Time for another look at cars in ads appearing in places they clearly don’t belong. Today, we’re looking at another trope (age-old, as it turns out), cars parked/driving on golf courses. After all, who hasn’t looked at the pastoral splendor of a golf course and thought to themselves, “we should totally turf this joint by driving cars all over it.”
While horse racing might be the “sport of kings,” golf has historically been a sport of the elite. Everything about golf screams luxury, from the well-manicured acres of lawn to the implication that you have the luxury of 5+ hours of free time to spend on the links playing 18 holes. It is no wonder that luxury cars feature prominently in this trope.
The earliest example of this trope I could find goes back well over a century, to this 1912 ad for Lozier. Being a stylized illustration, it is hard to tell if the car is actually on the golf course, near the golf course, or in a sand trap. The connection to the country club set is made clear in the copy, just in case you missed it in the picture. And while the $5,000 price in the ad means you don’t have to ask, being equivalent to about $150,000 today means you still can’t afford it.
Lesser automakers like Ford were not averse to using golf courses to burnish their image, as shown in this 1930 Model T ad. The car appears to be on a driveway or cart path and not the actual course, but close enough for our purposes.
Of course, tropes don’t start out as tropes. They start out as someone’s creative decision to place a car in an unusual setting. Only after years and decades of reuse do they become tropes. The art director of this 1941 Nash ad, featuring a car clearly parked on a golf course, was making what at the time was surely a creative decision in placing their car.
Here we see a 1955 Oldsmobile Holiday 98 parked in front of Strong’s Island, the famous par-3 9th hole on the Ocean Course of the Ponte Vedra resort in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.
This is what Strong’s Island looks like today. It is named after its designer, Herbert Strong, a British professional golfer who designed the hole (and course) in 1928. (Maybe I should do another series on the real-world locations of vintage auto ads).
This is perhaps the most implausible of golf course scenarios: Two men watching a golf tournament from the comfort of a 1957 Oldsmobile while parked in the rough. This scenario was so implausible it had to be rendered as an illustration and not a photograph. Who is that talking to the driver? A fellow golfer asking for pointers? Or a greensmaster asking them to kindly move their car? My guess is the latter.
I’m not 100% sure if this 1959 Mercury Colony Park is parked on a golf course or not, but it was too bizarre to leave out of this post. What exactly is supposed to be depicted here? An angry groundskeeper firing up the sprinklers to get rid of the trespassers parked on the green? No one seems to be too bothered by it, or even concerned enough to roll up the windows on the car. As always, I will leave it to the commenters to speculate further.
Wow! Here’s a 1960 Ford Thunderbird scoring a hat trick of tropes. We have the car on the golf course and the car beside the pool trope in the same shot.
The car with the checkered past? That’s how I originally read this ad.
Golf courses are colorful places, which is why ads featuring them are often shot in color. In black and white, the lush sea of green turns into a dour ocean of gray, which unfortunately affects your interpretation of the photo.
Why is the female driver of the 1962 Chrysler convertible on a cart path watching that threesome of men play golf? A jilted lover stalking an ex? A wife checking to make sure her philandering husband is actually at the golf course? Checkered past indeed.
Next up, a 1964 I-H Scout is being driven on what is quite clearly a cart path. At least the Scout’s narrow track and short wheelbase could make it plausibly pass for a golf cart, unlike the next photo.
Apparently they were out of carts at the clubhouse, so this twosome decided to just use their Buick instead.
Perhaps recognizing that this had become a trope, later golf course photos frequently show a pro golfer accompanying the car parked on a golf course, whether it is Andy Bean in the 1984 Jeep ad in the lede photo or Lee Trevino in the 1970 Dodge ad above. I guess people will figure that since they are pro golfers then they must be allowed to park their cars right on the course.
Great stuff. Reminds me of the early ’80s with Chuck Yeager peddling AC Delco crap.
