There’s A Surprising Amount Of Weird Things In This 1964 Buick Brochure: Cold Start

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Well, maybe not exactly weird, but there certainly are some odd choices, at the very least. Like the picture up there, showing off the decadent luxury of the interior of a Buick Riviera. Who sits like that? And how much does that woman like that armrest? Because from here it looks like she likes that armrest a lot. Like, more than almost anything else. She’s sitting on the ground, oddly close to the car, leaning here face up against the door card faux wood insert and caressing the leather of the armrest, her fingers gliding sensually over its liver-brown expanse. And then dude is there, just watching and chuckling, possibly in amusement, possibly in arousal.

Are they on a beach? In a desert? Was this a planned stop, or did they just need to pull over so that armrest could be really enjoyed?

If the dude moves, will that door just swing open more from the lady’s weight and she’ll flop to the ground? I really have no idea.

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Is this woman dancing? This looks like it was shot mid-dance. Did she just come screeching to a halt by this field of wildflowers so she could dance away the pain or joy or hunger or whatever?

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I do like how many of the interior shots give a little bit of story by including some activity that one can see, blurrily, outside the door that’s been left ajar. Usually it’s innocuous fun stuff, like this guy surrounded by six or so dogs. Then there’s this one:

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Where the dude with doggos felt like something we were supposed to see, happily, this feels like we’re catching a glimpse of something sinister, something we were not intended to notice. That frogman’s gait looks like the determined stalk of a hunter, and what is that long rod-like thing he’s holding in his hand – a harpoon? This feels like we’re seeing a trained assassin sent out to commit some manner of underwater murder. And if he sees us, we’re next, so keep your head down!

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These shots of cars in improbable places with no clear way that they got there are a car brochure staple. Why did this guy drive out into that dead-looking field of some kind of dead crop? Is it sorghum? Where are the tire tracks? And I just now saw the dog there! Did you see the dog?

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love this image: red, engines, people. These are four of the five engines offered by Buick in ’64, and I don’t fully understand the relationship of the people chosen to the engines, but I love it. Is the guy with the pool cue contemplating that V8? Is Breakfast at Tiffany’s there looking at me? Are those two at engine prom? This is such a wonderful and strange way to present these.

Also, read this copy here:

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I’ve never read a brochure where the word “others” so clearly means “some poor bastard.”

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The brochure also just has some fantastic illustrations of cars over white backgrounds, which I love as someone who has to make images for this website. These are gold – rights-free (because they’re from a manufacturer’s brochure) car images that are easy to pull from a background – they’re gifts!

In the same category is this dash image:

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I’m mostly including it here because I know I’ll need it later and now I can find it easy, already uploaded! Work smarter, not harder, friends!

51 thoughts on “There’s A Surprising Amount Of Weird Things In This 1964 Buick Brochure: Cold Start

  1. Those last pics remind me that Paint 3D (free) has some pretty nifty tools for chopping away backgrounds from cars or dashboards or whatever. Click the [Magic Select] button and fine tune the result.

  2. I think she has her head against the door listening for a cat. They had to pull over because she was so sure she could hear meowing. He’s laughing and asking her “Do you hear meowing now?” She then thinks she hears it into a nearby grassy field and her friend goes looking for it while the man entertains himself with some dogs, and then just to freak the girls out claims he saw the cat get chased into the pond, which leads to the frogman coming to search for it. The motors? They all purr. And the trunk release? Very helpful when delivering a feral cat to the pound.

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