I’m a professional copyeditor (amongst other things), so I tend to notice thoughtless phrasing. Take a look at the ’83 Caprice ad up there. Yes. It does. It’s got that style. The annoying one. The one where the copy is written. In little sentence fragments, is written with comma splices. But look at the last four little sentence fragments there at the end: You can spend more. The question is, why? Find out for yourself. At your Chevrolet dealer’s. I see, so I should go to a Chev dealer and find out for myself why I should spend more on something other than a Caprice. Were they even listening to themselves? I guess ad agencies really were as perpetually drunk as shown in “Mad Men”.
For at least one car—I can’t remember which, nor find it at the moment—there was an an ad that used the word impact, (as in wow, impressed, amazed, game-changer, etc) which is, ah, rather not a word one ought to use when trying to entice people to think warmly of cars in general or specific. That one falls under Stern’s Law, which I devised one afternoon while listening to a lecture being presented at a technical conference: If your name or your accent sounds even just a little bit German, it’s best if you will never utter the phrase the final solution, even if you’re talking about the developmental direction selected for a headlamp or whatever. I’m just saying.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I went to elementary school in America, and sometimes I ungrammatically asked permission to go to the bathroom. So my hardwired reaction to this slogan Oldsmobile used for a chunk of awhile is
I don’t know…can you?
Then there was Have you driven a Ford…lately?, which Ford used from 1981 to 1998, which is rather a lot of “lately”, isn’t it?
In other words: Yeah, ha ha ha, we sure did make a bunch of piss-poor cars, ha ha ha—maybe you even bought one…or two…or maybe even three or four…or a whole fleet, ha ha ha! But no, seriously, you guys, this time for sure! This line of persuasion rang less of a sour note from Hyundai (“…yes, Hyundai!”), probably because they’d forthrightly made unpretentious cheap cars, without any selfgratulatory babble about Better Ideas™.
It’s not just ads, either; many’s the car writer who can’t seem to stop themself babbling about this or that automaker’s product offensive. Keeps my eye-rolling muscles toned, it does—are they listening to themselves?
How ’bout you? What car ads (and suchlike) have provoked a reaction opposite what was presumably intended?
Chevrolet…Like A Rock
Uh, rocks aren’t known for moving under their own power and, if found in certain locations, aren’t welcome. Further, given the connotation of tough, it reminds me some rocks just aren’t very tough.
Toyota…Oh, What a Feeling!
What feeling? Euphoria, nausea, excitement, constipation – what feeling exactly? Plus, while many may fall for the emotional plea, many of us don’t. Use your words and tell me what causes the feeling of which you want me to experience.
Dodge…Imported From Detroit
So you’re saying Detroit is some faraway place? Or it’s another world? Well, based upon Detroit’s reputation (rightly or wrongly earned), that may be something you don’t want to play with Dodge.
Oh, ho ho, have I ever got a story about that last one. One day in January 2011, I’d taken all the pictures I needed of all the car lights at the Detroit auto show (that’s what it was, despite its pretentious/delusional marketing name). I had about half an hour before a meeting, so thought I’d go across the street to the parkade and get something out my car that I needed to send in a FedEx box. I left Cobo Center by one of the side doors. Across the sidewalk from the base of the steps was a man half-kneeling/half-sitting, rocking back and forth in the severely bitter cold. He had a crude patch—long overdue for changing—over one eye and a “Please help thank you” sign in his hands. There was an empty cup in front of him. He wasn’t speaking to any passers-by, and he wasn’t in anybody’s way. He was crouched between a signpost and a bollard; nobody walks there.
I’d left my coat at the coat check inside, figuring I didn’t need it for just going across the street. A short walk, but a bitingly cold one. On the way back, I stopped at the crouching man and asked if I could get him something to eat. He said “If you’d like to, that’d be great, thanks.” I said “What would you like? Sandwich or something?” He said “Sure…er…actually, a coffee would be even better.” I said “Sure. What do you take?” Cream and sugar.
I went in and bought a large coffee with cream and sugar, wrapped the change around it, grabbed a napkin, and brought it all out to him. Introduced myself. His name was Todd. We talked for a minute or so and then he said “Upp…here comes a cop; I’ll have to go.” Sure enough, the cop came over and said “How long were you planning on staying here?” Todd said “I was just leaving, Officer.” The cop said “Good. Do that. You can’t be impeding pedestrians.” I said “Officer, he didn’t get in my way, or even speak to me. He looked cold, so I bought him that coffee.” The cop said “You’re talking to him now, aren’tchya? That means he’s impeding a pedestrian, whether intentionally or not. It doesn’t pay to be nice here.” I said “Oh!” The cop said “Where are you from?” I said “Toronto.” He said “Yeah, well, we do things differently here. If you don’t like it, you can apply to be a Detroit cop.” I said “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound like I was telling you how to do your job.” The cop said, mostly to Todd but partly to me, “Yeh. So you were just leaving, you said. If I come back around and you’re still here, somebody’s getting a ticket or going to jail.”
A couple hours later when I left the building again, this time for the day, Todd was back in the same place. I talked with him for a couple minutes, keeping an eye out for cops. He said there was a program for homeless people to get canned food, but in Winter it freezes so they can’t eat it. Somebody had brought out some kerosene heaters, he said, so those who got one could eat when they got canned food. Presumably they could also be marginally less likely to freeze to death.
Yeah, yeah, I know. The illusion of prosperity has to be maintained, and that means keeping the icky poors outta sight to prevent any icky questions occuring to any not-poors. But that is what immediately and persistently came to mind whenever I heard “Chrysler—imported from Detroit”.
Great story.
Cop on a power trip.
