Time for a CC Commercial break. No, don’t skip to the next channel post! You’ll like these, as they’re from the golden age of classic VW print and media advertising.
This could well be the best VW ad of all time! One of my favorites. I also like the Fleetwood Seventy-Fives and what looks like a ’68 Lehmann-Peterson Continental limousine.
Prefer a poor man’s 356 to a Bug? No problem! Just don’t race one…
Remember the “torture test” one? Another classic.
Finally, who could forget the classic “snowplow driver” commercial? Sigh…a shame most commercials today don’t have one tenth of the creativity of these…
Hat tip to beetlejuice150 and nishiot for posting these great commercials on Youtube. Thank you sirs!
Thanks for the trip down memory lane, I remember all of these spots from childhood. The Karmann Ghia trying to break through the paper was hilarious then and it still is. I can’t imagine any car company, including VW, poking fun of themselves nowadays!
Thanks for putting these up. I remember all of them, but I don’t think I appreciated them as much as I do now. As if the punch-line wasn’t funny enough, Mr. Jones standing there for that extra few seconds is the frosting on the cake.
A fantastic ad. But one can only do that when one has a definite product differentiation.
Also, some good others VW ads, the 1996 Golf GTA featuring Speed Racer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNMeOGn1Ux8
And this one from 1991, broadcasted in Quebec, Canada with the Passat where the driver sing a mini-opera. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfJZYr3x9Zk
VW still gets them right every once in a while, the Un Pimp der Auto ones from a while back with Peter Stormaire were memorable.
I always like the “Funeral” ad….”nothing..nothing..nothing!”
I like this line from that spot:
“To my wife Rose, who spent money like there was no tomorrow, I leave $100. And a calendar.”
Sounds like my ex-wife.
Great ads like these are what inspired me to get into advertising.
Volkswagen always seems to have a real penchant for great creative!
P.S. – The Speed Racer GTI spot had me in laughing for a solid minute! 😀
Here’s one of my favorites:
My former agency’s creative director wrote these ads while he was at DDB. The concurrent VW print campaign was equally brilliant. Lots of great stuff here:
http://www.adclassix.com/caradsindex.htm
This one comes later (it’s a Scirroco spot), but it made a big impression on me. It added the word “ausgezeichnet” to my youthful vocabulary. And the steam escaping from the helmet when the driver flips open the visor is the perfect coda.
That snowplow driver commercial is the truth. On a snowy morning in the 60’s at my midwestern high school, frequently the first two cars to arrive would be a Karmann Ghia driven by my English teacher and my Beetle. We would proudly park next to each other.
My all-time favorite VW commercial.
+1. Their cars might be built like crap but, man, can VW’s ad agencies put some great music in their commercials.
Some recent faves used Dirty Egg-Sucking Dog by Johnny Cash and Black Betty by Ram Jam and were simply brilliant:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5abFrz_4HM
And for you entomology fans, here’s the latter with a couple of cool ‘making of’ trailers describing how it was done:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1MHNIuQ920
This may have been one of the now broken links…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1n6hf3adNqk
Does anyone remember an owner’s security blanket ad with someone who was afraid of the cold. And the dark. And the grasshoppers?