Congrats to the Eagles of Philadelphia for winning the Super Bowl. If you’re an Eagles fan, it was a great game. The same is true if you’re a fan of the pass rush. The biggest winners? Haters. It was the hater Super Bowl. If you don’t like the Chiefs, Mahomes, Taylor Swift, or Drake then you had quite a good time.
Jeep, too, embraced the hate a little. Recognizing that the brand has been in the other kind of bowl lately, Jeep threw a little shade at Ford by using the other kind of Ford in one of only two car ads. The company did go out of its way, however, to not make a political statement. It was neither pro-EV nor anti-EV. It was pro-choice. Wait, not that kind of pro-choice!
It’s a different world out there, and one without long-time car hauler Jack Cooper. After being dropped by Ford, GM also dropped the carrier. Why? No one is quite saying, though there’s one obvious theory.
The European Union will be the host to more American football games, which will be super exciting to watch if there’s a trade war. It sounds like the EU is already looking to lower tariffs on cars and buy more stuff to avoid the hassle. Tesla CEO Elon Musk is trying to avoid the hassle of driverless car regulation by focusing his driverless car empire on Texas. Perhaps getting what you want isn’t always great.
Just ask the people in Philly whose job it is to put the light poles back up.
Freedom Is ‘Yes, Or No, Or Maybe’
The guy who makes the ads for Stellantis is Olivier Francois. You might know him as the marketing exec behind Eminem’s “Made In Detroit” ad or Clint Eastwood’s post-recession “Halftime in America.”
His ads all feel a certain way and, about five seconds into Harrison Ford’s Jeep Super Bowl spot I knew it was a Francois joint. He might have been born in Paris, but he speaks American. Specifically, he has an understanding of the zeitgeist that allows him to put a lot of words in the mouth of someone else without saying too much.
It’s so easy to parody that the TV show Detroiters did a bit where a Detroit-based ad awards show’s biggest award was a competition between various companies all using Eminem for a very Francois-style “Detroit is back”-message (side note, the Detroiters guys also had the best Super Bowl ad).
The two-minute ad yesterday was full of imagery of Jeeps marching across Europe (I think) in pursuit of Nazis. There were soldiers. There were mountains. There was Harrison Ford pointing out that freedom is “Yes, or no, or maybe,” which is a good summation of the Jeep approach to electrification.
“Yes” is the briefly seen Jeep Recon. “Maybe” is the 4xe plug-in hybrid. “No” is everything else, I suppose.
What’s amazing is that this ad wasn’t supposed to happen. According to this detailed piece from Variety, Stellantis Chairman John Elkann decided at the last minute, post-Carlos Tavares, to do a Super Bowl ad. At this point, there weren’t 30 seconds to be had, so the idea of making a two-minute ad was “pure madness” according to Francois. Even worse, the company’s idea for a funny script didn’t land with Ford, who said he didn’t need the money or have the time.
According to this article, Francois went back with something a little more serious and inspirational. Ford agreed. The two minutes also became available after the California wildfires led some potential advertisers to pull back.
After a lot of work, what we end up with is something that’s trying very hard to not be political, other than implying you don’t need to be friends with someone to wave at them. This is on purpose:
Now all Francois had to hope the commercial pleases and inspires rather than rankles. He acknowledges some people may see it as touching on politics — something he hopes to avoid. The ad will only succeed “if politics are removed from the question. I’m not sure they will,” he adds, because determining how different groups of consumers will react to a commercial created so quickly is difficult. The ad could be accused of backing away from hard-sell for EVs or lumped in with environmental concerns, both of which, he says, “are bull—-.”
“Look, I need to sell a little bit of everything,” says Francois. “I still have a lot of love for electric, but “I need to say something that people will connect with.”
That was a sort of theme of this year’s Super Bowl, as well. The NFL even went so far as to remove “END RACISM” from the endzone, because ending racism was too… political, I guess? It doesn’t matter, because Snoop and Tom Brady ended racism with their ad. Brady celebrated the victory by buying a watch made of Adamantium.
There’s a way to view Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show as the actual highlight of the Super Bowl. It was, artistically, a masterpiece. If you could give a Nobel prize for halftime shows you’d give it to Kendrick. In that way, Los Angeles won a small part of the game.
Was it political, though? I’m not so sure. The tableau of red, white, and blue dancers felt like something, but it was notably non-specific.