“Parkade” is one of those words I only hear Canadians use. I like it though – it’s like an arcade, but for cars.
I used to work in IT long ago, so I always went to the annual Federal Office Systems Expo, the main annual tech event in Washington DC, crucial for keeping up with the latest gizmos and collecting brochures since in the pre-Web era you had to wait a week to get promotional stuff mailed to you if you needed to learn about it, which I often did. Anyway, tickets for entry cost something like $20 at the gate, which approximately 0% of attendees actually paid since free tickets were all over the equally free trade journals that every tech administrator subscribed to, and also you’d get about five free-entry coupons in the mail every year. It was for all practical purposes a free event; the $20 entry fee was just to keep the Todds from coming in to keep warm and look for giveaways. (I still have a bunch of T-shirts from long-gone tech companies advertising wildly obsolete stuff, kind of embarrassing wearing them now).
Funny, whenever I see the word, I think:
“Butter”
“Parkade”
“Butter”
“Parkade!! Mmmm…butter”
“Parkaade…”
That just reminded me of a magarine ad my Dad joked about back then.
“When you think of butter, but it’s snot, it’s Chiffon.”
Some words don’t sound good together said out loud.
Another beef I have with the Chrysler slogan is the indirect statement of imported cars being better because, well, this was imported. In Chrysler’s case that is likely a truth, but it’s stunning they would admit it in so many words.
Oh, and I’ve got a Detroit story in my COAL series I’m working on. It’s rather reflective of those times, it seems.
You know, I hadn’t thought of it like that, even though it’s plumb obvious when you spell it out. Yeah, through that lens it reads like a zombie undead version of this:
The last best American full size car.Sorry Crown Vic .You have the crown in name only. Mr Hoovies Garage says GM should bring cars like this back as they are strong and simple with no modern driver assists to go wrong .
Who knows. With the Ukraine invasion going on and on , chip shortages perhaps GM might have to go the way of Lada and relaunch these .
Sorry, what?
I believe Mark wants Chevrolet to start building 1980 Caprices again. I don’t disagree even though I know that it will never happen. Anyways I’m driving the next best thing, a Hyundai Genesis 4.6! Oh, what a feeling!
Considering Toyota’s numb road manners when that slogan first appeared, I would submit a revised punctuation. 🙂
Oh, what? A feeling?? Toyota???
I don’t know, 1980’s Toyota was pretty lit in my opinion; Cressida, MR2, Supra, Camry, RWD Corolla, there were plenty of good handling and fun cars in their lineup. Toyota started getting boring around 1998 when their tagline was “Everyday.”
Whom ever sang “like a rock” sounded like his balls were in a vise.
It was Bob Seger and the boys in the GM Goodwrench Service bays in dealerships throughout the country swear that he was actually singing “Like A Knock!”
. . .
»blink blink«
Um…
LOL!!
Just, wow. What next, hiring O.J. Simpson as their pitchman?
You win the comment thread lol.
You asked for it, you got it: Toyota.
Aside from the unpleasant implication, this missed the real point of Toyota’s arrival. Toyota knocked out Detroit because it satisfied a need that people HADN’T been asking for. American buyers didn’t know what they were missing. When Toyota showed the way, it was a total epiphany.
I remember recoiling at these two Ford ad campaigns around the turn of the century…
“Built to Last.”
This was trite, and this was precisely at the moment when Jac Nasser’s unhinged cost cutting meant that Ford’s cars WEREN’T being built to last.
“No Boundaries: Ford Outfitters.”
This was the line they were using to oversell thirsty, four-wheel-drive soft-roaders to grocery-getters. Who did they think they were fooling? And referring to dealerships as “outfitters” (as if “stores” wasn’t bad enough) just REEKED of pretention.
My pet peeve is any ad for an “off road” vehicle that’s shown driving off road in a place that doesn’t look like an OHV park. I’m an off pavement enthusiast with a 4WD truck, a dual-sport motorcycle and a mountain bike, but I use them on dirt roads and legal trails. This recent Nissan ad got a lot of bad press, and not just from environmental groups comprised of people who probably wouldn’t buy a 4WD truck anyway:
https://www.hatchmag.com/blog/nissan-trashes-stream-new-frontier-pickup-ad/7715374
The backlash may have had a positive effect with Nissan, it turns out, but Jeep, Toyota and others still have a way to go.
And then of course there’s “Not your father’s Oldsmobile”. Yeah, more like Grandpa’s. Or Grandma’s.
Given the time frame of that ad, most fathers Oldsmobile would have been a W-30 Cutlass.
To piggyback on dman’s “pet peeve” comment: Off road vehicles careening down rough roads, through mudholes at breakneck speeds, getting ridiculous amounts of air that NO ONE (in their right mind) with a 72/84 month loan would do. And WHY is it necessary to show a truck being driven through salt water on a beach?!?
Bar Harbor, Maine is named for a sand bar that connects the town of Bar Harbor and Bar Island (which is actually in Gouldsboro, go figure) at low tide. Well there was a guy with a 2021 Ford Bronco who decided to drive across the sand bar to the island but he got stuck. He got real stuck. The clock was ticking. Some one tried to pull him out but couldn’t. With the tide coming in, he was on his own. Yep, King Neptune claimed his Bronco. They don’t show stuff like that in car ads.
I gotta rush to post this reply before someone else does.
DAMN – dman beat me. That guy must have had his coffee early!
Anyway…
My nomination is [ALSO] the late 1980s “Not your father’s Oldsmobile” ad campaign (NMFO).
In my father’s time, post war Olds were the first muscle cars. Faster than even Cadillacs; nothing came close until the Chevrolet small block V8s came out in the mid-1950s.
