and thrift of the little car was its own best publicity. It appealed to the "common sense" of the American people. Big cars were being assailed as "gas-guzzling dinosaurs," and cartoonists, newspaper editorial writers, university economists, and even songwriters joined in ridiculing the useless fins and ostentation of the big cars.
One famous humorist toasted the Rambler as "the greatest invention since the ice cube."
Topic: AMCs in the media (Read 329188 times)