Richard M. Langworth

Con­tin­ued from Part 3

Ned Jor­dan spent July 4th, 1923 at his Rhode Island sum­mer home, watch­ing his daugh­ter Jane per­form tricks on a salty pony: “That child could ride—well enough to win prizes at rodeos….

Three days lat­er, on the Over­land Lim­it­ed, bound for San Fran­cis­co. A chat, at about dusk, with Mr. Austin, a New York lawyer, in the for­ward end of the lounge car. We passed some sta­tion in Wyoming, too late to catch the sign. Just then a husky some­body whirled up on a rarin’ cayoose…he, act­ing as if he’d nev­er seen a Union Pacif­ic train.…

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Con­tin­ued from Part 2…

The Jor­dan Motor Car Com­pa­ny began with­out a fac­to­ry. In Detroit, chief engi­neer Rus­sell Begg devel­oped a body to wrap around a six-cylin­der Con­ti­nen­tal engine. Final­ly Ned paid $50,000 for a five-acre site in Cleve­land, and by ear­ly July 1915 Jor­dans were com­ing off the line.

Jor­dan quick­ly rec­og­nized the closed car mar­ket and added a sedan and coupe in 1917. By 1918 he was build­ing 5000 cars a year, heady busi­ness for a small inde­pen­dent in those days. Plant space was expand­ed, bonus­es paid. Then in April 1919 came the first Jor­dan Play­boy. Hard­ly any­body noticed at first—but Ned was inspired:

Danc­ing one night at the May­field Coun­try Club, Cleve­land, with a real out­door girl, Eleanor Bor­ton.…

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Con­tin­ued from Part 1…

Edward S. Jor­dan was born in 1882, the only boy in a fam­i­ly of six, in the lum­ber town of Mer­rill, Wis­con­sin: talk­a­tive, brash, a lit­tle bit rude, with heaps of deter­mi­na­tion but lit­tle mon­ey. He wore white spats and bright ties and well-tai­lored suits, but he wasn’t a huck­ster. He had style, like the cars he built and the words he wrote.

Work­ing his way through the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin as a news­pa­per reporter, Jor­dan dis­cov­ered a tal­ent for words. His sales and adver­tis­ing know-how was learned with the help of two peo­ple: his moth­er and John Hen­ry Patterson.…

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