In my time, Olds may have been a tad big, with too much chrome and too much horsepower, but GM sold a lot of them to happy customers. They were great drivers – I know, I had one.
So, I guess this “new” Oldsmobile is not like these earlier models, which I believe were good, interesting, and fast.
Is that what these NMFO ads are telling me?
Yeah, eh? I mean, okeh, my father’s Oldsmobile kinda sucked, but I wasn’t the target demographic; I was 12 years old when that slogan went live. The –
math just doesn’t work– numbers just aren’t there; anyone old enough to be in the target demographic had a father whose Oldsmobile, if he had one, stood a good chance of being a good-to-excellent car.My father’s Oldsmobile in song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gbfnh1oVTk0
Not sure what the underwear model means, but that’s OK.
Remember stockings?
Since you mention songs, it occurs to me just now “your father’s Oldsmobile” has the same syllables as “My Merry Oldsmobile”
That’s not just an underwear model, that’s Bettie Page!
Well, I was about 30 when those ads came out, so yeah, if my Dad had owned an Olds when he was younger, it might have been a Rocket 88 or a 4-4-2. But in my location and culture, it just alluded to some bloated Bulgemobile. So whether it was my father’s Olds or not, it wasn’t a relevant benchmark.
And just before that there was “There is a special feel in an Oldsmobile”.
Makes me think “…yeah, it’s kind of a wallowing shimmy feeling. Comes in at around 50 mph and gets a lot worse above 65”.
Yes, I had an ’84 Delta 88,but no 6 footers in the back, just two teenage girls.
“Not your father’s Oldsmobile” is the mother of all self defeating ad campaigns. It’s child “That’s not a Buick!” is a rehash of the theme. Different day, same GM.
I’m not surprised I’m not the first to immediately think of those two awful GM ad campaigns. Both openly acknowledge their brand has an uncool, or at least old-fashioned or obsolete image, hardly the way to sell what’s supposed to be an upscale brand. This sort of thing can work in certain circumstances – there was a Renault ad campaign in the late 1960s with the headline “The Renault for people who swore they’d never buy another one” – an open acknowledgement their cars from 5 or 10 years earlier were unreliable, but there was no way you could advertise a Renault in the U.S. in 1968 and pretend the car didn’t have a bad rep (well, you can, and then you’ll go the way of Fiat). Likewise a similar British campaign for Škoda, “It’s a Škoda. Honest”. This was just after the old Communist-era rear-engine Škodas were replaced with vastly better VW/Audi-derived designs. But Škodas and Renaults were low-priced cars, not aspirational brands like Olds and Buick.
Have you seen the new Buick ad where the father keeps calling the Enclave the “Alexa” and has to be corrected by his daughter? Cringe…
How much longer until they kill Buick and rename it Avenir/Alexa?
I haven’t seen it—I don’t have a television set—but your description reminds me of this:
Ha…my father actually bought a new Renault (R10) in 1968 (the really funny thing is that at the time he also had a 1965 Oldsmobile F85 wagon)…the R10 was his “2nd” car (actually the first new “2nd” car he ever bought). Don’t know if the ad campaign had any influence on him; his prior and first (“2nd”) car was a ’59 Beetle which was totalled parked in front of our house by a teenager who lived down the street.
My father was in Germany in the American army during the Korean war era, and drove many Beetles then (they assigned them instead of Jeeps) so he was familiar with them before he bought his. The Renault was probably also kind of like that; in the late 60’s he spent quite a bit of time in France helping out a sister plant to the one he worked in, and seemed to become a bit of a francophile….but also the Renault had 4 doors vs 2 on the Beetle, and although we almost never used it as a family car, he did have a family and the R10 was more practical for that (plus it had a larger front “trunk”). He’s gone now, so I can no longer ask him why he went with the R10 with the bad reputation Renault had in the US.
As for the Škoda, that’s kind of funny in another way…my Mom was born in the US, but her family is Slovak, we’ve been over there, and most of their cars were Škodas (maybe a Lada thrown in)…it’s been 25 years since we were last there (they’ve visited us since) so I’m not sure what they drive now…several vehicles are actually made there now that weren’t back then, so the offerings have greatly changed.
In my old age, I kind of wish I could still buy my father’s Oldsmobile…a large, comfortable, easy to get into and out of car with a good ride, but they don’t sell anything remotely like that anymore….make mine a ’68 88 with the 350. The ’65 was my father’s only Oldsmobile (but his Aunts had many of them, the last a ’69 98).
A slogan that always sounded unpleasant to me (but possibly more honest than they knew) was ‘Oldsmobile…Engineered to Spoil You’.
Spoil you for what? An appreciation for good cars?
Something about being ‘spoiled’ by a giant consumer products corporation also brought up images of something rancid in the back of the fridge, leading to some chronically unpleasant medical condition and possibly an early demise.
It would have been a great slogan for a biological weapons manufacturer.
Ford: “Where Quality is Job None”
I had it as “Quality is Job One…and Putting Out Fires is Job Two”, but yeah. Thing is, job one doesn’t mean “first priority”, it means the first car to come down the assembly line. So “Quality is Job One” kind of suggests a singular focus on that one first car; good luck if you wind up buying the second or subsequent.
Yeah, every car is “quality” but is it good quality or bad quality? Most of my Fords were bad quality.
THANK you. Quality is a noun—not an adjective, though people use it as one. I know I’m pissing into the wind on this, and preaching descriptivist sermons never got anyone anywhere, but…dammit, words mean things; there have to be some rules, or we’re all just pointing and grunting.
Sloppy language makes me think of my first-year music theory class in college. There was a young man in that class who was called out by the instructor for ambiguous placement of a note. The young man took issue with that, and after that day we never saw him again. I wonder if he went on to help with the proliferation of sloppy language.