Haters, though. The haters loved it. Kendrick Lamar yet again bodied Drake by having an entire crowd yell “a minor” during “Not Like Us.” Jeep even got in on the fun with a dig of its own, both showing a Bronco and having Harrison Ford end the spot with “This Jeep makes me happy…. even though my name is Ford.”
It was a good joke, even if it was a reminder that Jeep once had this off-roader space almost to itself before the new Bronco arrived. This was definitely noticed by some at Ford.
Why Did Ford And GM Cut Hauler Jack Cooper?
Jack Cooper was formed as a car-hauling company in 1928, serving GM’s plant in Missouri. Since then, it’s been one of the largest car haulers for OEMs in North America. In particular, Ford and GM both used Jack Cooper for much of its hauling.
Now the company will likely not make it to its 100th birthday. What happened?
Curiously, both GM and Ford seem to acknowledge that the company did a good job. GM gave Jack Cooper numerous Supplier of the Year awards, and Ford said it had no issues with the performance.
There are two competing theories out there, and I’m not sure it’s just one or the other. First, Jack Cooper is unionized with the Teamsters. When Ford announced the move, the union immediately cried foul. From the Detroit Free Press:
Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien called Ford’s move “shameful” and “un-American” in a statement, adding that, “By taking steps to end its relationship with Jack Cooper, the Ford Motor Company has officially threatened the livelihoods of more than 1,400 Teamsters-represented car haul workers and their families. Ford, a once iconic American brand, wants to boost its own bottom line by walking away from a family-owned company and into the arms of second-rate third parties that will pay workers less money and far fewer benefits to haul Ford vehicles.”
After spending a ton of money electrifying their fleets, automakers are looking for places to cut, and car shipping is an obvious target. The article above mentions another issue:
According to a source familiar with Ford’s decision, the move to terminate the contract is not related to union representation or the hauler’s performance, which it has satisified. Rather, Jack Cooper’s history of financial distress and instability — it filed for federal bankruptcy protection in 2019 — has been among Ford’s concerns, this person said. The person asked to not be named because they are not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
The hauling industry is tough, with huge booms and busts in both demand and shipping capacity. Jack Cooper tried to renegotiate rates with its customers, including GM, but instead, GM decided to pull its business, effectively dooming Cooper.
EU States It Will Lower Some Car Tariffs
Sometimes bluster works! President Trump has variously threatened/promised tariffs against many other countries, though he’s only instituted some of them. The European Union was presumably next, but the body’s trade reps are already implying that they might be able to make some room on auto tariffs, which currently stand at 10% for most vehicles.
Here’s what trade committee head Bernd Lange told the Financial Times:
“We can try to have a deal before escalating costs and tariffs,” Lange said. The bloc would offer to buy more liquefied natural gas and military equipment from the US, “plus also look to lower tariffs for cars”
President Trump has signaled that he wants a 2.5% tariff, Lange thinks they can get “closer” to that number. Does this mean we’ll see Hummers in Europe? Probably not. Some of the biggest recipients of this kind of deal would likely be European companies that already export to Europe like BMW, Volvo, and especially Mercedes.
Tesla And The Danger Of Getting What You Want
Tesla CEO Elon Musk made a big bet on a Trump presidency and he won that bet. His next big wager is that his cars are good enough at self-driving that they’ll be able to do a task that companies like Waymo think requires a lot of expensive sensors with more processing power and no LIDAR.
Those two things are related. Musk needs the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to back off and allow it to field robotaxis, which it probably will now. Musk also needs a place to test them out and, hey, now that it’s a Texas company why not do it in a state that’s allergic to regulation:
Nothing in Texas law would stop Tesla from launching a robotaxi service. The state takes a hands-off regulatory approach that aligns with Musk’s increasingly anti-government political stances as an advisor to U.S. President Donald Trump.
State law allows autonomous-vehicle companies free access to public streets provided they are registered and insured, like any human-driven car, and equipped with technology to record data about any potential crashes. No state agency issues permits for or oversees driverless-taxi services — and state law forbids cities and counties from enacting their own driverless-vehicle regulations.
If Musk makes this work, then it’s a big convenience to be able to settle in Austin and he’ll make another trillion dollars.
