Excessive oil consumption in the family car is leading to this young couple’s financial ruin. Luckily, Perfect Circle piston rings are here to save the day.

The magazine ad for Perfect Circle Piston Rings we’re featuring here comes to us from a very different time. February 13, 1937, to be exact, in the Saturday Evening Post. Back then, there was no television, no internet, no social media. For entertainment and information, people really did read newspapers and magazines from cover to cover. Yes, even the advertisements. As a result, the ad writers had time to tell the audience an entire story. In fact, they were expected to in order to hold their readers’ attention.

So how do you make Saturday Evening Post readers care about piston rings? By creating a relatable story—say, a short family drama like they might hear on the radio. Here, excessive oil consumption is wrecking the Griffin family’s household budget, and Mrs. Griffin will soon be dressed in rags, evidently. But fortunately, Perfect Circle piston rings has the solution. And meanwhile, we’ll gain some interesting insights into automotive maintenance in the 1930s. (By the way, the ad appears here in its entirety. We’ve only cleaned up the panels a bit and moved them around to make them readable on the web.)

We’re glad that worked out. But wait a minute, the 21st century car owner might be thinking. New piston rings in as few as 30,000 miles? That might be a little early for new rings, arguably, but it wasn’t unheard of in the 1930s. Lubricants, materials, and machining tolerances were not what they are today. Periodic ring jobs and valve jobs as normal maintenance were commonplace back then, while complete engine overhauls by 100,000 miles were the rule rather than the exception. When they say they don’t make them they like they used to, they aren’t kidding.

In fact, the Perfect Circle X-90 piston rings featured here were specifically engineered for worn engines with scored and tapered cylinder walls. A set of six low-tension expander springs allowed the oil ring to conform to the irregularities in the cylinder to reduce oil consumption, smoking, and crankcase blowby. Replacement piston rings were a big business then, and most every corner garage and service station handled the work on a regular basis. By the way, Perfect Circle Piston Rings, founded in Hagerstown, Indiana by a family of automotive pioneers, Teetor and sons, is still in business today as a division of Mahle GmbH.