Web-wise, it’s old news already: Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce take on the Chevrolet XP-887 account, in the latest episode (last Sunday) of Mad Men. I don’t have cable (believe it or not), so it might be a while before I get to it on Netflix. But it’s an interesting choice, because the XP-887 campaign was undoubtedly the largest pre-introduction campaign ever undertaken by an automaker.
image:Michael Yarish/AMC
It’s 1968, and the chronology is right (of course): Chevrolet started a massive PR and advertising campaign to warm up the crowd for it’s new little car “that does everything well”, including rusting prematurely (among other tricks).
So this is the kind of stuff we were bombarded with for several years, starting in 1968 or 1969. GM was woefully behind the times in lacking a small car in the sixties, at a time when in California already on in four new cars sold were imports. So Don Draper will have to learn what “hypereutectic” means, along with a lot of other gibberish.
In addition to ads and the PR campaign, the XP-887 was of course the focus of intelligence gathering, like Jim Dunne’s “Detroit Report” in Pop Science. Here’s a snippet from 1969. Uh-oh; the Vega engine is only getting 12 to 15 mpg in testing, compared to the 24 to 28 of the similar-sized Opel 1900 engine? And why didn’t they just revise and build the Opel engine for the Vega?? As well as just the whole car?
Here’s my take on that question.
And here’s another one, from De. 1968, that suggests the name will be Chevette, and have an iron block and aluminum head. I guess everything was still a moving target.
If you wait on Netflix, you’ll wait a long time. They’ve figured out people without cable will pay two bucks an episode to stay current.
I would be one of those people.
Mad Men and Breaking bad are the only shows I pay to watch immediately; everything else I’ll wait till they show up on Hulu or Netflix, I haven’t had cable for 5-6 years and I have not missed it much, I just wish HBO would get some kind of online only subscription set up, that is annoying.
We are another non-cable household. We get Charlotte, NC TV which encompasses 13 channels from the air plus Netflix. If you subscribe to Hulu Plus you get most of the new stuff. But we don’t watch the shows mentioned so I don’t know if that applies.
Cable is getting outrageous, even satellite. On demand is the way to go. First we got VCRs for time shifting, then DVR and Tivo, and now we will get content by demand. The wife misses some of the cable because she likes HGTV and that mess but most of those shows can be found on Netflix. Hoarders, House Virgins, etc. We have been cable free since 2004 (when we got high speed modem) and haven’t missed it.
While I’ve followed the show since the beginning, starting last years (thank you Blockbuster – you haven’t lived until you’ve crammed all five seasons into four weeks), this has gotten the story arc very interesting. They did enough with the Jaguar arc to keep those who actually knew about the cars interested; so I’ve got great hopes that attempting to deal with the GM attitude will be at least as interesting as to who is sleeping with who.
My son mentioned this one to me last evening. I had forgotten that the ad campaign started so soon on this car. Chevy/GM certainly had the PR machine hitting on all cylinders, even if the cars wouldn’t.
I had forgotten that the ad campaign started so soon on this car.
Kinda like the latest Camaro. By the time it hit dealer lots I was convinced that it had already been out for two years.
Mad Men is one of my favorite shows and I enjoyed their Jaguar episodes a lot. Watching it yesterday evening I just burst out laughing when I realized they were going to be advertising the Vega. Don Draper picked a pretty good time to stop selling cigarettes, but this isn’t exactly the best time to hitch their wagon to GM.
I don’t have cable, either and I don’t miss it one but. You can get ANYTHING on the net, and I mean ANYTHING, as long as you know where to look. Not having cable saves me $1200 a year. That’s a plane ticket anywhere I want to go. That’s nine months of gas for my Acura.
Not having cable means you miss 99% of pop culture, most of which is trash anyway. It is so refreshing not having a clue about what “celebrity” happens to be popular that hour, or what fad diet is.
No cable makes life healthier, too. On long summer evenings, we go for extended walks, in the winter we go swimming. Our kids play outside. I’ll never have cable again.
There are times I’m tempted to follow your lead, stopped by one minor problem: A life-long addiction to Formula 1, LeMans, MotoGP, and the Tour de France. And living out far enough in the boonies that my DSL line is only high-speed Internet in comparison to a dial-up modem. I can’t even get an episode of Family Guy on Hulu without at least one re-buffering.
The day I can get the same kind of Internet service at home as I have at work (just watched stage 4 of the Giro de Italia this morning while working – and the boss knows), DirecTV gets a fast phone call and $85.00 a month gets used for something else.
I’m there too, never had cable. Did buy a decent TV this year. Our family plays wii games and we get Mythbusters DVD’s from the library.
We’ve watched Mad Men for the first few seasons but I lost interest as the advertising angle took more of a back seat to drama.
