Today’s Cold Start is a bit of a grab-bag of a few things I noticed in an old July 1973 issue of Popular Science, specifically three things that I feel you require to begin your day in the most effective manner. Actually, wait, four things, each wildly important and relevant today (please don’t check on that). Let’s get started, I’m late on this already!
First, let’s talk about that cigarette ad up top there. Cigarette ads in general are really historical artifacts now, as they pretty much no longer exist and have been banned from television since 1971, and were banned from magazines that could be “popular with teenagers” since 2000. I’m not sure Popular Science counts in that category, but I think we can safely say cigarette ads in general are pretty much extinct.
This one has a car racing theme, sort of, so I thought it’d be appropriate for us to look at it here:
So, this one is less about racing and more about watching racing, live, at a track. Which I suppose makes sense; the target audience for Camel Filters was probably vastly larger for people who just watched racing occasionally than it was for people who actually raced cars.
The premise of the ad is that in that group of racing fans – and, it appears, one driver – you have to figure out who is the Camel Filters smoker, and who smokes, you know, garbage cigarettes.
Unsurprisingly, the answer is the “cool” guy at the center, with his jacket flung cavalierly over his shoulder and a large, well-maintained moustache. This guy’s general look and self-satisfied smirk were sort of archetypal cigarette smoking male ideals of the era.
The rest of the people, if you read the little descriptions in the ads there, all are said to have a “gimmick” of some kind, which, of course, the Camel smoker doesn’t need. I don’t really get the “Third Turn Albanian” thing with the driver – was this some weird stereotype about Albanians I’ve never heard of?
Oh, wait, it says “Abanian?” What is that? Is that a name, perhaps an Armenian name?
And I think there’s a sexy double-entendre with the woman in the patriotic top and the guy wearing the hi-fi on his head. Also, the rich guy is such a perfect example of the cliché, with an ascot and a cigarette holder!
Anyway, just zoom in and enjoy that. Time for some other stuff. Like this amazing early example of doctoring a photo to make cars look genercized!
This was from a Quaker State oil ad, and the car on the left is clearly an AMC AMX and the one on the right is a Chevy Vega, but both have had their front ends airbrushed to look bit different, likely so Quaker State wouldn’t be seen as endorsing or denigrating any particular company’s cars.
I like the split grille on the Vega; it sort of prefigures the Pontiac Astre which came out in 1972 as Pontiac’s re-badged Vega. The AMX looks a bit more serious and business-like with that front end, but the front indicators seem to have been a casualty of the photo retoucher’s airbrush.
This is also fascinating, from the standpoint of just how wrong it turned out to be:
Two huge things that never quite happened in America are referenced here: GM making a Wankel rotary engines, and the US moving the the metric system. The GM Wankel project was doomed and pretty much forgotten about by the ’80s, but I remember the idea that the US was going to switch to metric “next year” being pushed to me pretty much every year of my childhood. I think by the ’90s everyone finally gave up.
Finally, I think this is the first mention of the Volkswagen Basistransporter I’ve seen in an American publication:
A Finnish company called Teijo built a bunch of these, too, from those VW kits.
There was a Mexican variant of this called the Hormiga (Ant); I’ve talked about the Hormiga a couple times here; this was an ultra-simple and rugged truck based on a reversed Beetle drivetrain driving the front wheels, like the Basistransporter version seen above, but with a slightly different body.
These were designed without any complex curves so it could be easily built in developing countries. They’re very cool, though I’m not sure I’d heard them referred to as “kits” before? Maybe in the context of CKD (completely knocked down) kits that carmakers send to assembly plants; that could be it. But I think the point of these was that as much could be locally made as possible.
The Hormiga was built in Mexico in decent numbers, and there were Basistransporter variants that used the Type 2 cab body panels, called Basistransporter, that were built in places like Turkey and Indonesia, too:
Fascinating, right? Anyway, I suspect this was the first talk about it in American media.
I hope these things helped. Now go forth and enjoy your day!
I just want one of those cashmere toupees mentioned in the ad.
“I don’t really get the “Third Turn Albanian” thing with the driver – was this some weird stereotype about Albanians I’ve never heard of?”
