Oakman Motor Vehicle Company Advertisement

From the collections of PVMA • Digital image © Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Assoc. • Image use information

About this item

Richard Oakman was the president of a cutlery and silverware company in Greenfield, Massachusetts, but he wanted to expand into the new field of automobile manufacture and sales. Oakman saw Max Hertel, a former classmate of Carl Benz (of Mercedes-Benz in Germany) piloting a gas powered car on a Chicago Street in 1895. Impressed and intrigued, he hired Hertel to oversee production of the Oakman Automobile. This Oakman Motor Vehicle Company ad emphasized the car’s easy operation (the woman drives with one hand on the tiller) and its carriage-like elegance. Manufacturing expenses doomed the Oakman Automobile; it cost four times more than Henry Ford’s assembly-line-produced Model T, of which Ford sold over 248,000 by 1914.

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Details

Item typeAdvertisement
PhotographerUnidentified
Date1898–1900
PlaceGreenfield, Massachusetts
TopicTransportation, Travel, Tourism
EraRise of Industrial America, 1878–1899
Progressive Era, World War I, 1900–1928
MaterialPaper
Process/FormatPrinting
Dimension detailsHeight: 8.75 in Width: 6.87 in
Catalog #1996.12.2124.02
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Oakman Motor Vehicle Company Advertisement. Photograph. Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, American Centuries. https://americancenturies.org/collection/1996-12-2124-02/. Accessed on December 5, 2024.

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