Never had cable; never watched Mad Men, save a few episodes early on. I’ll have to visit the library, as they have most of the seasons available. $1 for a three-week rental–can’t beat that!
I’m a big fan of the show, and I laughed when they said “XP-887″…”its the Vega!” I said out loud, to no one else since I was watching it the den by myself. My favorite part was that well staged lobby that I assume was the General Motors Building in Detroit, with the blue 68 Corvette and red 68 Chevelle SS with an illuminated “GM-68” sign in the background, well detailed.
I have followed Mad Men since Episode 1, and it is a great show. It is the only thing my wife and I follow besides Breaking Bad, which ends this summer.
So, when the agency won the contract for the XP-887, I recognized it as the Vega and understood the off-the-cuff presentation Draper gave in the bar scene. How he presented the Vega, is how it was presented to the public back then.
It will be interesting to see where the story line goes? Will we meet John Z DeLorean?
Of more interest, will they be showing the ads that were actually used in the presentations?
You guys and TTAC are mirroring one another.
See my comment on this topic over there.
The only thing I can add is that in fall 1970, while on Okinawa for 4 months, I read Arthur Hailey’s “Wheels”. Lots of parallels and a nice insight into the industry.
PS: My fedoras are much nicer than Draper’s…
The difference is that TTAC and the other articles I’ve seen don’t seem to know why the XP-887 account would have started in 1968, because of the drawn-out publicity/ad campaign years before the Vega was ever released.
CC doesn’t seem to mirror the JavaScript spammy redirects that TTAC has been suffering from as of late. Got so bad that I moved the bookmark to the bottom of my list from the top and haven’t been back in about two weeks.
Mad Men is mostly just a soap opera. But still, it’s a guilty pleasure and it’s worth watching for its occasional moments of brilliance. This was definitely one of the better episodes, on a number of levels.
In an earlier episode, the carbon monoxide suicide attempt with the Jaguar was inspired. As a car guy, you should be able to guess why it wasn’t successful…
That was memorable, as well as a bit predictable, if not even a bit over the top in that regard.
I think “Mad Men” is taking a few liberties…
The print campaign shown above kicked off months…not years before Vega’s launch.
Yes there was a lot of PR about XP-887 starting in 1968-69 but actual promo print ads came spring 1970. And the name was unveiled mid-summer. Before that we all thought it was “GMini” or something like that.
Crying shame, so much hype over such a brand-damaging total POS. Toyota/Nissan/Honda couldn’t have asked for more…well, yeah, there were those X and J travesties in the 80’s…which makes Vega the sexy warm up act.
Interestingly, Delorean actually preferred the “Gemini” name (a cutesy play on “GM-Mini”). The Vega name, along with the rest of the XP-887 project was shoved down his throat by Ed Cole and GM corporate.
It’s been well documented here and elsewhere just how halfassed the XP-887 was when it was handed over Chevrolet, along with how completely unenthusiastic Chevrolet engineering was in fixing it.
According to this Dec. 1968 Detroit Report, it was to be called “Chevette”. The name was a moving target.
And note that they say it will have a cast iron block and aluminum head. “Hey, let’s try it the other way around. just for the hell of it”
Spot on “from a Buick6” – DeLorean chronicles quite well the XP-887 POS forced down Chevy’s throat. Prototypes running around Milford and Mesa were literally breaking apart and even back then, Chevy engineers were screaming to at least let them utilize the old Nova four cylinder or an Opel engine for the car. No dice said the 14th floor in Detroit. The rest is the sad history, but the start of more GM faux-pauxs culminating in the “tango uniform” of the General in ’09 . . . .
The drama that was the GM 14th floor execs, John Delorean, and the Vega would be a great story line to incorporate into Mad Men. It was generally understood that the 14th floor despised Delorean for his end-run around them with the GTO. They wanted Delorean fired for it, but when the GTO became an unexpected, runaway success, they could do nothing but bide their time. That enormous jealousy and hatred make it entirely plausible that the 14th floor would stop at nothing to bring Delorean and his anti-GM, flashy, jet-setting ways down.
So, could it be they gave Delorean the reins to Chevrolet with the express intent of saddling him with the Vega to see him fail?
I can see it in the script, a GM exec handing Delorean the XP-887 folder with the snide comment:”Here, Mr. Hollywood Wise-Guy GTO. Fix ‘this’…”.
Regarding the ad touting the virtues of hypereutectic aluminum alloy, it seems to me as though that was part of an era where a lot of print ads actually tried to educate the customer rather than just dazzling them with snazzy pictures. Or maybe it’s just the type of books I read as a kid…. My dad had a subscription to Popular Science and we had a lot of back-issues in the end tables that I liked to flip through.
