You know Robert De Niro, right? Wildly famous actor likely best known for playing Harry Tuttle, renegade heating engineer from the 1985 movie Brazil? Sure you do. Well, at the very beginning of his career, when he was still playing parts with names like “Cecil – A Groomsman,” DeNiro also made a commercial for America’s favorite underdog, AMC. And not just any AMC: the commercial was for AMC’s top of the line car, the Ambassador, and, true to much of DeNiro’s future career roles, relies heavily on a lot of stereotypes of Italian Americans. Here, take a little journey back to 1969, to a New York City neighborhood where everyone talks at the same volume as a Boeing 747 taking off!
Don’t turn your speakers up too high:
Holy crap is everyone loud. I bet you have to use a bullhorn to whisper to somebody. The lungs on that kid Richie who has his sneakers on the seat, holy crap is that kid loud! Anyway, DeNiro plays Joey, who shows up back at his old neighborhood in a 1970 AMC Ambassador, wowing everyone with how expensive they perceive the car to be.
Joey’s a CPA, so he knows how to handle his money, though, and the truth is the Ambassador isn’t that expensive, you see! That’s the hook! All those people, with classic TV commercial-level skills of worth assessment, think the AMC is a fortune, when in fact it started at about $2,090, or around $17,000 or so in today’s money. I mean, that’s dirt cheap today!
The truth is the Ambassador was kind of outdated at this time, and AMC didn’t really have the resources to update it significantly. One easy tell was the external windshield wipers, when competing cars like the Chevy Impala would have hidden them under the cowl, as was becoming the style. I mean, to modern eyes, it doesn’t seem all that different than the competition, but it was, which is why AMC had to take such measures as becoming one of the first non-luxury cars to offer air conditioning as standard, which they made sure to play up, as in ads like this:
Also, if your test drive of a new car involves someone who isn’t you driving, be suspicious.
I suppose since we’re talking about famous actors who did car ads before they got big, someone in the comments will likely bring up Dustin Hoffman and the commercial he did for the VW Type 3 Fastback, so here, may as well watch that, too:
It’s a clever ad, wildly different from the DeNiro AMC ad; where DeNiro’s ad is essentially a tiny character study complete with multiple characters and a richly detailed environment, VW places its car and actor into a featureless void, where they use a novel technical trait of their car – the two trunks, thanks to a flat-profile engine placed under the trunk floor at the rear – as the primary hook for the ad.
Also, Hoffman really climbs all over that thing, doesn’t he?
I think DeNiro is in a new movie we just wrote about for the cars featured in it, too! Who knew we had so much DeNiro content here?
I want to buy an amc ambassador now
Can confirm the top speed of a VW Type 3… but it was the wall to wall carpeting that sold me.
My dad’s first new car purchase was an Ambassador wagon. Rode like a boat on the ocean.
They’re gonna go for a ride and Ritchie will mysteriously disappear for disrespecting the seats.
“Also, Hoffman really climbs all over that thing, doesn’t he?”
Hey! Hey Dustin Hoffman! Get the sneakers off the seat, will ya please?
“Hey! I’m trying to sell a car here!”
That is an amazing ad. I love the way they portray late 60s/early 70s New York street life. And the accents . . .
Brazil! Fantastic movie……the small cars were Messerschmitts, with a little add-on over the engine…..
Is it me or does that Ambassador ride really high? Was that the inspiration for the Eagle? Or were they giving him extra clearance to weigh down the trunk with bodies and bags of lye
https://www.hemmings.com/classifieds/dealer/amc/ambassador/2618214.html
You can buy the white manual wagon version here for a mere $23K. Seems steep but I do not know the market.
I said this farther down in the comments, but Brazil is an incredibly underappreciated movie. Happy to see a reference to it!
Next up… A deep dive into the design of the vehicles of Brazil? Both Jill’s truck and Sam’s government issue three wheel car interesting looking.
Brazil has the perfect quote to mutter to yourself when you are wrenching: “Bloody typical, they’ve gone back to metric without telling us”
Harry Tuttle in Brazil! Also, De Niro starred with Richard Romanus in the movie Mean Streets. Richard Romanus voiced Harry Canyon in the animated movie Heavy Metal. No word as to when Debbie Harry was first heard on the radio in an AMC ambassador.
Not sure what my point is here other than to wish everyone a very Harry Tuesday morning.
The verisimilitude of useless car features. The hidden cowl wipers did give the cars a cleaner look and might have protected them from freezing weather but they added complexity and unreliability with the vacuum-driven movable cowl and off-glass parking zone. For most consumers, they changed the car ownership experience about as much as an electric clock. Just like the pillarless hardtop, they were a thing that became a thing because some good marketing told you it was a thing.
“You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? Well, then who the hell else are you talking – You talking to me? Well, I’m the only one here. Who the f**k do you think you’re talking to?”
Travis Bickle, AMC Car Salesman
First thing I thought of
“10 minutes till Wapner is on.”
“STFU Ray! You are starting to piss me off!”
Of course I don’t have my underwear. I’m definitely not wearing my underwear.
K Mart sucks…
AMC also featured a pre-Duddy Kravitz Richard Dreyfuss in Javelin ads around that time. Someone in the casting department at their ad agency must have been good at their job
Still hard to beat Ricardo Montalban.
Rumour has it that DeNiro actually became a CPA to give his portrayal greater verisimilitude.
“It’s got an electric clock.”
Film stock is expensive… Dustin Hoffman fumbling with the trunk latch? Good enough, let’s print that take.
They get Dustin Hoffman to show how big a VW is? Now THAT is clever advertising. The guy is 5’5″ tall and would blow away if someone broke a stiff fart. He could make a pencil case look roomy. Now you get Bubba “Hightower” Smith climbing around inside that vehicle? I’ll buy one today.
Now, i’m imagining Alan Ladd in the VW spot, shorter than Hoffman, but in a ten-gallon hat, chaps, boots, and six-shooter. He’d be scaling the seats like that cowboy character from the Toy Story movies.
Did people run out and buy Civics after he ripped the front seat out so he could drive it?
They did make up for it a couple years later by getting Wilt Chamberlain to hype up the Rabbit’s headroom.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FnpWK4iO3k
To be precise, he plays a terrorist heating engineer, a threat to the state for his fixing things without the proper paperwork.
That movie continues to get more and more relevant as the years go by.
“Wouldn’t you like more beautiful ducts?”
100% agree, parts of Brazil can be hilariously reflective of the world today. It’s an extremely underated movie!