What if it doesn’t work? Sometimes guardrails are there to limit you from accessing some place you want to go. Sometimes they’re there to stop you from driving over a cliff. This is the concern I have. Alex Roy and Joel Johnson have been doing cross-country runs in FSD and found it to be something that works most of the time. Where it doesn’t work as well? In bad weather. Austin, having lived there for a number of years, gets a lot of bad weather.
Maybe they’ve got it all worked out, or maybe we’ll learn how much Austinites can stand to be beta testers.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
We need more guitars. This is my hot take. More guitars. Here’s Chloe Slater doing her song “Sucker” and, mostly notable, there’s a lot of guitar. I like it. Guitars!
The Big Question
If you watched the big game, what was the best ad? The worst ad?
The NFL dropped their “End Racism” because it was multi-billion dollar corporate nonsense that converted zero racists.
I don’t know why they bother trying this style of ad. They had a very similar “non political” ad with Clint Eastwood a few years back. Which was also terrible.
Geez, guys, it’s not hard. You are Jeep. Look at literally any Land Rover commercial from the past decade and just copy that.
You are in a Jeep, in the middle of nowhere, doing something impossible for an average car. That’s it. That’s the entire ad.
You don’t need some weird, sappy voiceover that… shit… what is grandpa yapping on about? Just show the Jeep, play some music, let the Jeep do the talking.
Australias version of the superbowl halftime adverts is the annual Australia/Invasion Day Lamb advert which manages very well to skirt around politics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75BAUXZyWw0 this is the 2025 ad but my favourite was the 2024 which you can google.
Jeep’s marketing strategy here is a no brainer. It’s truly amazing to me that companies haven’t been all over the “drive whatever works for you we provide all the options”. The only people who are turned off by that are EV diehards and they like olives on their pizza so why would we listen to them?
Don’t knock it till you’ve tried something other than black Mission olives.
castelvetrano FTW.
I had the good fortune of driving an as-yet untitled GNX at the Buick dealer where I was working for the summer. It was unreal for 1987. Fast and beautiful. Kendrick Lamar’s recent album is called GNX and he does own one of the 547 built. Apparently the tv car was an actual Grand National, but not a true GNX. I was worried for a second, but nobody is going to cut the bottom out of a 200k rare car for ten minutes.
On Jeep, for me, the chopped Gladiator in the Haagen Dazs ad looked pretty cool, I’m assuming they used the meager roll bar to reinforce the frame where they cut out the door frames.
Everyone who loves to comment about how you don’t care about the Super Bowl and didn’t watch, why bother commenting? You’ve got nothing to add.
Best Superbowl ever. Made 7-layer dip, snacks, popcorn…Then rented Sonic 3 and watched it with the kids. Woke up this morning refreshed without knowing/caring about the Superbowl outcome. Probably would have watched it for the Lions, but Chiefs/Eagles…meh.
You made the right choice. Boring ass game.
No. Fuck that. Don’t lower them, go higher. A large portion, larger than the U.S. is willing to admit, of unfinished goods and raw resources come from or come through the EU while the U.S. comparatively sends very little back to or through the EU. For the long term stability of the entire world it’s best to bleed the U.S. as many times as possible until all the poison has been let out.
Something I heard recently is “You cannot change that which you tolerate.” The EU keeps tolerating the U.S. determining the direction of it’s economic bloc, which means we’re going to drag them down with us. In a globalized economy an unstable economic zone is like an infection disease — it can and will spread and destabilize other economic zones. We’re economically connected to and capable of infecting all of North America, most of Europe, and a pretty good chunk of South America and Oceania. The only way to stop it is to isolate us before it spreads because once it does the only thing you can do is endure until it passes or we croak.
Well, he’s currently in the middle of gutting them, the FAA, the NTSB, and the CPB, so it won’t be long. We’d be making the traffic of Midtown Madness into a reality.
Stand being beta testers? Like standing on the street and being run over? They are probably choosing Austin due to its’ political color: blue. Meanwhile back at the ranch, jus t how silly is an autonomous car in the vast plains of Texass?
Politically blue, huh? Might be seeing a little more red on the streets around there.
I don’t need any more guitars. The fourteen I have don’t get played enough as it is. Lost interest in football many decades ago. I’ve decided to stop paying any attention to politics as it makes my blood pressure act up.
I’m looking forward to Tesla having autonomous service in Austin. No, I have no interest in using it, I’m just hoping one of their cars will total my 4XE.
