Ned Jordan

-Edward S. (Ned) Jordan.  Advertisement for the Jordan Playboy Automobile published 1923.

Edward S. (Ned) Jordan - (unknown birth and death dates).

Ned Jordan was a writer and reporter.  He became involved in the automobile business around 1906, working for his father-in-law, owner of the Jeffery Motor Car Company.  When this company was sold to Nash, Jordan formed the Jordan Motor Car Co. in Cleveland around 1918. 

While traveling on a train in Wyoming, Jordan saw a beautiful woman on a horse from the train window.  He asked a friend where they were and the answer was, “Oh, somewhere west of Laramie.”

Jordan immediately started to write this advertisement for the Jordan Playboy, which was published in the Saturday Evening Post shortly thereafter, with illustration by Fred Cole.  It became the most famous of all automobile advertisements, easily one of the best ads of all time, cited in scores of textbooks as a model of the craft.  From that point on, advertising started selling the romance of the product more than the product itself.

Somewhere west of Laramie there’s a broncho-busting, steer-roping girl who knows what I’m talking about.

She can tell what a sassy pony, that’s a cross between greased lightning and the place where it hits, can do with eleven hundred pounds of steel and action when he’s going high, wide and handsome.

The truth is--the Playboy was built for her.

Built for the lass whose face is brown with the sun when the day is done of revel and romp and race.

She loves the cross of the wild and the tame.

There’s a savor of links about that car--of laughter and lilt and light--a hint of old loves--and saddle and quirt.  It’s a brawny thing--yet a graceful thing for the sweep o’ the Avenue.

Step into the Playboy when the hour grows dull with things gone dead and stale.

Then start for the land of real living with the spirit of the lass who rides, lean and rangy, into the red horizon of a Wyoming twilight.