The First Automobile Advertisements

This Winton Motor Carriage advertisement from the July 30, 1898 -  “first” ad for an automobile.

Popular lists of automotive facts often mention two “first” advertisements: a Winton Motor Car Company ad in the July 1898 issue of Scientific American and the W.E. Roach Company’s ad in the March 31, 1900 issue of Saturday Evening Post. Yet a closer look at The Henry Ford’s collection of clipped ads and nationally distributed periodicals from the 1890s tells us that other advertisements also vie for this honor.