I liked this ad a lot. Leaving out the consumerism part of it all my top 3, with the Jeep one being a close 4th was:
Dunkings. Sorry, I ride or die Ben Affleck.
Totinos Pizza Rolls
Air Jordan Jalen Hurts ad.
edit:
Also, as for the politics of the Jeep ad go…When you present the American Ideal you will almost always prove that it is in stark contrast to anything that the current president stands for.
I liked the Eugene Levy Eyebrow thing for Little Caesars too. There’s also the one for David Beckham that is ok, that has a good punchline
Still don’t get the hype about reducing barriers to American cars in Europe, when, out of the three largest US automakers one (GM) doesn’t have any business there and isn’t at all interested in having one, another (Ford) used to be quite successful there but is intentionally wrecking their European business in a cost saving move, by refusing to continue building what European customers want, and the third (Tesla) has actually been very successful and growing in Europe until some recent PR stumbles over the past year or so.
Ford and Tesla are struggling there because of their own decisions, not tariffs, and tariffs are irrelevant to GM because they don’t sell there and don’t want to
Do you think the current rapidly fading, almost octogenarian has any clue that is the case in Europe?
Probably not, I’m expecting him to stumble into a post office asking to forward something express to the Yugoslavian embassy in Czechoslovakia and wondering if he’s too late to get it onto the 3:00 Concorde
Will just fly it over on Air Farce One…
Bet me…
Oh, hello shopkeep, I require one pint of chocolate Frusen Glädjé, and don’t bother with a bag, I’m hungry now
I think the barrier is to American made vehicles being exported to the EU. Ford has a dealer network in the EU and could sell US made cars. It might be cheaper to sell a US made Ranger or Escape in the EU without tariffs over an EU made one, but I don’t know. I think the rest of Ford’s American made vehicles are too big for European tastes.
GM doesn’t have any dealer network in the EU now, so the tariff could be 0% or 1000% and it wouldn’t make a difference.
Chrysler/Dodge/ Ram/Jeep. I think Jeeps are popular in the EU and lower tariffs might help Jeep.
But the REAL winners of a lower tariff isn’t who you think. BMW and MB already export cars from the South to the EU. A lower tariff would increase this export.
Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Mazda and Hyundai have dealer networks and the cars and smaller SUVs they make could be cost competitive in the EU, particularly since again, a lot of these are built in lower cost of living areas like the Deep South. (Admittedly, Indiana isn’t a Southern State where Honda makes a lot of vehicles, but I expect the labor costs are lower there than in many places of the EU and Japan.)
But although this would be a win for American workers. The fact that these paychecks come from a “foreign car company” won’t be popular with some people.
Yes, but we all know what is really meant when politicians whine about Europe “not taking our cars” – they think there’s going to be Chevies all over the streets of Paris or something, not US-made BMWs invisibly blending in with German-made BMWs, even if the impact on the US economy is essentially the same
The Jeep ad was actually the best add of the game in my opinion. But I also think the highlight of the halftime show was seriously the Grand national, which I was frustrated with seeing that dude standing on the hood of. But after the clown car part, I realized it was just a shell.
Emphasizing choice in ICE, PHEV, and EV is the right way to go. Ford has been doing it for a while. We need to get away from EV’s being a political decision. It’s really just a choice.
Also, just a “I didn’t know it at the time thing.” I went to grade school and most of high school with the grandson of the local Chrysler dealership owner in my town in Illinois. I knew they had a trucking business too, but I didn’t realize how big they were until I went to college in Detroit. I lost touch with him after high school. That kid’s last name was Cassens. They haul most of the Stellantis vehicles and it’s a huge operation. Wonder if they will pick up any of this work.
Spent the morning salting and breaking up ice for guests. Per usual when the local favored collection of people gathered onto a team that do not actually originate locally aren’t in it, we had a party and the game was on, but few pay much attention, so I only saw bits and pieces of ads and couldn’t discern much with conversations going, (not that I tried). At half time, one guy who doesn’t know me well laughingly half-accused me of saying something vaguely racist when I commented about how they fit an awful lot of people in a G body (that was obviously a fake GNX with a hole in the bottom). Took me a minute to think of WTH he was talking about and, by the time I figured out he must have been confusing “G body” and “G” as in slang for “gangster” because he’s a normal guy and not a car nerd, the moment to explain GM platform naming conventions was gone. I also ate way too much.