The spectrum of what a car brand gets its name from is really astonishingly broad: planets, gods, family names, acronyms, made-up words, words adapted from Latin, two or three letters, you know the drill. For the most part, a car marque gets a name from a fairly lofty or evocative source; a ringed planet, a fleet god with winged shoes, a family’s storied name, a lithe jungle cat. But there is one very well-known, if currently deceased, brand that has a name origin story of far humbler inspiration, even if that origin story was later ret-conned to be something with a lot more gravity. I’m not clear how well-known this story is, either. It’s not exactly a secret, it’s been definitely told and written about before, but I, a car-obsessed dipshit, hadn’t heard it until fairly recently, so I figured there may be others of you out there, still sadly ignorant of the fact that a major car brand was named for binder twine. Yes, like that scratchy thin rope stuff. Twine.
The car brand in question is Plymouth, one of the former key pillars on the edifice of the Temple of Chrysler, and most of us think we know what Plymouth was named for because their logo has looked like this over the years:
Yes, a big ship. Since the brand started in 1928 to when it ended in 2001 (with a bang called the Prowler, it’s worth noting) at various times a logo featuring a specific old sailing vessel, the Mayflower, was used. The Mayflower is, of course, the famous ship that in 1620 brought a boatload of fussy Puritans to America from England, where they did a lot of starving but eventually established the Plymouth Colony, which set in motion a chain of historical events that culminated in the existence, among a number of other things, of the Dunkin’ Donuts chain. There’s probably other significant results, too.
According to the Chrysler/Mopar-obsessed website AllPar, Chrysler’s official line on the origins of the Plymouth name was this:
“Product of Chrysler engineering and craftsmanship, Plymouth has been so named because its endurance and strength, ruggedness and freedom from limitations so accurately typify that Pilgrim band who were the first American Colonists.”
That certainly sounds plausible, and fits with the visual identity of the brand, so closely linked to those buckle-hatted pilgrims and their big wooden ship. But that’s not really how it got that name.
The original goal of the Plymouth brand was to be an entry-level brand to compete with Chevrolet and Ford. Chrysler knew this wouldn’t be easy, as between the two mainstream brands, that market was pretty well locked down. Still, when Chrysler was considering this plan, the Ford Model T was nearing the end of its life, and was seeming archaic and sales were slowing. There was a likely opportunity here.
A lot of the potential buyers for a low-priced car were farmers, and while the percentage of farmers in America was on the decline, the 1920 census still showed over 30 million farmers, about 30% of the workforce. So there was plenty of market there to sell to. The story goes that Joe Frazer, later to go on to found the Kaiser-Frazer car company, who was working for Chrysler at the time, is the one who came up with the Plymouth name.
The reason he chose that name had nothing to do with pilgrims or Puritans or colonies or sailing ships or historically significant rocks or anything like that; he chose it because it was a name he felt would be familiar to farmers, thanks to their familiarity with a product called Plymouth Binder Twine.
The Plymouth Cordage Company made this useful farmer’s twine, which I suppose was used to secure sheaves of things or maybe a tractor hood in place, or perhaps keep some pants up or really, almost anything. It was twine.
Walter P. Chrysler was from Kansas, and while his father was a railroad employee, he was surrounded by farms and agriculture and, yes, plenty of Plymouth Binder Twine. He got the appeal, and saw the value in making a car with a familiar name, one they could sort of piggyback onto decades and decades of familiarity and goodwill. It seemed to have worked. When the first Plymouth hit the scene in 1928, it sold well, and by 1931 had reached the third best sales position, and the next year was the only car to actually improve sales, even despite the Great Depression.
So, I guess it worked! Sure, Chrysler never actually admitted that the car was named for twine, instead preferring to push the narrative that it was named for the whole first Thanksgiving/Pilgrims mythos, but now we all know the truth: Plymouth is the only major automotive marque ever to be named for really scratchy string.
Maybe GM or Stellantis or The Volkswagen Group will decide to launch a new EV-only brand called Sisal or Jute, but until then, I think Plymouth’s distinction is pretty safe.
The Wildly Different Cars Named For A Type Of Ship Or A Thing That Cuts Hair
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Plot twist! The major body / panel supplier to the Plymouth was Mayflower Vehicle Systems.
You can’t make this up, folks.
I see a picture of the Mayflower on that roll of twine, so it seems like both stories are correct? The car was named for the twine which was named for the Pilgrims.
It was a first string effort.