Not sure golf carries the prestige it once had. It was the way to hobnob and network with bosses and the well to do. In the 60’s and 70’s, most had a waiting list for membership. Now, several local country clubs (most with golf courses) have closed due to declining memberships. Most are in suburban or urban areas and the land is more valuable for development.
Not pulling in Gen Y & Z is the big issue.
Tom,
Interesting series. A suggestion for your next post: Passenger cars on race tracks (Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Daytona International Speedway, etc.). Might be hard to separate Pace Car Editions from your everyday drivers posed looking tough at the track. But I’d bet you could do it.
Another great expose of the comedy of automobile advertising! Love the ads. Thanks for the fun. I looked to see if the idea ever spread to pumpkins. Not exactly. I found one ad purportedly from 1927 but the car looks to be much older.
The ad copy makes it clear the artwork is meant to portray a “horseless carriage” from an earlier time, so it could well be from ’27.
Yeah, car looks about 1910.
Another entertaining look at advertising cliches. The IH Scout ad seems like the most incongruous of these (high on the list of cars I wouldn’t expect to be advertised with a golf theme), while the Colony Park ad featuring the girls-in-white-dresses-sitting-on-grass is just beyond words. Seems like that should be a photo for a laundry detergent product instead.
Just this past weekend, I was chatting with my neighbor about golf. He’s an enthusiastic golfer (though not the stereotypical snooty kind), and by contrast I’ve never once set foot on a golf course. My neighbor has occasionally invited me to come along and give it a try – at one point I may do that. Who knows? Maybe I’ll like it.
Like 3SpeedAutomatic above, I wonder if golf carries the same cachet as it did in previous generations. And these tropes really get me thinking — what present-day ad cliches will folks laugh about 40 years from now?
I don’t think you’ll ever see an electric car being placed in a golf course setting for an ad, lest some wag make an association…And why is there a period after “1969 Buick Riviera”?
The Golf Course association at least makes more sense than the Pool one for some cars and maybe it’s trying to push things a bit with others. I get the Grand Wagoneer, not so much the Charger. I even took a bunch of pictures at a golf course when reviewing a Lexus LX570 a while back and tried to make it look like I was actually ON the course when that was of course not realistically possible.
I see that Mads, in the next newest post after this one, also seems to have positioned his car on a large grassy surface evoking a golf fairway. This trope seems well-engrained!
Well these are even sillier than the poolside car ads; at least those had cars parked on concrete. I can’t imagine a golf course owner allowing cars onto the meticulously-maintained fairways (except in the Lee Trevino ad where the turf is strangely unkempt). The closest I’ve seen to a car parked on a golf course was at a nearby driving range that put a junked Plymouth Volare or Dodge Aspen coupe way out in the distance just to make an amusing target.
Saturation in Andy Bean Jeep ad turned up to 11.
I’ve never heard of Lozier until now. Their advertising doesn’t convey much beyond that they’re expensive; evidently rich people preferred other brands.
T-Bird ad doesn’t portray a hat trick unless we can identify a third trope it illustrates. Perhaps portraying a car as it it were a piece of furniture? Something to sit on/in or lean against while socializing; there’s no sense in most of these that cars are primarily for transportation on public roads.
Re: T-Bird Ad:
I thought about this too, and came up with the third trope as beautiful women posing with the car. That trope gets used in advertising all the time.
I can. When the event was still held in St Charles by me the Bloomington Gold Corvette show had participants cars displayed on the fareways of the Pheasant Run resort’s golf course
JPC beat me to it below Matt, but I’ll cut an paste his text anyway (Sorry Jim):
‘ Someone yelling “Fore!” ‘ in that setting would completely freak out those Corvette enthusiasts.
Imagine the panic!
I do remember taking a break from the heat in the resort I eavesdropped on a loud conversation in the golf wing where one of the guests, golf bag over his shoulder, insisted to the manager on playing a round despite the course and driving range being scattered with Corvettes. He wanted to play the holes cars weren’t on!