Yeah, subsequent correction notwithstanding it’s such an easy mistake to make for many people that one does wonder if the choice of such a name was intentional and in reference to something particular to the pop culture of 1973 that modern (ha) readers wouldn’t get today. After all, tobacco advertising was one of the most lucrative (& competitive) fields of advertising for people to get into so those ads would undergo a lot of scrutiny before going to press (or screen) though sometimes it could simply be phoned in owing to the hubris of so many people in both the tobacco industry and the advertising industry. In the 80s and 90s the corporate mascots most widely recognized in the entire world were Bibendum (better known to ‘Muricans as the Michelin Man), Mickey Mouse, and Joe Camel. However, it ended up backfiring somewhat, especially in the U.S., with Joe Camel on account of all the negative publicity about targeting tobacco ads towards children.
Yeah, thankfully pervasive cigarette smoke is now a thing of the past in the U.S. In 2005 George Clooney co-wrote, co-starred in, and directed a docudrama film, Good Night, and Good Luck, about the chain-smoking journalist Edward R. Murrow (who unsurprisingly died of lung cancer in 1965) and Murrow’s critical coverage of Joe McCarthy’s activities. As Murrow & many of his colleagues were heavy smokers they showed that in the film; some of the actors said later in interviews that during filming they would frequently have to take breaks and go outside not to smoke but to get away from the smoke. Yeah, we’ve come a long way (to paraphrase the advertising slogan “You’ve come a long way, baby” of…a cigarette brand, namely, Virginia Slims.)
I keep expecting to hear an executive order banning the metric system
You’d think he’d like it because it makes certain measurements sound bigger.
Nah, he’ll ban US currency first and switch to crypto.
The genericized AMC is a Javelin (although AMX was used as a high performance trim of the 2nd gen Javelin after the 2-seat shrunken AMX was discontinued). They went to town on the air brushing, eliminating the Javelin’s distinctive “stingray” fenders.
Most kids in the seventies had people in their lives missing limbs or parts of their face from war service, or who were killed or nearly so in auto collisions or just from walking through a glass door…cigarettes seemed far down the list of dangerous things. These days I know no one with those injury issues, but a number of smoking casualties, either dead or still walking.
BTW there were a lot of Armenian names in So. Cal. racing back-when, including promoter J.C. Agajanian, so that might be kind-of a stereotype.
It was a trick question. The Camel filters smoker is really on a ventilator at Memorial Sloan Kettering. And as for Joe Cool there (not Joe Kool), he grew that mustache to hide a Bugs Bunny overbite and you can bet that inside his snazzy rayon shirt he looks like the back of a HEPA filter in.a kennel vacuum. Better watch out for that burning Camel around his vinyl jacket, too. See, R.J. Reynolds? That’s the way you do snark.
I find it hard to believe that Bubbles Fickfern is “smoking Fellinis”. That guy just looks like he wouldn’t be into it.
A measure of the onetime popularity of these types of magazines with teenagers – when Fawcett was publishing competitor Mechanix Illustrated (home of Tom McCahill) and Captain Marvel (Shazam) comics at the same time, MI frequently ran house ads in the comics.
The logic was that boys (mostly) would be into comic books for a few years at most but if you got them hooked on your science/tech/DIY mag they’d read that for life.
Arguably, when it comes to science and industry, we are a metric country. In the industry I’m in, everything we build is in metric, even our premade cables are measured in meters not feet!
I used to work at HP, and everything we did was in metric except for whatever touched the paper which was always in inches. Kept things interesting
‘Cuz all of the machinery/controllers operate in metric.
Looks like Abanian is a surname of Lebanese origin.
I think that graf about GM is referring to GM’s engineering standards, not the US as a country. At some point – I’m not sure when – they *did* switch to metric measurements.
Can the demise of print media be linked to the end of tobacco advertising dollars in addition to the internet?
Online sports gambling could prop up print media if they wanted
Very likely true. I’m just looking back and it seems all the print car mags went downhill fast after the turn of the century. Then I remember how many tobacco ads they had in the ’80s and ’90s. C/D and R&T got way thinner for a long time and are now published bi-monthly.
