Before we consider the question posed by the headline, let me ask another: when was the last time you saw a car commercial? Do you remember what car it was for? Did any of the commercial stay with you?
I honestly cannot recall any car commercials more recent than a few years ago, and what has stuck with me is how annoying and/or confusing they were. There was one with a way-too-stylish grandfather(?) who going to a wedding or something? In a Volvo, maybe? Oh, and those “real people” Chevy commercials. All I remember from those is the Zebra Corner parodies (If you haven’t seen these, please, stop what you’re doing and watch all of them immediately).
Now, back in the pre-streaming days of cable when there were only a handful of channels you cared about, or the pre-cable days where you had only three stations that came in clearly, car commercials were a big deal. They mattered. They had high concepts and even higher budgets, and man, they made an impression. And that brings us to the big Q: which car commercial is your all-time favorite? Or your favorite commercials, plural, go nuts. And if you want to tell us about the TV spots you love to hate, by all means, we’d love to hear you loathe.
As for me, my favorite car commercials – and favorite commercials in general – are the groundbreaking spots produced by Robert Able and Associates. Remember the surreal Levi’s Trademark ad? That’s Robert Able. In the 80s, Able and his team refined the high-tech, high-gloss look of the era with wonderful commercials for the Chrysler Laser, Pontiac Firebird, and C4 Corvette (among others). They’re corny now (or cornier, I should say), but they still hold up, especially when James Earl Jones is doing the voiceover. The embed below will take you to the Corvette spot (my fave), and if you want to keep watching, the entire Robert Able And Associates showreel from 1985 is there – lots of fun.
While those Able commercials are my favorite car ads, there are many, many more that I love. I’m a huge fan of Ford’s crazy “torture test” commercials from the 70s and 80s, remember those?
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I’m also a massive fan of any and all “music video style” car commercials, especially the long-form versions. Topping the list: Ride! Pontiac, Ride!
The “My Duster” commercial is another winner, which we’ve written about before – and mashed up with Robocop below:
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Your turn!
The Russ Swift Montego commercial.
https://youtu.be/TMTx0ZTOaIc?si=4McrGRjlXPggE_XZ
The Mercedes-Benz chicken Commercial and the responses from Jaguar
MB: https://youtu.be/nLwML2PagbY?si=ZidiA9O6i-gAdBfL
Jaaaaaaaag: https://youtu.be/FAGOcyvBap0?si=eJzO_fWgCI1EZChp
You guys must all be youngins. 1968 – a dozen Pontiac engineers (well, actors) wailing on the new gen.GTO’s dent proof bumper with crowbars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QmYgpqLlsk
It’s probably also one of the first uses of the now-classic trope that we saw a ton of in the 1980s – guys in white lab coats (sometimes holding clip boards or rulers) to signify high tech baby!
Nothing has stuck with me more than Nissan’s excellent commercial combining Toy Story with Van Halen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8QKK5IDSXE
Definitely my favorite, too. Although that Pontiac ad really makes me want to go buy a red Fiero GT with gold wheels and cruise around blasting Whitesnake. I don’t even care right now that the interior of that car makes me want to vomit.
Good news it you can swap that interior for one from a 90’s Firebird:
https://www.fiero.nl/forum/Archives/Archive-000002/HTML/20041015-1-040875.html
Not great but better than what it came with.
Perfect choice – so much wonderful going on, yet with such a sense of fun. I miss that in vehicle ads!
I also really miss the Joe Isuzu adds. Blatant lying in car commercials war brilliant.
For me it’s got to be the Aus/NZ Toyota ‘bugger’ ads for sure:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPYmtEQiG18
This one seems to stick in my head for some reason too, for the AU Falcon ute:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iA7QbCDK7p4
There’s a lot of VW in this list for sure. They absolutely killed it in the late 90s, early aughts, but the best of all of them was for the convertible New Beetle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiZt-waKtH8
Haven’t read the entire list of comments yet but VW is up there. Remember the Super Bowl ad with the Darth Vader kid trying to unlock the car using The Force? You could go way back to “What car does the snow plow driver drive to work?”
Then there’s my white whale, a Lexus commercial from the 1990s (likely 1996-1998) that apparently doesn’t exist ANYWHERE on the internet. It was for some kind of sales event – perhaps the “golden opportunity” event? I remember the famous Lexus narrator at the time saying “the goose that laid the golden egg became dinner” as they showed a roast goose on a dinner table. I found it hilarious as a kid, but I can’t find any evidence it ever existed.
I vaguely remember that
Trunk monkey!!! Who doesnt love that series?
Or i guess thats nit a car, but car adjascent
It was for the dealer.
