The Jordan Motor Car Company was founded in 1916 in

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

by Edward S. "Ned" Jordan, a former advertising executive from

Thomas B. Jeffery Company The Thomas B. Jeffery Company was an American automobile manufacturer in Kenosha, Wisconsin, from 1902 until 1916. The company manufactured the Rambler and Jeffery brand motorcars. It was preceded by the Gormully & Jeffery Manufacturing Company ...

of Kenosha, Wisconsin. The factory produced what were known as "assembled cars" until 1931, using components from other manufacturers. Jordan cars were noted more for attractive styling than for advanced engineering, although they did bring their share of innovations to the marketplace. Not surprisingly, the company's advertising was often more original than the cars themselves. Said Jordan, "Cars are too dull and drab." He reasoned that since people dressed smartly, they were willing to drive "smart looking cars" as well.

Establishment in Cleveland

Jordan Motor Car established its plant east of downtown Cleveland at 1070 East 152nd Street in the Collinwood neighborhood along the

Nickel Plate Railroad The New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad , abbreviated NYC&St.L, was a railroad that operated in the mid-central United States. Commonly referred to as the "Nickel Plate Road", the railroad served parts of the states of New York, Pennsylva ...

tracks. This not only provided an ideal location for shipping the finished cars, but also provided Jordan with ready access to out of area suppliers. The plant was built in two stages; the first building was begun on April 5, 1916 and finished some seven weeks later, while the second addition was completed within months of the first structure. In their first year of production (1916), Jordan sold over one thousand vehicles.

Manufacturing Methods

Jordan parts were obtained from outside vendors. The cars were powered by Continental engines, used Timken axles, Bijur starters, and Bosch ignitions. According to Ned Jordan's biographer, James Lackey, the source of early Jordan bodies was somewhat a mystery. While Jordan had the capacity to paint the automobile bodies and attach them to the chassis and outfit the passenger compartment, the facility was unable to fabricate the bodies themselves. Later production bodies were shipped from a variety of manufacturers in

and

Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut assachusett writing systems, məhswatʃəwiːsət'' English: , ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous U.S. state, state in the New England ...

. They were fabricated from aluminum. While most automobile producers limited themselves to a single color combination, and Ford relied exclusively on the fast-drying

Japan Black Japan black (also called black japan) is a lacquer or varnish suitable for many substrates but known especially for its use on iron and steel. It is so named due to the history of black lacquer being associated in the West with products from Japan. ...

lacquer which cured in a matter of hours, Jordan automobiles were available in no less than three colors of red - "Apache Red", "Mercedes Red", and "Savage Red"- as well as "Ocean Sand Gray", "Venetian Green", "Briarcliff Green",Clymer, p.163. "Egyptian Bronze", "Liberty Blue", and "Chinese Blue". Black was also available. The most flamboyant of color schemes was on the four-passenger Sport model which could be ordered in "Submarine Gray", with khaki top and orange wheels. Details given the cars were unusually advanced for an independently made assembled car. For example, Jordans boasted one of the first cowl fresh air ventilation systems. Jordan also went to all-steel construction in the mid-1920s, some ten years before

Buick Buick () is a division of the American automobile manufacturer General Motors (GM). Started by automotive pioneer David Dunbar Buick in 1899, it was among the first American marques of automobiles, and was the company that established General ...

, and eight years before

Chrysler Stellantis North America (officially FCA US and formerly Chrysler ()) is one of the " Big Three" automobile manufacturers in the United States, headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan. It is the American subsidiary of the multinational automoti ...

introduced the advanced Airflow models. In 1917, Jordan's 60 Series Limousine had a 6-cylinder 303.1 cubic inch Continental engine. Jordan purchased and installed straight-six engines for its 1919 Series F and 1920-1921 Series M cars. In 1922, the Series MX model featured a 246 cubic inch six-cylinder flathead engine. In 1926, their Line Eight and Great Line Eight models offered, corresponding to their names, eight cylinder engines. The 1931 Model 90 was powered by an eight-cylinder, 85 horsepower engine.

Jordan marketing

Jordan was also one of the first automakers to christen its model types with unique, evocative names such as the Sport Marine (with "fashionably low" 32×4-inch wheels, it was "essentially a woman's car"), Tomboy, and Playboy. He originally wanted to name the car with the World War I term, "Doughboy," but decided on the commonsensical but provocative Playboy instead. In 1920, the company issued the Friendly Three coupe, with the slogan "Seats two, three if they're friendly". Jordan used the emerging suburbs of Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights as backdrops for his advertising photographs, setting the cars in front of the mansions of Overlook and South Park Drives. Appearing in the June, 1923 edition of the

Saturday Evening Post ''The Saturday Evening Post'' is an American magazine, currently published six times a year. It was issued weekly under this title from 1897 until 1963, then every two weeks until 1969. From the 1920s to the 1960s, it was one of the most widely c ...

, the ad promoted the

Jordan Playboy Jordan ( ar, الأردن; tr. ' ), officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,; tr. ' is a country in Western Asia. It is situated at the crossroads of Asia, Africa, and Europe, within the Levant region, on the East Bank of the Jordan Rive ...

, in art by Fred Cole, driven by a cloche hat wearing

flapper Flappers were a subculture of young Western women in the 1920s who wore short skirts (knee height was considered short during that period), bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptab ...

hunkered down behind the wheel in abstract fashion, racing a cowboy and the clouds.
: While other Jordan ads contained the same winsome prose, one in particular had an unseen outcome. Jordan's "Port of Missing Men", which also appeared in the ''

'' (1920), featured Jordan's musings on restless man, and those places where they travel to when they needed to get away. The ad featured art work showing a Jordan Playboy in front of a cottage in winter by the sea, with a young boy walking by, looking up to the second story window aglow red from within. Jordan wrote to the editor of the ''Post'':

Final years of production (1927-1931)

In 1927, the firm introduced its only significant misstep, the Little Custom, a luxury compact. Not only did consumers ignore the car, but its financial drain on the company was a leading factor in the takeover by bankers of JMC, leaving Ned Jordan as the company’s titular head. Both Jordan and his wife began divesting their interests in the company in 1928. The company survived the Stock Market Crash of 1929, but with intense competition among the many US automakers then extant, and personal problems besetting 'Ned' Jordan, the company ceased production in 1931. The true total production of Jordan cars is unclear. Some sources list the total amount as high as over 100,000 units, while other sources list the production as low as 30,000. Finally, some other sources estimate the production of Jordan as below:

Notes

References

* Howley, Tim. "Ned Jordan: The spell he wove". Automotobile Quarterly. Second Quarter, 1975.

External links

Jordan Motor Car Preservation AssociationThe Jordan Register
{{commons category, Jordan Motor Car Company Motor vehicle manufacturers based in Ohio Defunct motor vehicle manufacturers of the United States Luxury motor vehicle manufacturers 1910s cars History of Cleveland Manufacturing companies based in Cleveland Defunct manufacturing companies based in Ohio Vehicle manufacturing companies established in 1916 Vehicle manufacturing companies disestablished in 1931 1916 establishments in Ohio 1931 disestablishments in Ohio Vintage vehicles 1920s cars 1930s cars Pre-war vehicles Cars introduced in 1916