Two more, down for the count:
“Oldsmobile Quality: Feel It!”
This was during the Roger Smith era, when GM’s entire lineup was at close to its nadir…and this slogan was presumptuous to anyone who knew even a hint about cars. Was I genuinely supposed to pretend that an automobile built from the same low-quality parts-bins components as all other GM products, built to the same designs as mediocre Chevrolets and Pontiacs, equipped with the same crude and trouble-prone engines, and sloppily built in the exact same assembly plants was of “high quality” just because of the rocket badge arbitrarily glued to the centre of the grille?!
And I won’t let the Japanese off the hook:
“The new 1997 Camry: Better than ever!”
The 1997 XV20 Camry was a transparently cost-reduced design that was plainly *not* better than the XV10 Camry that came before. And this ad campaign was a clear sign that the company was sinking into GM-like hubris, where their marketers made reality-detached statements and expected to get away with it.
The XV20 Camry was reliable, though. I still see tons of them in my area, and they are all 21-25 years old at this point.
Yes, there are still quite a few of that generation on the roads around here (central VA). I had a ’97 LE 4-cylinder. It was a good car, 111K miles in 7 years. I sold it only because I wanted a newer one with side curtain airbags.
“If you can find a better car, buy it”
The words by Lee A Iacocca. Well, I did buy one and I’m still driving it.
This original minivan by Chrysler Corporation revolutionized the auto industry, and has been a dependable vehicle all these years.
That was sort of the opposite of today’s subject; it was good salesmanship. Iacocca didn’t come up with that line on his own, though; he, ah, “borrowed” it from Toyota—maybe as revenge for something they did in some of their TV ads you’ll see posted tomorrow, originally from about the same time as this print ad for the 1978 Cressida.
That is one sweet looking, now-classic minivan. If you haven’t brought it to a Radwood show, or the Malaise one in Oregon if you’re in that neck of the woods, do. As with prior generations’ classic cars, everyone wants their weekend toy to be the car they dreamed of having when they were kids so when someone shows up in the car they were actually hauled around in when they were kids it’s a showstopper.
As for the slogan, the joke used to be that instead of “If you can find a BETTER car, buy it” the emphasis should’ve been “If you can FIND a better car, buy it”, that slogan having been introduced at the height of the “voluntary” import quotas.
Buick’s slogan from many years ago: “When better cars are built, Buick will build them.” Somewhere they lost track of it. My in-laws’ 1988 Buick Century sedan was a woefully underwhelming car that they kept for quite a few years but which needed several expensive repairs. Nothing about it felt special.
Others in the same series:
No more apologies.
“I won’t buy a Renault no matter how good it is.”
“It’s not German. How good could it be?”
GM/Chevrolet print ad copy disrespecting bicyclists as nerds and losers who can’t afford a car, apparently to encourage/shame college students into taking out loans to buy a Chevrolet so they could drive instead of use a bicycle to get around campus.
GM/Cadillac television ad featuring an obnoxious prick crowing about how hard he worked & how lesser proles can’t have what he has.
If I was one who submitted to being bombarded with ads, I might not have bought a GM car at all, if these ads are the norm from GM. As it is, a relative had a bunch of GM bucks, and I liked the features of the Chev. Cruze (no CVT, back seat suitable for adults, high MPG).
https://www.chicagotribune.com/autos/chi-gm-pulls-bike-ad-20111017-story.html
https://road.cc/content/news/45956-reality-sucks-says-gm-so-does-being-unfit-debt-stuck-traffic-and-paying-through
Don’t know how to load an image. The 2nd link has an image of the print ad aimed at college students, implying loudly that bikes are for losers.
“Recently GM had placed this ad in many college newspapers across the country and has taken a lot of flack for it. The ad depicts an embarrassed young man on a bicycle covering his face from an attractive female sitting comfortably in a GM car. With the Quote “Stop pedaling… start driving.” at the bottom. GM has decided to pull the ad and they are apologizing for their offensive ad.”
Ha. Funny about bikers being nerds and losers. One of the reasons I thought I could do with a GM car was that, if it broke down, I could rely on my bicycle while it was being repaired. Sure enough, in typical GM fashion, it broke down hard at low mileage & was out of commission for two weeks while the dealer waited on parts.
“The little better car”
Vauxhall Nova 1983. It could really have done with a comma to make it the “little, better car”.
Ooer, that’s a good one!
Setting a high bar there for yourself, don’t you think?
“There, we’ve documented it. Now it’s not a bug, it’s a feature!”
Hey, let’s hear it for truth in advertising! If you like the Elite you probably won’t like a 2022 Toyota Camry, and vice versa.
The lack of an area code in the phone number and a zip code in the address told me this was an old ad, so I did some online research to see when the Elite was in production: 1957 to 1963.
It would be interesting to know what magazine that ad ran in, but I’m sure it was a buff book.
So if you lived in Seattle you had to drive down to LA to look at one and worst ,if you lived in ” One horse Town” mid west Lotus had no way of reaching you and you had to go the way of Packard and ” Ask the man that owns one”. Still wondering why British cars failed in America,at the time?.
Must have had a dirt bike engine. Did it run on pre-mix?
I’ll put in for the ’94 Mustang. “It is what it was.” No. That was the ugliest Mustang made up to the latest series. Including the Mustang II. Should have been How To Ruin The Fox-body Mustang.
… They did drive well, though. They had a great personality.
<Ed>
It…is…what it…was…?
</Rooney>
Oldsmobile again:
In the mid-1960s, Oldsmobile, perhaps jealous of the success of sibling Pontiac, ran its “Action is an overtime thing” campaign. Its TV commercials are corny, yes; but for me, their singing radio commercials, carried on national radio network newcasts, were the nadir (not to be confused with Nader) of insipidness. Sadly, nobody seems to have preserved one but that stupid jingle can still make the rounds in my head until some other thought displaces it.