How about cars in cemeteries? Hess & Eisenhardt used to photograph some of their funeral coaches at Cincinnati’s Spring Grove Cemetery, and ambulance pics along I-71. I assume other manufacturers did something similar. Of course, that is the native habitat of a hearse or limousine,
I’m impressed about this and the pool tropes. What we might be seeing is a visual marketing presentation appealing to 20th century buyers.
I understand how the pool trope permits photographing attractive young barely clothed bodies posed next to the product being sold. The pool trope permits a classic Roman or Greek love of the human form.
The golf trope? Golf and polo are both exclusive “sports”. Horseracing is another. Presenting your product in these settings adds action and exclusivity to it. It isn’t just a car – it is a physical object giving you the satisfaction of being alive and active, and knowing that others could see you as having exclusive access to wealth. Both of those appeal to people and during the 20th century, those “sports” offered both.
Exclusivity is a very powerful American marketing plus. It is what pushes US drivers into driving foreign cars, big luxury vehicles, specific brands, ivy league diplomas and electric cars today. Without a class system, the need to show a higher station in a community in our society usually relies upon purchasing products denoting an exclusive class. US history is filled with purchased class status fads. Golf, polo and horseracing are just a few from the previous century.
Catching and presenting these tropes is an insightful look into auto marketing.
The Lozier Ad confuses me a bit. It says the car is from Detroit. If that’s true, then why is the steering wheel on the wrong side?
But the part about the higher horsepower version being $300 higher makes sense in today’s terms. Using an inflation calculator, that’s over 9 grand. Sounds about right when you compare a GT Mustang to an EcoBoost in today’s dollars.
That “inflation” calculator likely works for the bump in horsepower too… a 5HP increase for your $9K+ is a 156HP boost today. 😉 Sounds just about right.
Because essentially all early cars prior to 1910 had their steering wheels on the “wrong side”. The 1908 Model T was the first Ford to have it on the left side.
Passing wasn’t exactly a common issue back then. But not letting your car slide into the ditch on the very primitive “roads” of the time was a real issue.
It’s the same reason trucks (and some cars) kept RHD in Italy and Switzerland well into the 50s, so that the driver could see the edge of the road on all those narrow mountain pass roads.
I remember you mentioning the RHD trucks in Italy and Switzerland in an article a while back. Thanks for the clarification, Paul.
Passing not being a common issue back then may explain only a 5HP bump for the “expensive model”… (Just kidding – that was probably a big increase at the time!)
Regarding the image of a 1962 Chrysler convertible on a cart path…the reason that there are only three players shown is that, once again, Charlie Smerdinger hit another shot into the adjacent fairway and got so upset with himself, he is shown swinging the club downwards towards the turf.
It was that level of frustration which caused Bill Crowley to abandon the foursome five holes earlier. At the 19th Hole, he met up with Betty Smerdinger and recommended that she should take their new car down onto the course and take Charlie home.
Speaking of Lee Trevino, he starred in a Dodge tv ad with Sheriff Jo Higgins for the 1972 Dodge Monaco.
I had never really thought about the golf course trope, but it is a great one. I live near an old country club, and both of my boys worked there during high school and college. Never once did I hear about anyone driving a car onto the course.
These photos were all evidently taken before the cracked glass and dented panels that resulted from badly hit golf balls. Someone yelling “Fore!” from 60 yards away doesn’t give a guy much of a chance to get the car started and moved before the little white projectile does its business.
The individual ads give some great ideas about the conversations being had.
Lozier: “Say chum, you look like you know where the tennis courts are. Elizabeth here thought she knew, but here we are on the golf course.”
The white Oldsmobile – it’s probably a bookie. “I want to put $100 on Sam Snead – what are the odds right now?”
The Mercury wagon – “Ok girls, back in the car. Mr. Epstein is expecting us and the party starts at 7.”
I, too, an curious about the future of golf. I looked it up one time and learned that the average 18-hole course occupies 150 acres, and that doesn’t include things like buildings and parking lots. That’s a lot of (often prime) real estate so that (mostly) old, (mostly) white, (mostly) rich, (mostly) men, who happen to have 5 free hours in the middle of the day, can play a game.