Hands down, Honda’s “Cog” commercial from 2003:
Honda The Cog HD (youtube.com)
I read that every part of the sequence was real, but there was a CGI frame blend between to two different cuts.
YES!!!! this is what i was going to post. I absolutely love this commercial!
The Cog for the (Euro) Honda Accord wagon, and it’s not even close:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z57kGB-mI54
https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/2016/jun/02/how-we-made-hondas-cog-ad-wieden-kennedy
Came here for this.
The 2001 Nissan Pathfinder bullfight commercial – “not that you would, but you could”.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=70UzsTR-eqA
This Volvo one is moving in a way few commercials are.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPgDgNtOouo
Pouring one out for the late, great Donald Sutherland, whose voice work for Volvo was first-rate. I’m going to nominate the S80 launch ad, complete with the (slightly reworked) genius of DJ Dmitri from Paris: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXilZG2OpBw
This is gonna be weird, but I always appreciated a VW (I think?) commercial from ~15 years ago: it starts off extremely cliche, 3 or 4 attractive young people hop in the car and drive off, they laugh and chat on their way as a catchy, quirky indie rock song plays… and then out of nowhere they get absolutely t-boned by a truck nobody saw coming. It was a commercial about side-impact safety all along!
“Safe happens”.
That’s it, thank you. Funny how my memory changed the details but had the basic idea.
Living in New England, it used to be the Snowpocalypse one from Dodge as it just hit home so hard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WG-6-XNzgUg&ab_channel=meltonsales
But as an American, I really just love this Michael Bay Chevy one, even the Aveo catches air!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kAbM0L6YxE&ab_channel=TheMotorChannel
A little strange perhaps, but I’ve always loved the late 80s Sterling ads we had here in the States.
Featuring a vaguely spy setup and (the reveal at the end) Patrick Macnee doing his best budget Bond, they made a fairly obtainable sedan seem both cutting edge and classy. The later hatchback version was especially sexy.
Edit: holy crap they actually got the rights to the Bond theme – I’d forgotten about that!
https://youtu.be/_YUsVuWqfsA?si=wfmg4_axqaOH_tU7
Currently, I see a fair amount of Hyundai Elantra ads, which are forgettable in themselves but yay a sharply-styled sedan!
Hands down the Peugeot 206 one:
https://youtu.be/wpqSvrjZsrU
Mine is a mid 90s Toyota 4Runner commercial. It showed the 4Runner driving through a downtown city with a kayak and other camping gear on the roof. The people on the sidewalk stare in awe and comment, “It’s Tuesday…people work on Tuesdays.”
This one is probably my all time favorite:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cffizc91-nE
Runner ups:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN9bStOA758
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdFng9W_tek
This is so easy it’s not even funny.
The Ford Taurus launch commercial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n12lyKTAa50
I’ve gotten this stupid jingle stuck in soooo many people’s heads.
AND NOW THE FUUUUTURE IS HEEEEEEEERE.
Extremely honorable mention: The original “Like a Rock” Chevy pickup commercials.
Just a solid minute of pure truck pornography
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzT3haPytkg
Either the Fiat 500 Abarth one with the gorgeous woman (who our very own Torch met!) or the Porsche Boxster one where a guy wakes up from a coma, goes out to drive his 550 Spyder, runs into a guy in a Boxster, and they share a respectful glance. I’ll also give a shoutout to the VW un pimp my ride ads. Those were a riot and one of the 2-3 times in human history Germans managed to be funny.
Joe Isuzu there are none better.
I’m going to have to say VW “Milky Way” aka Pink Moon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-kqUkZnDcM
VW “Synchronicity” is a good runner up and for bonus car related trivia, the music was performed by Master Cylinder.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcfW_hlYZ5k
And this one from GM explaining daytime running lights…His “i’m a car line” and the jump cut. Me and my friend group cracked up at this one all the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6JuWZMJ_3U
The VW Pink Moon commercial is top-notch as it introduced multiple generations to the genius of Nick Drake.
Absolutely beat me to it. VW Pink Moon is almost a film. Not a word spoken but tells a great story. Also it’s the commercial success that Nick Drake never had but finally achieved with the sound track.
Doesn’t get better than this:
https://youtu.be/_-kqUkZnDcM?si=DEQyOzUpI-fVRPcm
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My favorite is the 1960s commercial with the VW Beetle being driven into the water where it floats around to demonstrate the tightness of its construction.
The last commercial I recall seeing (yesterday) was a Jeep ad that was not specific to one model. Just a bunch of different Jeeps driving in dirt and snow. Nothing special.
It has to be this one,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8GHiY6jmR8&t=56s
Now tell me that you do not want a Peugeot 405.
I liked the Joe Isuzu commercials a lot.
And, pretty sure I saw the yt Hornet commercials in the last year.