The business of selling pickup trucks must be hard. Each year, you have to figure out how to make your truck look and be more burly than the other guy’s. You also can’t lose that grille size and towing capacity arms race. Now you have to advertise, and you need a person people love.
This morning, Jason wrote about how Dodge used to market trucks by having Don Knotts of deputy Barney Fife fame to be their spokesman. He ended that Cold Start by asking how an automaker could replicate that success today. Now, one of my favorite recent Ram campaigns played Lainey Wilson’s Heart Like A Truck. Nobody tell Ram that the trucks in the music video were Fords:
Of course, Chevy’s ‘Like A Rock’ campaign is an iconic piece of advertising:
How do we do better? How about Ash78’s suggestion:
Richard Ayoade is a great suggestion, but he’d have to bring that Travel Man energy. (not IT Crowd)
“Many a homo sapiens has pondered just how one can tote all of one’s personal shizz PLUS the kitchen sink. Wonder no more because the mad geniuses at Stellantis are here to bring you the RAM 1500 to handle all of your personal handling with none of the gambling, but I’m rambling. 12,000 pounds of towing and I don’t mean the currency, we’re talking five metric tonnes with an e, and speaking of ‘e’, the patented e-torque system is here to ensure your V8 doesn’t get you a personal letter from Greta Thunberg.”
Here’s Ayoade in action:
Now, you won’t be surprised to read Thomas’s report that the BMW XM had a dumpster fire in sales numbers last year. Nsane In The MembraNe isn’t letting BMW off of the hook:
“I’m not sure if someone forgot a BMW i3 behind a dumpster or a stack of tires, but this beloved EV still logged a sale in 2024 despite officially bowing out after the 2021 model year“
…I’m assuming someone got David a very nice wedding present. Congrats! Anyway the XM is an abomination in the eyes of god and I’m thrilled that it’s been such a flop. It’s a microcosm of how far BMW has fallen in pursuit of the conspicuous consumption crowd and the Chinese market where I’m sure a rolling anus on wheels with a dollar signs painted all over it would be a hot seller.
Dumb car that is bad and expensive doesn’t sell, more at 6. I will say that the XM is going to make for some true hilarity when it winds up on buy here pay here lots in 3 years though. I’m excited to see one rolling on a donut spare that’s been decked out with Autozone accessories and ground effects.
Speaking of BMW, some jerk stole the BMW parts I bought to fix my E61. Some decent money gone in just a poof. I hope you enjoy a bunch of cooling hoses and a mouse-shaped flange for a car you probably don’t own.
Finally, we asked you about a cool classic car that might not ever be valuable. Robert Hanlon is showing some love for the awesome and underrated Kappa platform GM cars:
The Pontiac Solstice Coupe. With either engine, they are fun cars that an American company will never make the likes of again. They weren’t expensive when they came out and are quite reasonably priced today. Even the convertible is a bit under appreciated as Mercedes well knows. They will never really go up in value as everyone that has one tends to keep it. And others will avoid it do to lack of part availability or unawareness of a Miata alternative.
Have a great evening, everyone!
(Top Image: Talkback Thames/Retort/Delightful Industries and Stellantis)
I always thought the Venn diagram of “truck brands” and “brands of sex toys targeted to the men-having-sex-with-men” would be a circle.
POWER STROKE
RAM
DURAMAX
F-150
TITAN
That IS some suggestive language. F-150 comes up a bit short, but otherwise, yeah.
Early IT Crowd was so good. It kind of went off the rails in later seasons, but as someone who worked at a help desk when it came out, the first season pushed all the right buttons for me.
Is that Ram commercial for real? It seriously sounds like the male voice over is out of breath from smoking 10 packs a day. And the song, so cringe. It’s straight from the reject pile of the Walk Hard soundtrack.
BMWs don’t have donut spares. I found this out when my parents rented an X5 years ago on a trip up to Prince Edward Island, Canada. On the most remote road in Maine they got a flat and we found that BMW in their infinite wisdom only includes a fancy can of fix-a-flat. So we limped along for hours and the 7 hour drive became a 14 hour ordeal with me adding air every 20 minutes from a hastily purchased WalMart compressor. No tire shop would plug it and none had replacement sizes in stock since it was a rural area. BMW is now just the Ultimate Mbadge Marketing Machine.
Fix-a-flat? So they’re not just relying 100% on runflats anymore? 🙂
My rule is if you can’t carry a spare (even an aftermarket one in the trunk or roof rack) then at least a can of Slime and a compressor. Or if you can manage it on the roadside, a proper plug kit. I haven’t messed with those because Murphy’s Law says I’ll be doing this in the cold rain or snow, in the dark. With Slime, the main goal is not dropping the valve stem insert.
OHHHHH FUUUUUUUUDGE.
It was an Enterprise rental. It did have run-flats, but with senior parents and the BMW warnings on the dash not to exceed 50mph or 50miles or some nonsense it made for a long trip. The tire was too hot to touch the entire trip.
Been there, done that. Halfway to Galveston on a Sunday in my then wife’s X5… Found a piece of conduit on the road and limped to a bar and waited for the flat bed to take it back to the dealer in Beaumont.
I will never buy a vehicle that can’t at least carry a donut spare. We replaced it with an MDX after the self-leveling rear suspension started doing the Carolina squat thing. It had a donut, but had room for a real spare, which I replaced it with.
And then never had a flat in 60,000+ miles.
Exactly. Proper spare tires are not a feature, they are a necessity. When you need one, you want it right away. A long wait for a tow truck when you are in East Gish and then no tire replacements for 48+ hours is a bummer way to spend a vacation.
For folks that DON’T live in California or one of the 5 aligned states, Hot Rod magazine published an article on how you could swap in a LXS engine, complete with all GM part numbers that would perk that little roadster right up.
Yes but I remember reading that in the end it ended up weighing about as much as a Corvette, in which case just buy a Corvette and save yourself the trouble.
Welllll, true in the strictly financial sense. The fun part would be having a sleeper that might surprise a corvette driver, possibly lower insurance costs and probably a more powerful engine. I would think that you could complete such a hybrid for C4-C5 convertible money (especially a nice driver).
May whoever stole your car parts have endlessly wet socks.
And give them endlessly cold clothes too.
That’s evil!! I love it!
Add in some of that fine grain sand that clumps up in just the worst places.
I just hope David and Elise (not her real name) are safe even if it means spending the night in the Aztent in the Galpin lot (or if David’s smart and the place isn’t getting greedy with surge pricing, that Holiday Inn next door that shows up in so many pics of the lot…)
Let’s use a huge diesel to tow a load a 1st gen explorer won’t notice! Won’t be a RAM unless 95% of its ability is wasted!
The next time I see a Cummins towing will be the first