This followed their radio campaign which did specifically target Pontiac: “The Pontiacs? Good cars…but have you seen the Quiet Men of Olds?” That fell flat because somehow I doubted that Olds salespersons were actually under any imperative to dress conservatively and eschew the hard sell.
Buick advertised the w-body Lacrosse with the tagline “the car you’ve been dreaming of is the car we’ve been dreaming up.”
Who’s dream car was the Lacrosse?
Then “That’s a Buick?”, which effectively reminded buyers that the public hated Buicks and their image.
Right. That the W-body LaCrosse borrowed more than a little styling from the (still-in-production) fourth-gen Taurus was another great failing. The car was doomed from the start. Well, it sold well enough, but it was a crucial missed opportunity for GM to try and elevate Buick’s image, and I think it belongs on the Deadliest Sins list.
Borrowed more than a little? Hell, that Buick passes for a Taurus rebadge without needing to go buy a fake ID!
..
Chevy: Find New Roads.
Me: I’m paying for OnStar. YOU find the roads for me.
As for the annoying “sentence fragment” style of writing, that has its roots in the TV ad campaign for the 1969 Pontiacs:
Wow! I don’t know that it was the first with sentence fragments, but I note they spent one fragment on the 428 engine, one fragment on the 4-speed transmission, and three fragments’ worth of time on the hidden radio antenna.
I don’t know if it was the first, either, Daniel. But it was the first I remember. I was 12 in the fall of 1968, and had never heard that phrasing before. Soon, it was appearing in other advertising. A lot (see what I did there?).
Pan Am adopted it wholeheartedly for its 1969-70 “Pan Am Makes The Going Great” campaign, which had radio ads with copy like “Go all kinds of places. On all kinds of airline. Pan Am. With stewardesses who know their way around the world like most girls know their way around the block.”
And this print ad for the January, 1970 launch of 747 service:
Don’t know why the photo didn’t come through. Here’s a link to it:
https://bangshift.com/general-news/videos/classic-youtube-pan-americans-first-747-flight-occurred-on-this-day-in-1970/
Off topic, but “makes the going great” sounds like a slogan for laxatives.
Charmin toilet paper’s current campaign is “Enjoy the Go.”
So, yeah.
Does anybody know if this hidden antenna was any good? My grandmother had a 1979 Impala with AM-only and the hidden antenna in the windshield and the reception was horrible. I’m asking because the entire 1980’s and 1990’s were plagued with broken power antennas in New England where I lived. What a waste if the problem was solved three decades earlier but cost-cut into oblivion.
The hidden antenna was lousy, and GM stuck with it a long time. It greatly reduced capture of weaker AM signals, making some stations unlistenable on the fringes of their own markets.
I have a 2006 Scion XB with antennas in the rear quarter panel windows and the reception is wonderful. Also a 2000 Cadillac Deville with antenna in the windshield and it’s reception is good too. They finally got it right, it only took 40 years.
It barely worked for FM stations, either.
Has anyone noticed that since this Pontiac ad was made, people don’t typically smoke 2 to 3 packs of cigarettes a day anymore? They also don’t sound like this announcer anymore. Coincidence?
That’s a coincidence the same way I’m a bourbon enthusiast*.
Watch an episode of “Quincy, M.E.” to really drive home the point.
* I don’t drink; nobody needs my mouth getting any bigger than it already is.
Yes, but cigarettes were absolutely a factor. 65% of American men smoked in 1960. Those numbers fell after the release of the Surgeon General’s report in 1965.
I was agreeing that cigarettes caused most of that kind of voice. Well, that and lots of very dirty exhaust.
The OnStar network went dark some years ago.
No. Hands-free calling ended four months ago and some older OnStar units will become useless this December, but OnStar’s still there, including turn-by-turn navigation, which was my reference:
https://gmauthority.com/blog/2021/12/onstar-turn-by-turn-navigation-still-in-service/
There are II things that come to mind, Chevy’s use of “Eurosport” this and that. It seemed to acknowledge the Europeans had a better product, and here is our lame trim and option package to emulate them. And, by the way, our standard trim products are obviously even more inferior. Super Sport was available and had a lot of Chevy history. So what if what used to mean extra chrome trim now meant black-out trim. Things change.
The II thing is the use of II to denote “it’s so less crappy than the first version, we (sort of) renamed it.” Chevy’s Citation II and Chrysler’s TempMatic II come to mind. Even Mustang II was sort of lame, but I get they were implying a return to the Mustang’s roots as a simple, stylish car vs. a muscle car.
Obviously these gripes are more of a branding issue, but these II things were certainly incorporated into ad copy.
Oh yeah, Eurosport: “Okeh, fine, we took off most of the chrome and put black or body-colour trim instead. There. Now you no longer have any excuse to buy a foreign car.”
I think SS has been discussed on here somewhen. In other countries it brings to mind things other than Super Sport; I refer again to Stern’s Law.
Ugh, that lame-‘n’-lazy “II” thing. I bitched about it the other day in Joseph’s post about the Mustang II. Good example here; Citation II reads like “Do over! We getta do over!”.
(I think you’re thinking of Chrysler’s Auto-Temp II)
Speaking of “Citation”, in my world that is a traffic ticket.
Yeah! I always thought that was a super extra thoughtless name for a car, for exactly that reason.
That it was previously used for an Edsel submodel is reason enough not to reuse it.
Yes, I’m surprised Chevy had no issue with SS with Nazi Germany less than 20 years in the rear view. Almost as bad as the Studebaker Dictator, sold in the 1930s. At least they changed the name for European exports.
