{"id":3861,"date":"2011-03-16T21:31:48","date_gmt":"2011-03-17T01:31:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/?p=3861"},"modified":"2011-03-16T21:36:46","modified_gmt":"2011-03-17T01:36:46","slug":"the-good-maxwell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/2011\/03\/the-good-maxwell\/","title":{"rendered":"The Good Maxwell"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"1924<\/a><\/p>\n

In 1922, the Maxwell Motor Company<\/a> began an advertising campaign touting “The Good Maxwell<\/a>.” Does that mean that prior Maxwells were bad? Unfortunately, some of them were.<\/p>\n

It had not always been so. Jonathan Maxwell was a pal of Benjamin Briscoe<\/a>, and Briscoe convinced J.P. Morgan to invest in their new car company. The jaunty little two-cylinder Maxwell runabout<\/a> developed a fond following, and by 1909 the make achieved third place in sales. Comedian Jack Benny<\/a> had one, which maintained a constant virtual presence on his radio show.<\/p>\n

The Maxwell dealer in these parts was Palmer’s Garage<\/a> in New London, Connecticut. Owner Roy Palmer<\/a> made a trip to Detroit for a dealer driveaway<\/a> of the 1916 models, which included this special speedster runabout<\/a>. Palmer had a fondness for the old two-cylinder runabouts, too, and kept one<\/a> at the back of his shop.<\/p>\n

In a spirited bit of advertising that same year, Maxwell made a family-oriented pitch<\/a>, explaining<\/a> how a woman could make use of a Maxwell in her role as mother<\/a> and homemaker<\/a>. Why, she could even put up the top<\/a> by herself. That this was a ruse became evident on the next page<\/a> where we see mother and child in the back seat, with father patriachally at the wheel.<\/p>\n

All auto manufacturers were struggling in the aftermath of World War I, but Maxwell more than most. In addition to poor market conditions, Maxwell’s quality had suffered, and sales dropped precipitously in 1920 from seventh place to eleventh. Walter P. Chrysler<\/a> arrived that August, from Buick, and set about rescuing both quality and sales. A series of engineering improvements was followed by the “Good Maxwell<\/a>” campaign, pointing sales upward again, although a merger with moribund Chalmers<\/a> in 1922 didn’t help. Still, gains were made, as Maxwell sold a new line<\/a> of open<\/a> and closed cars<\/a>, even a spiffy Sport Touring<\/a> model. But Walter Chrysler had his eye on a car that would bear his name. Maxwell was dropped after 1925, but a version lived on through 1928 as the four-cylinder<\/a> 50-series Chrysler<\/a>, a facelifted and slightly re-engineered Maxwell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1922, the Maxwell Motor Company began an advertising campaign touting “The Good Maxwell.” Does that mean that prior Maxwells were bad? Unfortunately, some of them were. It had not always been so. Jonathan Maxwell was a pal of Benjamin Briscoe, and Briscoe convinced J.P. Morgan to invest in their new car company. The jaunty….<\/span>
Read full article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[146,68,145,77,147,144],"class_list":["post-3861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-cars","tag-briscoe","tag-buick","tag-chalmers","tag-chrysler","tag-jack-benny","tag-maxwell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3861"}],"version-history":[{"count":36,"href":"https:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3898,"href":"https:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3861\/revisions\/3898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}