Don Draper [ad exec] is thinking it’s some new “powerful big” car, since it’s the Muscle Car era in full swing.
Also, he looks at the briefs and says “they [GM] are scared”.
GM didn’t wait until August 1970 to line up ads, they would have started planning 2 years out. The fictional agency is probably going to do the PR, also, not just ‘whip up’ ads overnight.
One other funny ‘retro’ scene was the loud airliners flying over their hotel. Now, commerical jets are much quieter.
The “they are scared” comment was more about the job their current ad agency, which is why several agencies were invited to pitch at the last minute, they go over the list of agencies, Campbell-Ewald is mentioned, which was Chevrolets agency at the time.
Very nicely done Paul, thanks. This plot twist might actually get me to look at Mad Men. We don’t watch much TV, too much good stuff to do.
I’m glad and not a bit surprised to find so many of you have cut the cable. We did years long ago, once broadcast went digital. Friends are stunned how great local channels look on a good HDTV. Way sharper than cable – they squeeze the juice out of everything to max out the channel count. Good riddance.
Streaming Netflix and Hulu Plus on the Blu-ray player, plus rabbit ears: far cheaper than cable and far better too.
PS: I had to look it up: “Hypereutectic pistons are made of an aluminum alloy which has much more silicon present than is soluble in aluminum at the operating temperature. Hypereutectic aluminum has a lower coefficient of thermal expansion, which allows engine designers to specify much tighter tolerances.” Better for emissions, which is why today’s cars don’t burn oil as much as they used to.
I knew if anyone knew about hypereutectic, it would be you Mike. Thanks for the explanation!
The attention to minute historical detail on Mad Men is impressive, especially for television. Others have mentioned the attempted suicide by Jaguar, which was a bit was a great, but subtle touch. Chasing a car that turns out to be the Chevy Vega? That’s obsessive compulsive brilliance; Most cars guys wouldn’t have gotten the joke if not for the endless Monday morning articles about it.
Character vehicle choices are very well done on this show as well. Draper worked up to Cadillac. Pete, now a frustrated commuter from the suburbs, got a license and bought a Buick Wildcat.
This show’s a guilty pleasure, but I’ll still end up waiting for this season to show up on Netflix next year.
I noticed in the MLK assassination episode last week that Don is still driving the ’65 Sedan de Ville. It’s time for a new car, preferably an Eldorado, the natural choice, or maybe now that they have Chevy as a client, they will give him a cheap lease on a Corvette to supplement the Caddy. Don wouldn’t go near anything else in the Chevy line, that’s for sure.
I think its a Coupe deVille, you see a good deal of it in last seasons Howard Johnsons episode, its gray with a red leather interior, buy I agree, a 68 Eldorado is a perfect Don Draper car.
Here it is.
Can’t see Don in anything other than a Cadillac. He’s the lone character who can’t/won’t bend to the cultural shifts of the time. He hated the XKE, Revolver, etc. Others sprouted sideburns overnight; not Don. A Corvette just doesn’t fit.
” Don wouldn’t go near anything else in the Chevy line, that’s for sure.”
Except for a Caprice or a Monte Carlo, possibly.
I’m looking forward to 1971 in the show now. The launch and Sally’s driver’s license should intersect and it’s not hard to imagine Don proudly giving his daughter a brand-new options-laden Vega…and how quickly that’ll go sour.
Yes! That was my second thought on Sunday night, right after “Oh man, I can’t wait to see what they come up with for the Vega!”
Given that the show has come up with fictional campaigns for actual products I’d like to see what the writers create for this one.
No cable, no Netflix. I’ll buy the season 6 DVD set when it comes out.
My ’71 Vega was one of the most reliable cars I ever had. I know, I’m probably the only one.
You’re not the only one. My parents bought a strippo ’72 notchback for commuting. A deep brown (almost black) sedan with a 4-speed and nothing but an AM radio. Paid $700 w/ 35K miles in ’76; drove it past 100K in 2 years with not a problem. Don’t recall what happened to it, but one day they brought home a new commuter car, a ’68 Rebel 4 door sedan, w/ a 232-6 and a 3-on-the-tree. Had 35K and cost $400. It didn’t even have a radio, but was a mid-level trim “440”. Another good car with a bad rep.
Mine went over 220,000 miles, but by that point, I had rebuilt everything in the car at least once. Most of that was my decision, tho (Buick V6 swap, replaced base dash assy with GT dash, etc.).
I regularly got 27-30mpg on the highway with the (rebuilt/sleeved) 2300/4 speed manual.
‘Overall, the Vega engine is something of a breakthrough’.
Got that right…
I’ve nevr seen Mad Men.
