Don Knotts Once Was Dodge’s Truck Spokesperson And It Was Bonkers: Cold Start

Truck advertising has always had a bit of an obsession with the general concept of “toughness.” Ruggedness and the ability to do difficult and demanding jobs has always been a factor is good work vehicle design, but really the concept has become something more about a certain kind of visual look and emotional tone, an idea of “toughness” more than anything else. Most carmakers take themselves pretty seriously about all of this, though for a while, in the 1960s and 1970s, it looks like Dodge was secure enough to have some fun with the idea.

I say this because they hired Don Knotts as their spokesperson.

In case you’re unfamiliar with the work of Don Knotts, he specialized in playing a sort of deeply nervous, nebbishy kind of comic character, but, significantly, also one that had grand illusions of his own power and let any tiny amount of authority go immediately to his head.

In this context, he was likely best known for playing deputy Barney Fife on the long-running North Carolina-based small town cop-comedy, The Andy Griffith Show. I could embed some clips from the show here, but I think it’d be more fun to show you this video of Peaches’ song Fuck the Pain Away, which, wonderfully bafflingly, was made with old Andy Griffith clips:

If that was too raunchy, then you can cleanse your brain-palate by watching this quite long trailer for a movie where Don Knotts played a nervous guy who could turn into a fish, and then as a fish helped to hunt down Nazi U-Boats, called The Incredible Mr.Limpet:

Okay, let’s get back to Dodge. The point here is that Don Knotts was hardly an icon of toughness or the sort of ruggedness that most truckmakers would seek out to represent their trucks. Which is why it’s so fun that Dodge chose him to do ads like this:

This ad acknowledges that Knotts is a bit out of place here, but Dodge later made a much longer promo film with Knotts that really lets Knotts shine with his self-conscious bravado and misplaced confidence:

This film is also full of plenty of mid-century creepy horny misogyny and Knotts plays that up pretty much any time a woman comes within three feet of him. There is a woman who is Dodge’s factory technical representative, at least, though she ends up taking on a strange, almost maternal role at the end of the film.

Also, we do get to hear Don Knotts recite a line from William Earnest Henley’s Invictus, and quote Alexander Pope.

Knotts was also specifically used as the mascot/spokesperson of a special edition for the 1969 Sweptline pickup, the “Dude Sport Trim Package,” which was basically a decal kit.

The Dude is interesting because it was one of the earlier attempts to make a pickup truck appealing as a more general-use daily driver than just a utility vehicle. The stripes and “sport trim package” made this sort of a muscle car with a massive trunk, at least in some vague way. That was sort of the intent, at least.

Only about 2,000 Dudes were actually made, so they’re quite uncommon today.

I’m trying to think of who would be an equivalent spokesperson today if RAM decided they wanted to do something similar. Timothée Chalamet? The guy who played Steve Urkel? Richard Ayoade? It’s not an easy call.