What Car Advertising Campaigns Have Stuck With You (For Better or Worse)?

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Back in the pre-internet days, when television and print ads were king, car manufacturers (or more accurately, their ad agencies) worked tirelessly to develop campaigns that would stick with potential customers by relentlessly pummeling them with relevant slogans, jingles, and tag lines. It worked: Many of us find ourselves recalling long-defunct commercial themes without even trying, and surely we’ve all dropped car-ad catchphrases as pop-culture references a time or two. Oh what a feeling, Toyota, anyone? Or maybe it was a high-concept presentation that did the trick. Ford really went in for this type of thing, with insane truck demonstrations and stunts like the Tempo loop.

Coordinated marketing is still very much a thing, of course, but the brain-searing effect is blunted by the mind-boggling number of platforms and channels and personalities we consume media from – not to mention the ability to skip ads entirely when we do encounter them. So we expect you’ll respond with oldies for this edition of Autopian Asks, wherein we query you thusly:

What car advertising campaigns have stuck with you (for better or worse)?

Also, have any commercials and/or ads ever influenced your buying decision? Consciously, that is– who knows what kind of subliminal hijinks are going on!

To the comments!

[Editor’s Note: For me, it’s gotta be the Ford Commercials showing F-Series machines carrying and towing the competition up a boulder-hill (Peter alluded to these in his lede):

I just haven’t been able to get that image out of my head for over a decade! -DT]. 

Autopian Answers Transp

Yesterday we asked for your feedback on car-feature subscriptions, and lot of you are not fans. Surprise level: zero. However, mature adults that you are, concessions were readily made for the idea that some updatable features do require time and expense to be updated by the manufacturer, and thus a subscription plan for a reasonable fee makes sense. But paying to turn on physical components already in the car? Do Not Want.

ExParrot nails it quite succinctly:

Hardware should never be a subscription, unless it too is regularly changed out.
In short, if I’m going to continually pay a subscription, the manufacturer should be continually incurring cost for the service that is provided.

Or, if you prefer a little more color, Granulated MC is less restrained. GTFO indeed!

Software is expensive to write. Paying something after I bought the car for a new application running on the same hardware is fair … [but] paying to activate equipment that’s already in the car and completely disabled until I subscribe? GTFOtta here. That’s 100% profiteering. The hardware is there. You paid for it. Charging me extra for something you disabled because you can is a protection racket.

Ruivo will not haul your junk, you hear that manufacturers?!

Don’t paywall stuff that I can’t remove, change, or use an alternative. Want to charge me for the equivalent of an ECU remap? Open that platform to competitors, so I can have a choice. Charge me for heated seats? Allow me to remove your hardware – or, better yet, allow me to operate the thing myself. If I have the hardware on my car, that I paid for, but I’m not allowed to use it, it isn’t really mine, it is the manufacturer’s – so please collect your junk, I don’t want to haul it around.

All you responses were and are great, of course. Keep ’em coming! And special extra thanks to Members! If you haven’t joined yet, please consider becoming an official Autopian Member today.

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230 thoughts on “What Car Advertising Campaigns Have Stuck With You (For Better or Worse)?”

  1. Asking me to dip into nostalgia is asking me to spend the rest of my weekend on YouTube. However, here’s a short list:

    Here are some local ads that will only appeal to a few:

    Believe me I could go on for hours.

    1. I referenced the Celozzi-Ettleson ad in the other week’s car dealer brawl piece discussion. I can still see them in mind, holding up those thick wads of cash!

    1. They should be ashamed of themselves for putting that generation LeMans in that ad. The only excitement that car would generate would be when you floored it at the start of the on ramp, and you studied the traffic you were about to merge into, then just started praying.

    3. I remember this ad from back in the day. Brings back memories of my ’89 Firebird Formula. Red, 5 speed manual, T-Tops and 305 screaming cubic inches of throttle body fuel injected mayhem. With the exception of the Mustang GT (and the Camaro version), it really was the only mainstream “performance” car you could buy, back then. I mean it made, like 140 hp, and would actually smoke a tire. That was pretty bad ass, for a new car in the mid 80s….I had no idea that there was an actual 3 minute long song.