Here in Ontario it feels like more air time (TV & Radio) is given to lottery and gambling products than any actual programming. It’s even worse than all the annoying pharma and personal injury lawyer ads in the US. It makes me wonder why they bother. I’m sure even someone interested in these products likely tunes out the ads by now.
“I remember the idea that the US was going to switch to metric “next year” being pushed to me pretty much every year of my childhood. I think by the ’90s everyone finally gave up.”
Coulda, shoulda, woulda, and might have avoided;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter
I am old enough to remember the Hellscape 1970s and young enough to have only bad memories and no fondness or nostalgia. The ubiquity of smoking back then cannot be overstated. Hell, my mom smoked at her desk in the State Department of Health headquarters.
In the 70s the Department of Health got a glimpse into the future.
Ha! I’m so old that I knew right away that you were quoting a line from the movie “Sleeper” 🙂
” I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here. I’m 237 years old, I should be collecting social security.”
I’m still looking to buy a “Orgasmatron” like the one featured in the film! 😉
The Orb is portable.
You know how certain smells can push your nostalgia buttons? That’s how cigarettes are for me. It’s become rare enough in everyday life to feel like something from the distant past–not pleasant, but nevertheless it takes me back.
I also imagine the smell of tobacco smoke repulses younger people in the same way the smell of weed repulses me. I don’t say that in a judgmental way; it’s just not my thing and I find the smell just slightly better than skunk.
Also the sweet? smell of raw, unfiltered car exhaust does it too.
So rich in unburned hydrocarbons.
Especially leaded race fuel!
Exactly! I was born in the ’70s and a whiff of old car exhaust brings the memories flooding back. Tobacco too – dad was a heavy smoker (he FINALLY quit a few months ago at 75 after an unrelated hospital stay). Pretty sure I went through nicotine withdrawl when I went away to college. I remember long hours of my childhood in his workshop building Pinewood Derby racers, model cars, electronics… in the always present wafting cigarette smoke. Working on the car or mower or bikes in the garage…
I like the smell of stale gas.
But it’s not stale gas, it is different, distinct. I can’t describe it, but a carbureted engine without catalytic converters emits a distinct aroma.
There was a ’00s show on Fox called Fastlane that was sorta a combination of Miami Vice and the Fast n Furious.
At one point, Tiffany Theissen’s hot but stern boss of our undercover cops manages to acquire the original Bullitt Mustang (this was like a decade before it actually surfaced in real life). She leans into the driver’s side window & deeply inhales. “I can practically smell the cigarettes!”
When we flew back to the states in 1980 14yo me wheedled a couple 4-packs of airline Marlboros from the stewardess.
Last week I spent 20 min in a supply house office where the owner smokes and had to throw all my clothes in the washer that evening. Even my longjohns were smoky.
The Young’ns have no idea what it’s like to come home from the club and have to leave your coat outside and immediately go and wash your hair.
Filters are the light beer of cigarettes
Condoms are the light beer of sex.
Condoms are the O’Doul’s of sex.
Doing it in a canoe is the light beer of sex*
*Fucking close to water.
It’s hard to believe that smoking used to be cool.
I’ll bet everyone in that ad died of emphysema. Assuming they were actually smoking, which is statistically likely given the time period.
I enjoy how tv shows now often list “smoking” as a content warning at the beginning. I first noticed it watching AMC’s fantastic Monsieur Spade, which takes place in the early 60s, in France. So pretty every single character is constantly lighting up.
Somewhat surprisingly, Hot Rod magazine had cigarette adverts in print in the past year. (not sure about currently I dropped my sub when they stopped publishing monthly).
I think I’m going to switch to Camel.
I can see rally spectators smoking cigarettes for certain, being a) mostly Europeans and b) cigarettes being a traditional accompaniment to a brief bout of excitement like le petit mort or nearly experiencing le grande mort from a Finn behind the wheel of a 1200hp missile.
Looks like “Abanian” and not “Albanian” so now I’m wondering if this is some kind of Armenian stereotype that I’ve never heard.
But then again, apart from a rough mafia and a long history of Soviet oppression (respectively….or both), I don’t know enough about either to offer an opinion.
Ooo, how about the Armenian Money Train from The Shield?