Citation was a Triple Crown winning horse in 1948. That may be why the Edsel and this were named as such.
SS trim was created by Oldsmobile. Chevrolet stole it. Just like Chevrolet stole the 2007 Saturn Aura by changing the brake light design and renaming it the Chevrolet Malibu. I honestly don’t know how Chevy was never able to steal the Buick Grand National. Huge, wasted opportunity there.
It would’ve been more of a Rally Sport than a Super Sport anyway – no extra power (the V6 was a separate option but I do wonder what the take rate of Iron Duke Eurosports was).
Citation II, a rebrand so lazy they didn’t bother to change the font, layout or location of the badge when they stuck the “II ” on.
It does have actual Rally Wheels though, rather than the “Rally Wheel Styling” optional on earlier ones which added exposed-lug center caps and trim rings to the standard wheels (which were already silver-painted and slotted).
I worked for a few ad agencies as a graphic designer in the 90s, and copy writers often laughed at their own writing. After it was approved. They saw the humour and irony. It was the marketing people at the companies buying this, that would accept the silliness. They likely later saw the irony themselves.
I can dig it; I wrote some ad copy for a particular auto part once, and that’s a story I’ll tell in a POAL post.
in the mid 1980s, Austin-Rover, the volume bits of BL that were still surviving used the slogan “Now we’re Motoring!” a lot….to remind us of the previous 15 years of commercial and product drudgery
” You can do it in a MG” .Do what?. The add feature a MGB and a girl in a bikini. Perhaps the add should have read ” Do it in this then you properly be able to do it any where”.
Not a car ad, but it did address ad grammar:
There’s the Subaru commercial showing the CUV being “released into the wild again”, like some rescued bear cub. It’s not alone in the silly category.
I vaguely recall a couple of ads from long ago – curious if anyone else remembers them in the same way.
Circa 1970, a Renault 6? ad appealed to the person who didn’t need his car to be an extension of his manhood, however, the seats could fully recline, in case you wanted to extend your manhood in a different direction. Pretty cheeky and would get a lot of negative comments these days.
The second is from around 1978ish, showing a Honda Accord with a handsome young man and about a halt dozen comely young women. The message was that he could spend all his money on some Detroit muscle car and fuel, or on Allison or Michelle or Donna ….
I wasn’t a dashing young bachelor in those days, but that ad copy would have been relevant and compelling, I think.
Subaru’s dumb jingles like “Hey, hey, baby, you’re the one that I love”. Or is that just a New England thing?
“The Car You Knew America Could Build” for the late ’90s Chevy Malibu. Uhh…I already knew America could build mediocre, badge-engineered sedans for rental fleets, unfortunately.
There was the circa-2003 reprise of “Have you driven a Ford lately?” with the “If you haven’t looked at Ford lately, look again!” jingle.
There was an Isuzu ad in the late ’90s that said something like “cars are for malls” and we only build vehicles for adventures. Gee, that sure explained all the Isuzu Rodeos in the mall parking lot! (The early ’00s Joe Isuzu reprise ads were funny, though.)
I did like those Joe Isuzu ads, with the “He’s lying” subtitles.
Don’t forget Joe Isuzu’s mom.
https://youtu.be/Qu-gOSBvTas
I’ll agree with a few above about the trashy way they show off-roading. Anyone, and I mean anyone who has ever set foot off road in a real way knows that speed is not your friend. I used to do a lot of off-roading in Jeeps, and slow and easy was always the game. But I’m going to take this one step further. Nothing is worse than luxury brands (ahem, BMW, MB and many others) running a commercial where they show one of their cars (or more likely an SUV) speeding down dirt and gravel and snow covered roads like someone just car-jacked the stupid thing.
Did you ever see the episode of Top Gear where the Opel Kadett won every off-road challenge? That was very eye-opening to me with regards to the advertisements of “rugged SUVs” and what actually works in the real world. Every SUV buyer should be required to watch that episode prior to purchasing one of those bro-dozers. Hard to believe it was filmed 14 years ago already!
The worst? Ford’s never-ending (or so it seemed to me) ads touting the Granada being confused for a Mercedes-Benz. The ads really played up the gullibility factor for those that truly didn’t know the difference between the two.
Runner up? Pontiacs cheesy “More Pontiac to the Gallon” campaign circa 1980.
Pontiac’s ad was stupid, and they knew it. It was soon changed to “More Pontiac Excitement to the Gallon”. That kind of blew the whole MPG association. MPEG? More Pontiac Excrement to the Gallon was more like it. The Ford ad was just insulting.
…and then Dodge made a similarly risible claim. Like, just stop.
When the current Chevrolet Malibu debuted the “Real People” advertisement had people confusing it with a BMW, Audi, and Tesla!
The “38 of 50 Automotive Engineers..” line reminded me of the “4 out of dentists recommend…” line. I always wanted to hear what either Automotive Engineer #39-50 or Dentist #5 had to say on the subject at hand.
The “38 of 50 Automotive Engineers..” line reminded me of the “4 out of 5 dentists recommend…” line. I always wanted to hear what either Automotive Engineer #39-50 or Dentist #5 had to say on the subject at hand.
Very nerdy, I know, but the copy editor in me is still pondering that apostrophe in ‘at your Chevrolet dealer’s’….what?? Boathouse? Lawyer’s office? Favourite bar?
But others’ contributions are much more entertaining.
Yeah that is the thing that bugs me the most about it.
That’s on my list along with the ubiquitous “See in store for details”.
“Nobody Sweats the Details Like GM”
Did they mean as in finding as many ways as possible to cut the cost out of the interior of their cars so that they were falling apart before they even reached the end of the assembly line?