  4. “The Great One by Pontiac. You know the rest of the story.”

    https://www.hagerty.com/media/automotive-history/short-lived-1968-gto-ad-shouted-street-racing-without-actually-saying-it/

    I love this ad because it doesn’t even come out and say what car it’s advertising–you have to look really closely to see it’s a GTO. But it leaves just enough clues (the Woodward Avenue signs, the presence of a car in the turnaround median, the suggetion that this is just the beginning of “the story”) to let your imagination fill in the details. And priming your imagination this way is far more effective than just coming out and saying “So, this guy in suburban Detroit was waiting for a pick-up street race, and someone comes along and challenges him, and he wins, because the GTO is fast.”

    It’s (in)famous because it suggested GM supported illegal street racing, and only ran once. But it’s head and shoulders above every other car ad I’ve seen from that era.

  5. Holiday ads. Toyotathon, Lexus December to Remember. Happy Honda Days. Ford Truck Month. I should not remember these dumb marketing holidays offhand.

  7. As a very young kid, I saw the ads for the Mercury Lynx. The world belongs to mercury. The world belongs to lynx. Had a very cool looking Lynx on the car. I can still see the commercial. I was highly offended when I got older and realized what an absolute shitbox was the lynx.

    2. I had a Lynx, and can confirm that thing has etched permanent scars into my brain from the stress of wondering how it would leave me stranded back when I only had money for rent and store brand pretzels for food.

      It was running so poorly I couldn’t hit 65 mph and CHP pulled me over to tell me I couldn’t use the freeway if I couldn’t drive the speed limit. They made me take the next off ramp, which put me in the hood at night. I hid for long enough to give the cops a good head start and got back on the freeway so I wouldn’t get got by gang bangers.

  8. Bernbach, Doyle and Dane early VW Beetle ads were excellent, especially “Lemon” and “Think Small.” I’ll never forget the ad (included in your collage) of the Beetle driving down a boat ramp and floating off in a harbor to tout it’s sealed, steel bottom. And only $1999!

  10. “It’s Hot Don” It was an ad catchphrase for Don Moore Chevy in Owensboro, KY in the 90’s. Tried to find an ad on YouTube but couldn’t find an original. You’ll still hear people saying it today.

  11. Bad product placement marketing sticks with me. In White Collar, they started pushing Ford one season so much that one character yells to check the blind spot and the other one tells him to relax, because it’s a Ford Fusion and it has blind spot detection. It practically drives itself. They zoomed in on the mirror during that to see the blind spot alert, as well as the infotainment and logos in various scenes.

    1. A better product placement moment is in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She is in a rush in a BMW convertible and says “Can’t this thing go any faster? Ultimate driving machine my ass.” Her boyfriend points out her speed and they move on without further lingering on the BMW or its capabilities.

    2. Someone down thread mentioned the TV show Bones. They did this multiple times during an apparent agreement with Toyota, such as Bones describing the navigation system to Booth and how it will allow them to arrive at their destination faster. During this time Booth also switched from a Suburban to a Toyota SUV. When their agreement with Toyota apparently ended a few years later, Booth went back to the Suburban, but they replaced the Grill to remove the Chevrolet badging. I guess GM didn’t want to pay for product placement.

      1. Oh, I didn’t see that comment, but Bones was another classic offender. At least White Collar was one of myriad USA Network shows doing it to scrape by. Bones was on Fox. They didn’t need the deal to make it work.

        1. Fox also did a pretty blatant one in 24 where a character commits suicide inside his Hyundai Genesis, and the camera makes sure to focus closely on the dash screen as it goes through it’s startup menu with the big Genesis wing emblem.

          USA was always terrible at it though, you expect it. Monk had his assistant buy a Buick Lucerne out of nowhere, even though it didn’t fit her character at all and was also beyond her means financially (but, she was also a single mother working a nearly minimum wage job caring for/assisting a suspended police officer, and lived in a single family Victorian house in San Francisco)

          1. 24’s Ford sponsorship was also big. All of Jack’s spy-truck black SUVs and there’s an episode where he drives a then-new Mustang Mach 1.

      2. First season Bones has an SLR. Once the agreement with Toyota is in place, suddenly she’s an environmentalist and has a Prius. Fine. What I object to is Bones’ artist friend.

