We’ve recently covered several taboo subjects that seldom appear in vintage car ads: Smoking and Religion. To me, these topics that are (mostly) off-limits to advertisers are far more interesting than topics that get used repeatedly until they become true tropes. With that in mind, today let’s take a look at another item that almost never appears in car ads and brochures: Guns.
As you would expect, many of the appearances of guns in car ads are in conjunction with various forms of sport shooting, in yet another example of the “lifestyle by association” trope. These can either be skeet/trap shooting (as shown above in the 1939 Pontiac Ad) or hunting (as shown below in the 1958 Mercury ad).
1958 Mercury ad
I found various examples of guns used in hunting (although not as many as you might think), so for the rest of this post, I’m going to focus on the really unusual appearances of guns in car ads.
1947 Ford ad
Another unsurprising place where guns made an appearance was in ads for police cars (although again, not nearly as often as you might think). The 1947 Ford ad above is unusual (probably even unique) in that the officers are not only carrying firearms, but actually have them drawn. Even more unusual, the officer on the right is holding what is clearly a Thompson “Tommy” submachine gun with a drum magazine, something that a typical beat officer would definitely not have been carrying.
1955 DeSoto ad
The 1955 DeSoto ad above is unusual not only because it features a firearm, but also because it does not feature a picture of a car (a separate trope that we will dig into in the future). From my research, this particular piece was originally a sign or poster intended to be used in showrooms, so vehicle pictures would have been unnecessary.
1959 Dodge brochure page
The image above is from a 1959 Dodge brochure, showing a child holding (presumably) a toy gun. As we all know, station wagons are versatile vehicles, but tail gunner is a use that I haven’t thought of.
1958 Mercury brochure page
This 1958 Mercury ad is very avante-garde for the time. It is something you would expect to see in an arthouse film and not an advertisement from a mainstream automaker. I’m not even going to try to explain it – I’ll leave it to the commenters to speculate as to what is being portrayed here.
In 1966 and 1967, Dodge ran a “Dodge Rebellion” series of ads, leaning into the US Revolutionary War with antique weapons ranging from pistols and muskets to cannons. Even though the pistol that the model is holding in the 1967 Charger ad above is clearly an antique, I gotta confess to feeling a little shocked when I first saw this ad while researching this post. Given how edgy Dodge advertising was in the late 1960s, I’m sure this shock value was the intended effect.
The 1966 Dodge Dart brochure (above and in the lead) seems to focus as much on the musket as it does on the car. Again, Dodge was trying to be as outrageous as possible in the late 60s, so this is pretty much par for the course.
We will close with this 1967 Dodge ad, which has an odd juxtaposition of the middle-aged couple driving the Coronet in the bottom with the James Bond-inspired model with a very realistic-looking toy dart gun sitting at the top.
There was also some tv ads with guns who featured the Dodge boys like this one.
Tom – that blue Mercury Voyager wagon is a ’58.
For me the obvious gun/car relationship has to be the shooting brake.
You are right – the quad headlights should have been a dead giveaway. I’ve corrected the text.
So much suggestiveness in the ’66 Dart ad. She’s in the trunk – Enjoyment – Wide Open Invitation to Accept – later she is ‘breathing’ on the tip of the gun – Man Sized. Couldn’t be more obvious. And it was the ’60s too! How they got this past the censors is amazing.
Then the second to last photo – performance, comfort and convenience, appearance. Pretty obvious they were targeting the young male market.
Censors? What censors? For a car brochure? If the client (Dodge) accepted it, it was good to go.
Yes, it was the ’60s; that’s the whole point. I think you’re reading a bit more into it than most would, especially about the trunk part.
I marvel at these ads.
There really isn’t anything sporty about that Dodge Revolution ads from the late 1960s. Unlike the hunting ads, which tie the old country club elitist angle on a sporty car – there really isn’t anyone hunting with those newer ads. It is pretty crazy.
The kid with the toy machine gun nest riding in the back of that wagon – that’s incredible. No one today could even approach that kind of image.
As a car enthusiast and a firearms enthusiast, I heartily approve of this (non) trope!
Whenever I come across ads or brochure images like these that have folks randomly posing with guns, I often wonder what the last such car ad was. I have no idea.
That ’58 Mercury ad is just downright bizarre – I have no idea what the explanation could be, other than the cars’ interiors are versatile enough to be appropriate for well-dressed ladies, little kids, and sportsmen. But they sure took an odd route to demonstrating that.
Somehow, I’ve never seen the ’59 Dodge brochure with the boy acting as a tail gunner. I can just envision the family wagon stopped in traffic in 1959, and the kid “shooting” the car behind, and the driver plays along and pretends to be hit. Times were sure different.
Great collection here – thanks!
In grade school in Iowa City in the early ’60s, our favorite after school activity was “Combat” (after the popular WW2 tv show). We all had plastic and wood guns, including some like in the brochure image, divided up into Germans and Americans, and ran all over the neighborhood hunting each other. There were no fences back then, so every house and yard for blocks was our territory. There was no sense of privacy in that regard, although there was one crotchety old guy’s yard we avoided.