On the other hand, you have the Trabant, a lofty name which means “satellite” which was inspired by the Sputnik satellite – but “twine” might be more appropriate since the body is made from recycled cotton fiber.
or perhaps Lint or Fussel in German
Plymouth they demanded all their cars be One-Fits-Sisal
It’s also rumored that The Beatles found inspiration from twine, when they came up with their hit song, “Hay, Jute”.
That middle logo for Plymouth with the Mayflower reminded me of some cat butt meme. If this site allowed, I’d be crappily MS painting that logo over a cat butt and submitting it for your displeasure.
(now, waiting for approval because parsko is on the naughty list for some reason)
Name a car Jute and people will spend so much time arguing over the pronunciation they won’t have time to actually buy one.
Joo-TAY?
Yute?
etc…
Similar to people mispronouncing the word ‘forte’ as ‘for-tay’.
The correct pronunciation is ‘fort’.
I was going to make a bad taste joke about driving your Plymouth down to the lynching tree but
Shit. Too late. Where’s that damn edit button?
One of Weird Al’s first songs was Belvedere Cruisin’, about his parents’ Plymouth. He later sang about the Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota (although the high-rolling family in that had a DeSoto). Maybe he was trying to tell us all along?
We had a Plymouth wagon once that I’m pretty certain was put together with twine.
At least it wasn’t named after the Plymouth Brethren. Garrison Keillor had a good bit about them
Better than being named for a teeth whitening product: “Stellantis”. Hahaha.
I grew up on a farm, and binder twine is what they use in some hay balers to tie hay bales. Other hay balers use baling wire. The binder twine was all imported because it was made from hemp. Hemp cultivation was of course a federal crime at the time.
Baling wire is of course what held stuff together before the invention of duct tape.
Still is. A properly equipped engineer will have both.
“Bailing twine” in the UK is made out of nylon, and is pretty much the last resort when trying to tie things together (except bails). For some reason my dad saves any of it he finds, and uses it round the garden.
. . . and, is it “bail” or “bale” in Jolly Old E?
It is bale.
The autocorrector on the phone knows not of bale and keeps changing it to bail.
And I’m knot paying attention.
“I’m not clear how well-known this story is, either.”
I’ve heard it before but that’s mostly because, among other things, I used to have a ’37 Plymouth P4:
https://www.washington.edu/news/archive/images/20091015_pid52705_aid52703_harrell37_w400.jpg
Good thing it wasn’t named after Microsoft Binder Twine. For some reason, they had a tough time marketing those cars in blue.
Ha ha, good one, Torch, but this is FEBRUARY 1st…
Not APRIL 1st.
I suppose tomorrow we’re going to learn that Mercury was actually named after the regionally popular “Mercury Brand Udder/Teat Ointment” that midwestern cattle milkers favored in the 1920’s.
And I thought this was going to be a tongue-in-cheek rant about Cords.
Also, something janky is happening on this article after the ad at the end of the text. All the following links to recent articles are compressed in a column, like some sort of formatting wasn’t closed out.
Yeah, I’m seeing that as well. It’s hopefully just a day one issue. I think we may pull that last ad spot as it’s redundant anyway.
Still loading like that to me. Maybe doing away with that last ad spot would really make a difference. Not sure if it could have to do with this, but it’s showing up in triplicate, there’s one at the top and another bottom of the links section, but also to the right of the links you can see 1/3 of the ad (the rest being outside the invisible margin for that section). Maybe the one that’s to the right of the links is what’s screwing it all up?
I’m wondering if a rendering of a particularly ferocious alien, with multiple layers of mandibles could be described as having multiple plys of mouths. 2plymouth if there are two layers of teeth, 3ply if it were a particularly luxurious beast.
“Maybe GM or Stellantis or The Volkswagen Group will decide to launch a new EV-only brand called Sisal or Jute, but until then, I think Plymouth’s distinction is pretty safe.”
How about “Cord?” (Yes I know it’s named after a person…)
Yeah, and Dodge didn’t put horns on their vehicles.
You really strung us along there with that drawn out story.
I guess it’s a shame that it was Pontiac and not Plymouth who had rope drive.
Kaiser-Frazer, Frazer-Nash is completely unrelated to either Kaiser-Frazer or Nash-Kelvinator, just a coincidence, like that guy named Anthony Michael Hall who stole my car stereo
Kaiser-Frazer: the Darrin roadster
Frazer-Nash: Fast Tourer/Mille Miglia roadster
Nash-Kelvinator: the Nash-Healey roadster
Eventually, Kaiser-Frazer & Nash-Kelvinator all got rolled into AMC, right? I mean, K-F turned into Willys-Overland before then and the fridge business was sold off, but they all ended up in the same place at some point, I’m pretty sure.
Considering the ropey strands that they crapped out over the years, that history tracks.