Gave up cable around 2005 when we moved to where DSL was available. The previous owner of the house was my late mother-in-law and I’d seen the lousy cable signal she had. Anything past channel 46 was unwatchable due to signal leakage and snow, which unfortunately included most of the channels the wife & I liked such as Discovery, TLC, Food Network and Sci-Fi. Of course the lower digit channels which were mostly local, unused blocks, shopping and religious came in just fine. Comcast customer “service” was totally unresponsive and were never able/willing to fix it. Made the choice real easy and the money saved went for even higher speed dsl than before. Now we’ve broken the cable habit for good and I doubt we’ll ever get it again. Between digital over the air, hulu and all the other sources available, why bother?
If any of you have stock in a cable company, dump it now. It’ll be dead in 10 years as everything will be streamed on the ‘Net. Hopefully we’ll still have over the air digital TV.
“If any of you have stock in a cable company, dump it now. It’ll be dead in 10 years as everything will be streamed on the ‘Net. Hopefully we’ll still have over the air digital TV.”
I can already see the death of Cable/Satellite TV happening within 5 years.
Once a bunch of FCC anti-piracy laws die with a resounding thud, over-the-air (internet streaming) digital TV will probably gain more traction than ever before.
With no cash flow, how will all this ‘free digital TV’ make money? But that’s another topic.
People think they are ‘entitled’ to free TV, movies, but producers have to get paid to make them. If no revenue, then there will just be be junk You Tube videos of guys getting hit in crotch or “reality” TV over and over.
That’s what is going on now. YouTube as originally programming so does Netflix. The difference is that cable is sold as a cluster block with revenues shared and distributed where as these newer technologies like Neflix/Hulu Plus get their revenue directly from the consumer and it is for a specific purpose. The individual cost is much lower but the content pusher keeps 100%. It is no secret that Netflix made its name offering discs by mail, but now their business models involves discontinuing mail service and going strictly streaming. Except they are having a bit of a hard time getting the stream selection to catch up with the disc selection. Between Netflix and Hulu Plus for about $15-16 a month I get more than I can handle. If I want to pay more I can subscribe to MLB on Netflix and watch every baseball game recorded in North America if I so choose, such a service unavailable (usually) on mainstream cable. With Pandora on Netflix I get nice music in the house. Its all about connecting consumers to specific content. The revenue stream will be there but the days of generic bundled packages like cable are gone.
Barry Diller’s Aereo service (available just in NYC now I think) is an interesting development. https://aereo.com/ Not much there to work with now but seems to be an interesting concept.
Aereo is a brilliant concept; my hat’s off to the guy who thought that one up. It’ll be interesting to see whether it stands up to legal challenges. It has the broadcasters terrified.
Count me in as a cable-hater; they’ve never seen a dime from ever.
For several reasons, one of them being that we don’t hardly ever watch tv. And I’ve been mad about their bundling business model for 25 years. Way back then, they intimated that a la carte was coming, but they never did it, because they make such a bundle off their bundles.
My real deep-seated hate for them come from when I was in the broadcasting business (over the air). In the real old days, cable companies had to carry (rebroadcast) all local tv stations (“must carry” FCC rule). But that went away in the deregulation of the seventies. So we had to beg, cajole and even bribe (legally) to get them to carry our UHF/Spanish language stations. They were so self-righteous about it. That is, until the law changed in 1997, and must carry came back. And now the cable companies have to pay the broadcasters re-transmission fees for the pleasure of doing so.
Well, at least the Detroit Report got the gas mileage right. My ex’s ’72 90hp/Powerglide managed 12 – 14.5 mpg. Beetle acceleration with Camaro fuel mileage.
Maybe Mark Reuss can build us a new version!
Give GM an exotic sounding alloys, and what did they do with it? Create a turd. Bravo. No wonder it went bankrupt. Hope the new GM does a little better…
Respectfully that’s a bit simplistic.
If GM had been playing the way they did from 1949-57, Vega would’ve been the Tri-Five Chevy of subcompacts.
Instead, corporate suits designed it, and bean counters had the final say. When their wishes butted heads with reality, reality gave way.
That’s why Vega was a total POS.
Read Aaron Severson’s Vega history here…
http://ateupwithmotor.com/compact-and-economy-cars/195-chevrolet-vega-cosworth.html
Brock Yates wrote a book about car biz, and he claims GM made Vegas crap on purpose. Thinking was that buyers would swear off “small cars” and buy bigger GM cars, from then on.
But, they didn’t think buyers would swear off GM!
Dipped into it now and again,I refuse to pay for Sky,Virgin or the other cable stuff there’s more than enough to entertain,amuse and inform me on freeview.I missed a lot of it as I worked shifts for a long time,worth watching for an old car fix and good acting and storylines.I loved the clothes and cars from the early 60s