My best friend in 4th-6th grade had a 22, and he’d show me the Luger that his dad kept by his bed. He’d go squirrel hunting with the 22. I felt rather nervous about him handling these live guns. Coming from Austria, all of this was very new and different.
Nowadays most newly-built houses around here have 6-ft. fences in the back, so people never even see their neighbors, let alone have their kids play in other folks’ yards.
Your stories remind me of stories my father would tell. By the time I came along, much of that changed. I saw a picture not too long ago of my father and his cousin (around 10-12 years old) with BB guns. I joked that they couldn’t have been up to any good, and he told me that they would roam the neighborhood looking for things to shoot with either BBs or slingshots. Cats were their favorite target. 30 years later when I was that age, hardly any kid did that sort of thing.
With Chrysler this extended beyond ads, remember the name for their hot engines in Plymouths, Dodges and Chryslers respectively were Commando, Magnum and TNT, terms familiar to anyone watching a rootin tootin western or combat movie or TV show at the time. In the early 70s the B body muscle cars even got a “Pistol grip” 4-speed shifter
I think the most no fly zone one by todays standards is the kid with the fake gun in the window. Obviously societies sensibilities regarding firearms has shifted quite a bit since the 60s but that’s the only one of these that outright seems inappropriate by today’s standards. Dodge within the last 10 years ran a revolutionary war parody commercial featuring soldiers with muskets
Keep in mind that when that ad hit print, the first ‘mass shooting’ (of my lifetime, anyway) was still something like 4-5 years in the future. And John Kennedy was a Senator, any talk about Presidency was limited to the Hyannisport compound, and would primarily be coming from Joe Kennedy.
Nobody talked gun control back then, because there was no need to.
Not exactly an ad, but the box of the Revell model Ford Country Squire 1957 station wagon features a Western theme. The car is parked in front of a barn, a guy dressed like a cowboy is loading a saddle in the tailgate, another cowboy is seen in the distance, and a boy about 6 years old is playing cowboy with his hat and double pistol holster while he is shooting at a bad guy somewhere in the unseen distance.How many kids are playing cowboy today? Do they still make realistic looking toy 6 shooters? How times have changed!
Believe it or not, such things are still made, though they’re not easy to find. We have a few cap guns that we bought about 7-8 years ago for our kids, and they’re old-school realistic looking (the end of the ‘barrel’ is orange though). But we told them for obvious reasons to only play with them in our own yard!
Neat .
I especially like the Dodge Dart adverts .
-Nate
As a child of the mid 70s – 80s I used to own several cap guns and very realistic toy guns prior to the orange tip barrel law. Playing with friends around the block/ culdesac it was mainly gorilla warfare and the capture of some dumb token. Thankfully I outgrew that phase in high school during the first Gulf war that helped to solidify my pacifist beliefs. Before the Columbine school massacre in 1999 if one saw a child (provided they are white and not in the big city) with a gun it was assumed to be a toy. Then the gun lobbyists succeeded in letting anyone that can breath carry a gun in public and turned millions of people into paranoid wannabe cops. So much so that simply making the pistol sign with one’s hand is enough strike fear into most people.
As far as that 58 Mercury brochure goes let’s just say sometimes the marketing team drops acid and decides to act on the craziest idea they came up with. For example the Beatles Yesterday And Today “Butcher” album cover. Somethings just make no damn sense.
I thought talking politics was forbidden on this site. I guess I was wrong.
Thanx Rick .
It’s a serious change in society .
When I was a pre teen going hunting alone with a 30.06 wasn’t any big deal .
Plinking cans with a .22 LR same thing, everyone did it .
Including the father of a guy who went to the town dump to plink rats and got his face mostly burned off when he exploded a container of who knows what next to some burning rubbish .
No one batted an eye when I wanted to buy an M1 Garand in 1967 .
Firearms are serious tools and *must* be respected at all times, same as chain saws .
“Gun Control” means knowing how to handle firearms safely .
(also tight grouping)
-Nate
Forgive me if this has been previously covered in a feature.
In 1984, Dodge offered a special trim version of a D150 Ram pickup truck named the “Marksman.” It came with a higher-grade version of an actual model 94 Winchester rifle in 30-30. Complete with a Dodge symbol. I’ve read that the buyer actually received a certificate to take to a firearms dealer, then the rifle was shipped to them for transfer. I’ve read claims that a Remington shotgun was also offered as an alternative.
Some killer photo-shoots here (I had to).
The ’47 Ford ad borders on the bizarre. The (somewhat poorly drawn) officer with his Tommy gun looks for all the world like a jackbooted Nazi. Oh well, old Henry did get some money out of his Cologne site in the war, and didn’t object to the odd medal before it. Still, the market for former Nazis in police service in ’47seems rather limited to me.(The market for a small minority of coppers with that attitude, however, is essentially bottomless and worldwide, but I’m digressing).
The green police car seems far ahead of its time, in fact, so far that that color has never been seen on a cop car in the Anglosphere.
German police like it a bit though, which essentially proves my conspiracy. (Along with the aliens, but I’ll tell you that one another day).
It’s the jodhpurs that do it. Also seen on officers of the Galactic Empire.
That 59 Dodge with the kid aiming a rifle out the back, if I were following him, we’d be talkin 911!