The year 1928 was a busy one for Walter P. Chrysler and his company, Chrysler Corp. Having launched the company in 1924 with introduction of a full line of cars bearing his name, the entrepreneur expanded it four years later by bringing out two new lines, the Plymouth (to fit into the low-price market), and De Soto, to fill the gap between it and the Chrysler.
A year before the October 1929 stock market crash, the ’20s were still roaring and so was Walter Chrysler. Before 1928 was over, he was offered — and accepted — the opportunity to buy Dodge Brothers, which he had attempted to purchase two years earlier. Dodge Brothers started manufacturing automobiles in 1914 and built the company up to second place in the industry by 1920, which was the year that both brothers died. Without their leadership, business fell off, and in 1925, the two Dodge brothers’ widows sold the company to a New York banking firm. Three years later, when the company was sold to Chrysler — at a $ 24 million profit, incidentally — Dodge production had dropped to seventh place.
Dodge cars had always been identified by an emblem featuring intertwined triangles, which closely resembled the six-point Star of David, a Jewish symbol, although the Dodge brothers were not of that faith. One of many tasks on Walter Chrysler’s to-do list was to develop new identity symbols for Dodge and the other two new cars under the corporate banner.
In the process of researching the “Little Mermaid” radiator cap ornament that adorned early Plymouths, Jim Benjaminson also tracked down the origin of the Dodge Ram ornament. The long-time editor of the Plymouth Bulletin and current membership director for the Plymouth Owners Club, Benjaminson published a detailed account of how both mascots originated. It turns out, the both came from the hand of the same person.
“In 1929, rising young sculptor Avard T. Fairbanks arrived at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor to head up the sculpture department,” Benjaminson wrote. The Great Depression having set in a couple years later, he needed a more reliable car than the one he was driving, which often wouldn’t start on cold mornings, but he didn’t have the money to buy one.
Launched in 1928, Plymouth planned to introduce a new, lower-priced PA Series for 1931 that would have Plymouth competing with Ford and Chevrolet to establish the “Low-Priced Three.” Chrysler engaged Fairbanks to design the Winged Mermaid ornament — later to become known as the Flying Lady — for the Plymouth PA. The artist drove home a brand-new Chrysler Royal Eight as payment for the job and in lieu of cash.
Recognizing the appeal of Plymouth’s Flying Lady ornament, Walter P. Chrysler recalled the artist to the company’s headquarters in Highland Park and commissioned him to design a brand image for the new Dodge model planned for 1932. Benjaminson cited the account of a Fairbanks family member in a 1987 Southwest Art magazine article:
“For two weeks father worked on all sorts of models from mythology creatures to various powerful animals. Finally, he called the designers and Mr. Chrysler in to see three models of a Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep, a ram. He proposed the charging one.
“They asked, ‘Why a ram?’
“Father responded, ‘It is sure-footed; it’s the King of the Trail; it won’t be challenged by anything.’ They nodded their heads. Then father, with a bit of corny humor, added, ‘And if you were on the trail and saw that ram charging down on you, what would you think? — DODGE!’
“To which Walter Chrysler excitedly replied, ‘That’s it! The ram goes on the Dodge!’”
Not needing another car in exchange for the Dodge ram ornament design, Benjaminson said Dodge Division President K. T. Keller settled with Fairbanks by giving him a check for the full retail price of a top-of-the line Dodge Eight: $ 1,400.
The Ram radiator ornament debuted in January 1931 on the new Dodge DG Series Eight, then on the new 1932 Series DL Six models when they were introduced in November of that year. It would continue to appear on all Dodge passenger cars and light trucks. When new styling in 1935 hid the radiator inside a grille and sheet metal shroud, designers added a new base for the charging ram as a hood ornament.
The ram design was updated in step with the cars’ styling during the years that followed. The 1946-’48 hood ornament was more streamlined, and then the head and horns became more prominent on the sloping hoods of the early-1950s Dodge.
The new “Forward Look” Dodges in 1955 were the first since 1932 without the ram hood ornament. In fact, traditional hood ornaments of any kind went pretty much out of style from that time through the 1960s and ’70s. However, the ram image continued under the hood. Dodge’s Hemi-head V-8, introduced in 1953, bore the name “Red Ram,” and an image of a charging mountain goat appeared on the valve covers. “Red Ram” would designate the Hemi engines through 1958. In that year, Dodge began transitioning to wedge-design V-8s, which went by the “Ram Fire” moniker.
An application of the ram image that began in 1960 harked back to Avard Fairbanks’ mascot design of the charging Rocky Mountain goat. Ram-charging and ram-induction were the names used to describe the concept of using intake manifolds with long tubes connecting the carburetors to the cylinders, which set up a wave effect to faster force more fuel-air mixture into the engine.
“The Ramchargers” was the name of a drag racing team largely made up of Chrysler engineers who tested their go-fast innovations as they campaigned the company’s Factory Experimental and Super Stock combinations on the nation’s drag strips.
Later, the Ramcharger name was revived and applied to the new sport-utility vehicle (SUV) when Dodge entered that market in 1974. The marketing department suggested the name described the “agile, nimble, go-anywhere vehicle.” Originally offered with only four-wheel drive and V-8 engines all the way up to the 440-cid version, the Ramcharger could also be ordered with two-wheel drive the following year.
In the years that followed, the Ram name and designation worked its way into a wider variety of models from Dodge Truck Division, such as the Mitsubishi-built Ram 50 and Rampage mini-pickups, Dodge Ram vans and D-150 Series Ram and Power Ram 4×4 pickups. A new ram’s head hood ornament began to reappear on certain models in the early 1980s.
When Chrysler Corp. was purchased by Fiat in 2009, RAM became the company’s separate truck brand and the original Ram truck logo was adopted. And it continues to this day as the bold “R-A-M” lettering in the locomotive-appearing grille coming at you down the highway (or looming in your rear-view mirror), and as the now-familiar head-and-horns emblem peering from the tailgate of that Ram truck ahead of you at the stoplight.
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