All Wheel Drive ?

[Mike Cecil]

A discussion with friends last evening who are looking for a new vehicle, spiked my curiosity about the phrase 'All Wheel Drive', or 'AWD'. It appears in the marketing and on many modern vehicles (like it was something new), but when was the term first used?

I can remember the cowl plate that came with the Marmon-Herrington conversion kit for Ford trucks in the late 1930s which had 'All Wheel Drive' on it, but was the term used in any official and/or commercial sense before that? What terminology did, say, Jeffrey and FWD use to market their vehicles back in the 1910s and 1920s?

I'm hoping the collective wisdom of MLU can come up with a reasonable answer!

Mike