But, like JP’s sons, I also grew up near a very fancy golf course, and made money as a caddy and a valet, and I came to have a vague understanding of those sorts of folks, and I don’t think their numbers will ever be few enough to sell off all that land.
I don’t know Evan, Rodney Dangerfield’s character from “Caddyshack” had a little something to say about that… 😉
The golf course I pictured with the Corvettes has been slated for redevelopment for the last few years, last I heard warehousing since it’s adjacent to dupage airport and they don’t want residential development. There’s another resort course right near me that closed but the residents protested redevelopment proposals and it has since been bought by the city as a large green space/park.
Personally I’d much rather see green space than more ugly apartments or warehouses cluttering up the area, even with I have the tepid interest in Golf I do, the courses are nice to look at.
I am fascinated by the ‘55 Olds Holiday 98 ad. It was, indeed, shot in Ponte Vedra, FL. But to help avoid confusion, the 9th hole seen in the Olds ad is on the Ocean Course of the Ponte Vedra Inn & Club, an early-20th Century Florida resort. It shouldn’t be confused with the world-famous “Island Hole,” No. 17 at the Players Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass, 3-and-a-half miles to the south. TPC Sawgrass wasn’t built until the early 1980s and therefore wouldn’t have been available for shooting any car ads in the 1950s.
Since “TPC,” in this case, stands for “Tournament Players Championship,” the Sawgrass course is the one that has been seen on television for the last few decades, likely making No. 17 there more famous than the No. 9 at the Inn & Club. FWIW.
More details on No. 17 at TPC Sawgrass (with generous mention of the course at the Ponte Vedra Inn & Club) is here: https://golfweek.usatoday.com/lists/five-things-hole-17-tpc-sawgrass-players-championship/
Another great set of observations of the weirdness we take for granted. Love these.
The Ford station wagon ad with all of the young girls dressed in white (and the sprinklers) has the vibe of:
(an Australian film from the 1970s that is actually much more interesting than its trailer may appear)
I wonder how many of those girls made it back from the golf course…
As for golf courses in general, I am not a golfer; but having spent my high school years in some of the nicer Maryland close-in suburbs of DC, there was no shortage of golf courses upon which to trespass late at night after typical teenage past times (the sort that we’d be better off not being behind the wheel of a car after engaging in). Often, part of that trespass involved getting onto the courses and taking off running at full tilt. The rolling terrain of a golf course is a blast to run on when you can’t really see where your feet are going to land.
Come to think of, it would probably have been fun to drive on them like that as well. Just a little harder to get out of the sand traps 🙂
I remember one of the early Auto Extremist rants was about pre bankruptcy GM execs being obsessed with golf and golf sponsorships and how no amount of Tiger Woods was going to get younger buyers into Buicks. I can somewhat relate since I have no interest in golf and can’t imagine myself puling into a country club. Conversely I spend a lot of time at trailheads so I guess I buy into outdoorsy a bit.
As far as posing cars on golf courses goes, I want to know if any company exver put a car on or near the famous floating green in Coeur d’Alene Idaho?
Golf course ads may be overrepresented because they to appeal to the kind of middle-aged executives in charge of ad budgets who also love golf. Easier to land an account or get your ad concept approved if it lights up the bosses’ eyes.
I remember an ad in the 90s for a candy bar usually marketed to young adults that inexplicably featured some ancient pro golfer nobody under 50 would ever have heard of, and remember thinking the pro must be a golf buddy of the CEO.
Vintage ad tropes is a great series. What about cars parked by airplanes? It combines two things Curbsiders love.
I was thinking that Scout pretty much looks like a golf cart compared to some of the other vehicles. That could be it’s natural habitat.
I still golf once or twice a year, it used to be a fun way to spend time with Dad since he was a golf enthusiast. But he’s 85 now and retired from golf.
Glen Abbey golf course, one of Canada’s snootiest golf courses in one of it’s snootiest towns had a redevelopment plan filed in 2015. So far the town has held it off…