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The Mayflower ship on the radiator of the first Plymouth automobiles may have suggested the car company got its name from the rock of the pilgrims. But according to The Plymouth Bulletin editor Lanny Knutson, if it werent for a famous brand of binder twine, there would never have been a car named Plymouth.
In 1926, Walter Chrysler was looking for the perfect name for his bold new automobile designed as a low-priced and reliable alternative in a market dominated by Ford and Chevrolet. Chrysler wanted a name people would recognize instantly. But his executives were stumped until Joe Frazer (then an up-and-coming Chrysler employee who would, in 1939, become president of Willys-Overland) suggested the name Plymouth, a then famous brand of twine known to every farmer in America.
The first Plymouth eventually debuted in 1928, a year before the start of The Great Depression. According to Knutson, Chrysler executives who two years prior saw the name as too puritanical soon saw the wisdom of giving their new car a moniker that rung so many positive bells in the minds of Americans car buying public.
Most Americans still had some connection to farming and, as Chrysler had reasoned, would find an easy and comfortable familiarity with a name they saw nearly every day. At the same time economically strapped Americans were struggling to survive an uncertain financial future, Plymouth also brought to mind positive connotations of endurance and strength, ruggedness and freedom from limitations that so typified the first American colonists.