If I want sweaty details, I’ll go buy a used car from a Buy Here Pay Here lot.
Nobody sweats that you’ll notice the details like GM.
this whole tv show is just an hour long ad for 1969 fords when they used the going thing tagline https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdVlM8LdvZc&ab_channel=CucamongaSewingCircle
What a great QOTD, Daniel!
My submission is one Mitsubishi used in Australia about 2000. Despite the slogan we bought one anyway. Perhaps Mitsubishi’s Japanese HQ was responsible for this one and it lost something cultural in translation? Surely no Aussie would have come up with this. Surely….
“Mitsubishi. Please Consider.”
Wow. So, was that, like, a subtitle below some Japanese characters on the TV screen?
Don’t think so. I just recall the voice over, no characters. Think it was used in print ads too.
What amuses me about that Cutlass commercial is that they wrote a separate jingle not just for the Cutlass, but for the Cutlass S (that’s the cheap, not-Supreme version). I miss jingles.
The copy style in the Caprice ad bothers me less than that ugly font.
I’ll submit this 1980 Pontiac ad campaign as one of the all-time worst. Before looking at this Grand Prix ad, recall the wonderful (and persuasive) Pontiac print ads from their 1960s heyday. They’re best remembered for the legendary and gorgeous drawings by Art Fitzpatrick (cars) and Van Kaufman (people and backgrounds), but the copywriting was up to the level of the artwork too, concise yet convincing. Now compare that to this awful Grand Prix ad from two decades later, which effectively distills GM’s 1980s cluenessness down to a single page. Who would be convinced to buy a car advertised like this? It’s hard to even read through the whole thing; there’s so much legal mumbo-jumbo about how you can only compare estimated MPG to other cars and your mileage is affected by how and where you drive, that destination charges depend on where you live, etc., that any good points it makes about the Grand Prix get lost in the morass. It’s like one of those prescription drug ads that for legal reasons has to read off all the side effects and contraindications. Then there’s the aesthetic, printed in black and white to save money just like a 1958 Studebaker brochure, and that generic Japanese guy (playing a Toyota exec) who also starred in the TV version of these ads, cursing away (in Japanese) about how Pontiac knows things the Japanese don’t. Cringeworthy.
Photo of ad didn’t upload – here’s a link: https://blog.consumerguide.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/10/Pontiac-.png
Sheesh. Cringeworthy is right!
And I’m sure people who want a Celica could be persuaded to buy a Grand Prix instead…
The sentence that caught my attention was the one saying level of standard equipment varies. Maybe for the Grand Prix but not the Celica.
I’m having great trouble imagining who would cross-shop a malaise-era Grand Prix and a Celica.
GM is still at it. This was part of commitments to all electic,
https://electricdrives.tv/ev-life/general-motors-updates-its-logo-ready-for-its-move-into-electric-car-age/
Note the missing parts, on the model and the vehicle.
Yeah, about that new GM logo…suddenly it’s 1955:
We were once “The Standard of the World”. We were GM. Now we’re not. Now we’re gm. Note to gm. You’re marketing department sucks. Have a nice day.
That old 3M logo is so much better than the boring current one. I just now noticed the “M” is just the “3” turned on its side. Also, I have a really elegant looking 3M chess set from the 1970s. Why was 3M making chess sets? I have no idea.
3M did a series of board games from 1962-1975. I remember them from childhood. Can’t find a single thing that explains why they ever got into that line to begin with, though.
Bizcorp-Companyco Amalgamated Industries, Inc.
Is that similar enough for 3M to sue for trademark infringement? 🙂
Given that 3M retired it in 1978, for the logo that they use today, I seriously doubt whether, if they wanted to, they could make the case that GM’s current logo harms them by resembling a logo introduced 61 years ago and discontinued 44 years ago.
Toyota’s “Oh what a feeling” We’re still inflicted with that corny, stale tag line here in Australia. Take it out behind the shed and shoot the damn thing!
If you flipped a Toyota, you could sing “Oh what a feeling, we’re dancing on the ceiling…” (with apologies to Lionel Richie!)
Wait, what? They’re still using that???
Amazingly, yes. Saving money, I guess.
“This is your father’s Toyota ad!”
“Lincoln. Reach Higher.” O.K., we will. Let’s go check out an Audi.
I have absolutely no marketing education, but I’d make ads that show rich people having fun doing rich people things with the slogan “Live Life in LINCOLN Luxury!”
Matthew McConaughey musing “Why do I drive a Lincoln…”
Because they gave you one for doing this ad? Just a guess.
(On a related note) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3eN9u5N2Q4
Chevy’s “real people, not actors” commercials from a few years ago. My god, not only were they in the “not your father’s oldsmobile vein of “our old products are such crap, we’ll show you how much better they are now” now featuring real people reactions exclaiming “THAT’s an Impala?” The ads themselves were repellant, far probably more real people that made fun of those commercials to friends and collogues than were swayed to actually buy a Cruze based on them.
Why, all of the “hep” young people watching those ads surely felt compelled to go and “check out” the “hot prospects” at their nearest Chevrolet dealer. And surely every “teen-ager” who saw those ads longed for the day when they, too, could become the proud owner of (et cetera)
While we’re on the subject of ads parodied by SNL, I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned the Lexus December to Remember ad campaign and its’ many “surprise your spouse with a new car they’ll be paying for half of anyway and may not be to their liking” imitators.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcEylCwkSxE
And since XR7Matt mentioned it, the Zebra Corner Chevy ads starring Mahk;
Whoops, double posted one link and forgot the second;
Wow. That Lexus one is the first time in a very, very, very long time I’ve laughed at a SNL sketch, and this is the second:
My nomination is the jingle in the FoMoCo ad campaign in the ’60s or ’70s asking the big question,
“Where’s Your New Meteor, Where’s that new Car? It’s all you’re looking for, who could ask for anything more?”