        (I didn’t watch the show, my mother did, so I know far more about what happened than I care to, but I don’t remember names, nor do I care enough to look them up)

        Single with no children (early on, anyway), sort of a free spirit type. In universe, she is the daughter of ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons. And they have her in a fucking Sienna.

    3. Fringe had an agreement with Nissan for the Leaf. I think it was one of the better ones because someone said, “Are you sure that we’ll get there?” and the drive replied, “There’s plenty of charge.” It was obvious product placement, but it was a blink and you miss it thing.

    4. I had mentioned product placement too and another one just came to me – the Chryslers on Breaking Bad, when Walter bought him and his son SRT models and there was a scene where they just revved them out in the driveway for a while. I think the old site even had an article critical of it. It might have been more cringey because otherwise, they did a pretty great job of matching cars to characters, and did the same in Better Call Saul with the newer characters.

    5. Heros and the Nissan Rogue. Exact details are fuzzy, but I believe a perky blonde protagonist was given a Rogue by her parents and made a huge deal of it. Then it seemed every episode had her saying, “I’ll / we’ll take the Rogue!”

  12. In the game NHL 07 the shootout mini game is sponsored by Dodge and there is a Dodge Nitro just outside the boards as product placement. Can’t seem to find a picture of it online but for whatever reason I’ve never forgotten about it.

    This is a screenshot of the arena https://www.mobygames.com/game/32216/nhl-07/screenshots/windows/289325/

    I played way too much of this game as a kid.

    Edit: found a video of it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Sr_VhkMF_Q

  14. Around here, we get a lot of TEAM Mazda dealership ads. They really stick with you. If someone says “go team,” I instinctively reply “save money, buy happy.”

  16. Like a Rock… I love what you do for me… Go farther… Who could ask for anything more? I’m not 100% I even remember who’s jingles they were, but they’re burned into my brain in all of they’re grainy low def analog broadcast-ness. Was going to say glory, but nah.

    1. And before “Who could ask for anything more?” was “Toyota… QUALITY!” That went on for years (at least on the radio) and probably still sells lots of Toyotas.
      Honda had “We make it simple”, which seemed too understated to teenaged me… but they sold every Honda they could get to the dealership, so they didn’t really need to try very hard.

  20. ’90s Jeep ads. My dad and I still reference this one:

    Scene: Dusty gas station in the middle of a desert. Mountains can be seen in the distance. A man pulls up in a boxy SUV. Probably a four door GMC Jimmy.

    Man: What’s the best way to get to Bakersfield?

    Gas station attendant: (long elaborate directions, but its clear he is driving aorund the mountains)

    Man has disappointed looking face, drives off.

    Scene: Same dusty gas station. Same attendant. A woman pulls up in a Jeep. In my mind it is a Wrangler, but I’m probably wrong.

    Woman: What’s the best way to get to Bakersfield?

    Gas station attendant: (squints, looks the Jeep up and down, points at mountains) Head right over them mountains.

    Woman drives off, bouncing through the desert, kicking up dust. Camera zooms out. A dirty CJ is seen parked by the gas station.

    Fin

    2. There was the other Jeep ad where a bunch of ad men, production assistants, etc. are surveying a rugged mountaintop in the middle of nowhere as a shoot location for an unnamed 4×4 vehicle. “Yeah, this is perfect – but how will we ever get it up here?” “I don’t know – let’s go back down and figure it out.” Then they all get into their Jeeps and drive away.

  22. Recently, the Lo-Fi Nissan ad sticks with me in a weird way. Dunno if that will be lasting, since it’s not as catchy as “like a rock” or “built Ford tough,” but it’s interesting to see a longform commercial like that and a fully animated car commercial.

    Canyonero sticks with me more than any real ad, and Zoom Zoom was the most effective ad that stuck with me.

  23. Music-related: Jaguar TV advert with the Clash’s “London Calling.” Cadillac ad with Led Zepplin’s “Rock and Roll.” Strangely sexual: Mercury ad showing a woman from the knees down walking across a conference room floor in heels to the voiceover “Watson, come here, I need you.”

    AAMCO or some other company offering muffler repair services to the Los Angeles market by showing chimps banging on a pile of mufflers with sledgehammers.

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