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Edward S. (Ned) Jordan (born November 21, 1882, died December 29, 1958) was an American entrepreneur, automotive industrialist and pioneer in evocative advertising copy, which he wrote and used to advertise the automobiles produced by his Jordan Motor Car Company of Cleveland, Ohio. Jordan’s June 1923 advertisement for the company’s Somewhere West of Laramie is considered a breakthrough in the art of writing advertising copy. Jordan was born in Merrill, Wisconsin in 1882, the only son in a family of six children. His mother, Kate Griffin Jordan, supported the family by running a series of small general stores along the Overland Trail. Jordan supported his own way through the University of Wisconsin-Madison and achieved high grades while working as a sports reporter for a Madison, Wisconsin newspaper and the Milwaukee Journal. He then joined the National Cash Register Company in Dayton, Ohio for a year, and in 1907 began a nine-year affiliation with the Thomas B. Jeffery Company in Kenosha, Wisconsin, manufacturers of the Jeffery automobile, where he served as secretary and manager of advertising, publicity and sales, and eventually as general manager. Jordan married Kenosha native Charlotte (Lottie) Hannahs on February 1, 1902 and the couple relocated to Cleveland, Ohio after 1906 where he was a reporter for the Cleveland Daily Press. Jordan also worked as a reporter for the Crowell-Collier Company of Springfield, Ohio, publisher of Collier's Magazine at this time. After leaving Cleveland, Jordan came under the employment of John Patterson of National Cash Register Corporation of Dayton, Ohio. From Patterson, Jordan learned that success was built upon doing one thing a little better than anyone else. Patterson also added the caveat that the “Husband is only half sold until his wife is sold” on the item at hand. Mrs. Jordan's family (The Hannahs Company made children's furniture at 1324-1330 52nd Street) had connections within Kenosha society, and it is believed by Jordan biographer James Lackey that she asked her family to make a contact with Thomas B. Jeffery about securing a position for her husband at Jeffery’s automobile company which produced the Rambler automobile in Kenosha. Upon arriving in Kenosha, Jordan was offered a position with the Jeffery concern. In 1909, Thomas Jeffery died and the leadership of the company passed to his son Charles, who, in 1914, renamed the car the Jeffery in honor of his late father. While successful, Charles Jeffery decided to leave auto making in 1915, following a harrowing ordeal in the sinking of the Lusitania. Jeffery’s wife had purchased a high-quality life preserver prior to her husband’s trip, and it saved his life. However the event also caused Jeffery to re-evaluate his life and priorities, and automaking wasn’t one of them; he sold the Jeffery concern to Charles Nash, who renamed the concern the Nash Motors Company. Nash extended an invitation to Jordan to stay on, but Jordan decided to pursue building his own type of car. According to Jordan, “Cars are too dull and drab.” He reasoned that since people dressed smartly, they were willing to drive “smart looking cars” as well. Using his position, Jordan arranged financing for the venture and chose Cleveland (where his father had lived as a child) as the manufacturing center for the car; outside of Detroit, Michigan, Cleveland had the greatest concentration of automakers and suppliers in the nation at the time. Cleveland’s position as a shipping and steel center as well as a finance center also weighed heavily in his decision. Jordan also selected a spacious home in East Cleveland, Ohio on Grandview Terrace to which he could retreat when the pressures of running the company became too great. Jordan decided that the vehicles built by his Jordan Motor Car Company would be an "assembled" car - that is to say that Jordan would build the cars but not manufacture the vehicle parts from scratch. Instead, it would rely upon the best standardized components available. Jordan also decided that he would outsource the production of components that were unique to his cars and designed by his engineers. While this raised the cost of each Jordan built, Ned Jordan’s target market was not one in which price mattered much. He managed to raise $200,000 within a day to start the Jordan company. From the first, the Jordan was a success for a car of its type. While production never exceeded 10,000 per year, given the type of operation and the intended market, Ned Jordan and his products were an instant hit, especially with women. Jordan bet that in the upper-class car markets, women would be drawn to fine upholstery, richly-detailed interiors, as well as a wide array of body types and colors. One engineering hallmark that all Jordan vehicles were known for were their suspension systems, which were supple but without sacrificing stability or handling. Designed by Russell Begg, the system used oversized vanadium steel half-elliptical springs. The design also did away with a soft suspension's tendency to sway. Jordan advertised that system as the lightest of its type and unabashedly “the best on the road.” However it was Jordan’s flair for turning a phrase that raised his cars above the din of makes that were available to consumers in the 1920s. Automotive writer Beverly Kimes states in the Standard Catalog of American Cars 1805-1946 that "there had to be a Jordan (automobile) if for no other reason than to allow Ned Jordan the unfettered license in the prose that he chose to extol it. And how the man could write, lyrically, romantically, emotionally." While major automobile companies wouldn’t embrace automotive styling as a major factor in their cars until the arrival of the LaSalle in 1927, advertising for all automobiles to 1922 was based on extolling the benefits and features of the automobiles themselves. Ned Jordan took another path - towards evocative advertising copy. Jordan’s style and wording captured the feeling of the restless "lost generation" that F. Scott Fitzgerald would gain fame from writing about. The ad that changed the automobile advertising world did so through sweeping prose and lack of detail about the car itself. Appearing in the June, 1923 edition of the Saturday Evening Post, the ad promoted the Jordan Playboy, with art by Fred Cole showing a car driven by a cloche-wearing flapper hunkered down behind the wheel in abstract fashion, racing a cowboy and the clouds.
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