Now you are ready to go places!

[0X01B8]

Found this '57 Plymouth owner's manual at my folks house the other day.  It was my Grandfather's car, his next car was a '65 Fury II - my first car, which by the time I took possession, was nearly 20 years old.  If he wasn't a Plymouth man then who knows what would have happened to me.  I've got the manual for that one too but it's kinda boring.  Anyway, I like how they wrote manuals back then, the whole thing is written in an optimistic, post war, innocent, everything is just swell attitude.  Like "This is your very own, brand new automobile, and now you can drive somewhere and do things!  Isn't that great!  It goes where you point it!"

Bob Eubanks would copy that same style years later when he announced the shitty prizes on the Newlywed Game, except is was a cynical joke in the early '70s.  Everybody had to know that the hysterical newlyweds would be dragging the brown, shag carpet and the yellow appliances to the curb two weeks later.  They likely put too many pairs of bell bottom jeans in the crap washer and it broke under the strain.  Or maybe the washer possessed self-respect and it just didn't want to have anything to do with bell bottom jeans - we may never know.  Maybe the happy, post-hippie couple were smart and took the cash instead, but since Nixon printed so much money to pay for Vietnam, the cash was pretty much worthless as well.

Nixon had his revenge though.  Nobody dicks Nixon and gets away with it.  The dollar became a joke, the price of gas went through the roof, and everybody had to ditch their inefficient, titanic vehicles in favor of ugly-ass, small, high mileage cars.   No, I'm not talking about the 70s anymore, I'm talking about today.  Two of Nixon's henchmen went on to avenge his disgrace - Rumsfeld and Cheney, and succeeded beyond anybody's craziest expectations.

More proof, the new Challenger has arrived just in time for the end of the party, and Ralph Nader wants everybody out of his place by 4:00 AM or he's calling the cops.  I think we know what happens next.  Like a biblical plague of locusts, Disco will descend upon the Earth once again, infecting every hapless subwoofer with its soulless beat and every tweeter with its hollow message of empowerment.  Except this time the Ramones won't be around to save us, they're all dead.

-john

[0X01B8]

..

[Brock Samson]

cool,.. and an intertesting rant as well... 
i've been buying selected old promos too, my faves are a '56 Buick and pre-war desoto full color brochures...

[Ghoste]

I'm not sure if this is anti-republican, anti-disco, or pro-Plymouth.    The 70's weren't all bad and the 50's weren't all good.  Cool manual though and I've always been fascinated by the way ad copy has changed over the decades as well.