Geez I dunno where I left it, maybe back at the dealer where I didn’t buy one?
I’ve read about the Chrysler ad campaign about the White Hat Special, which I think was about white vinyl rooves (tops if you prefer?) on cars. Umm, OK I guess so. You could be a Dodge boy too!
I thought two 1990s Ford ads were good – the “Have you driven a Ford…lately?” ads (especially when a local put the personalised registration plate “LATELY” on their Ford Sierra wagon) and the “(Everything we do is) Driven by you” series (although that was mostly because of Queen’s Brian May writing and performing it.)
But with the good comes he bad, and “Built Ford tough” has irritated me for years now. I suppose it’s actually a quite good phrase and I don’t know why it bugs me, but maybe because it doesn’t explain enough – is Ford’s ‘tough’ like regular tough, or is it better? Is ‘tough’ the same as quality? Lego bricks are tough, does that mean Fords are similarly hard, sharp and square? Could have been worse I guess – they could have gone with “Built Ford tough, like a rock”…
And they could have used screech-voice Bob Seeger, many of whose songs grate on my ears.
Yes! I have commented elsewhere that Bob Seger’s “Like A Rock” that accompanied Chevy truck ads some 20 years ago reminded me of someone straining whilst trying to pass a frozen turkey.
Gotta love admire the oh so 80’s cheesy yet instantly catchy jingle. Epic sax solo as well lol
https://youtu.be/-IG9EsoFCm4
Seriously though Cadillac was making some of its ugliest cars around that time with the shruken head Deville, Seville and Eldorado that looked like every other GM car that cost half as much. Then the one good car they made, the big Fleetwood was the same car from 10 years ago, fashion had moved on
Took some real balls to lead in with “Cadillac style”, This wasnt the 50’s when all the cool people like Elvis, Dean Martin, Liz Taylor, etc drove one. This is what your grandpa bought as his last ride, cause you know he was “with it” in the 1950s and he could just now afford one. Sad to say the world and fashion had changed a lot in those 30 years even if gramps had not
Wow, what a thread. I saw it at first and focused on the car shown, an early 80s Chevy. Which was one of my Dad’s favorite cars. Not a car guy, but he had many, ranging from 2 or more MB, Cadillac, large Ford, large Chevy, Renault, Mitsubishi, with at least one each of VW, Vauxhall, small Ford and more.
But car ads. Actually ads in general. Who actually puts more than a scintilla of belief of what they say. I guess they may make an impression, the industry generates an enormous amount of money, but other than perhaps subliminally, does anyone believe a word they say?
Now good cars can have bad ads, and bad cars good ads, but for the most part, does it matter?
Well, it matters in that I »still« can’t get that stoopid 1993 Ford Escort song out my head, and I resent the hell out of them for polluting my mind like that.
You can get an Escort (’93 Escort!)
Braaaaaand-new Escort (’93 Escort!)
You’ll be payin’ one price (’93 Escort!)
You’ll be sayin’ ‘that’s nice’ (’93 Escort!)
Et cetera. Sorry.
Must be a TV ad. I rarely watch TV and I don’t recall ever hearing it. (that or I’ve got a good filter)
Chevrolet had their idiotic “genuine Chevrolet” ad campaign.
I went to a Chevy dealer, wasn’t sure it was genuine, so I bought a Ford.
Oh, right, I’d almost forgot about those. How were we meant to tell the counterfeits from the genuine ones?
The counterfeits were sold as GMC’s and GEO’s until GEO merged with Chevrolet, then they became “genuine.”
I’m reminded of BMW’s recent ad, which roundly mocked an E66-era 760Li (that’s the V12 one), in an attempt to make its new iX EV look better. The entire ad has all the self-awareness of something written by a 20-year-old intern.
On one hand, the E65/66 (2002-2008), especially the pre-facelift (2002-2005) was never a looker. On the other hand, it’s the perfect whipping boy for this sort of assignment. The other cars are either too sacred to BMW fans or look too much like the current cars.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5o4kKuOFToo&w=1000&h=560%5D
I’ve never hated a commercial more. I don’t like either car but I wouldnt take lip from that pretentious condescending buck toothed glorified Alexa either,
That BMW commercial really blows.
THANK YOU for the various linked TV adverts ! .
-Nate
“Love-It’s what makes a Subaru”
You’ve just gotta be kidding me. And the “Dog tested, dog approved” thing isn’t too much less cringe-inducing.
I donno. “Love—it’s what makes a Subaru, a Subaru” struck me as pitching directly to the hippie/earthmuffin/Eugene-dwelling buyer. On the other hand, I don’t know that they really needed to advertise in that direction; those people were already onside.
There was also “Subaru. What to drive.” Not a bad slogan at all, but the ads that went with it (“I want [feature], I want {capability], I want a [feature] and a [feature] and [capability]”, etc) came off as “MEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”, kind of offputting. There was a parody I remember as being funny, but it’s decades since I saw/heard it; I can’t find it any more, and it might be one of those things I misremember as funny (like Saturday Night Live) or one of those things that only seemed funny because I lived in the homogeneous whitebread suburbs of Denver (like Dave Barry, Garfield, etc).
I’m with Daniel here, at least that’s the reason I still love my old deathtrap VW Beetle….
I thought Dave Barry lives in Florida ? .
-Nate
This is not at all vehicle- or manufacturer-specific, but what are auto dealers thinking when their print ads for used cars include “Won’t Last Long At This Price!”
On the other hand, full marks for honesty!