Revealed: The greatest car adverts of all time
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- 10 min read
Since some bright spark realised that you could use television to try and sell things to people and came up with the idea of TV advertising, car manufacturers have been using TV ads to ply the public with their latest wares.
Many of these early car TV ads were pretty awful and infused with a smorgasbord of 1960s political incorrectness which would make the ad executives in Mad Men think twice. It wasn’t until the 1970s that car advertising really came of age, due in no small part to Volkswagen’s excellent advertising campaigns. Since then, car television advertising has produced some absolute belters, as well as a few complete stinkers.
So read on for a selection of some of the best, most creative and funniest television car adverts ever devised…
Honda – The Cog
YouTube: Ricardo Montalban – 1975 Chrysler Cordoba Commercial
The writer remembers watching Honda’s masterpiece, The Cog, as a teenager when it first aired in its unabridged 120-second entirety during the 2003 Brazilian Grand Prix. I can still remember the arguments I had at school about which bits were CGIed and which bits were genuine. The genius of Antoine Bardou-Jacquet’s short film is that it doesn’t even show the car – a ho-hum Honda Accord – until right at the very end of the advert.
Ford Puma – Bullitt
YouTube: Ford Puma TV Spot with Steve McQueen (1997)
Ford realised – correctly – that the best way to sell its small sporty coupe for the 90s was to get the TV viewer to associate it with two icons of 1960s cinema cool: the Ford Mustang and Steve McQueen. It doesn’t matter that McQueen died a full 17 years before the Puma went on sale, making it highly unlikely he ever drove one; by making it seem like the kind of car he would have driven, Ford ensured they had a sales winner on their hands.
Citroen C4 – Transformers
YouTube: Citroen C4
It’s often the case that the advert in question is better than the car it’s advertising. And lo, it turned out to be the case with the Citroen C4. Granted, Citroen’s Focus rival wasn’t a bad steer, but it’s the dancing Transformer robot which everybody always remembers.
Peugeot 206 – The Sculptor
YouTube: Peugeot 206 advert: The Sculptor
As the Peugoet 206 continues its inexorable descent into Banger-dom, it’s hard to remember that when it came bursting onto the scene in the late 90s, it was a genuinely fantastic-looking little car. Peugeot cemented this reputation with The Sculptor, an advert whose primary message seems to be “Hey, our new supermini is more desirable than a Hindustan Ambassador!” And they were right, it was.
Peugeot 405 – Take My Breath Away
YouTube: PEUGEOT 405 ADVERT
When it came to selling the Peugeot 405, the French manufacturer’s ad agency clearly had one thing on their mind: fire. There’s quite a lot of it in this video although quite why is never made explicit (perhaps the director needed to get rid of a job lot of firelighters – we’ll never know). And with the soaring Top Gun soundtrack over the top, the 405 ad really does ‘Take our Breath Away’. Sorry.
Volkswagen Golf GTI – Singin' in the Rain
YouTube: Golf – Singing in the Rain
“The new Golf GTI. The Original. Updated,” was how Volkswagen decided to promote the fifth generation of its legendary hot hatch. Cue a CGI Gene Kelly breakdancing to a 21st century remix of ‘Singin’ in the Rain’. A daft premise, perhaps, but the genius of this advert lies in the quality of the effects, which look good even by today’s standards.
Fiat Strada – Handbuilt By Robots
YouTube: Fiat Strada – “Handbuilt by Robots”
Parodied in the brilliant Not the Nine O’Clock News skit as ‘Handbuilt by Roberts’, Fiat’s advert for its then-new Strada gave the impression that the car was cutting edge (it wasn’t), designed with care (it wasn’t) and built with precision (again, it wasn’t). The power of advertising very much working overtime here, then.
Renault Clio – Papa and Nicole
YouTube: Renault Clio – Papa – Nicole
Between 1991 and 1998 there were a staggering eight episodes of the Papa! Nicole! saga, making the Gallic duo almost as ubiquitous as Gio Comparo, the highly obnoxious Go Compare tenor. Luckily, Papa and Nicole were nowhere near as annoying and managed to help make the Clio one of the 10 best selling cars in Britain in the 1990s. One episode even featured Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer.
Volkswagen Golf GTI – Changes
YouTube: Volkswagen Golf – Paula Hamilton – 1987 – UK Advert
In less than twenty years, car advertisers went from treating women as the little lady indoors who might be allowed to drive your new car so long as she promises not to crash it on her way to their hairdressers, to actual people who might – SHOCK HORROR! – be interested in buying one of their cars. This ad for the VW Golf GTI featuring Paula Hamilton is a great example of this. She throws everything away, her coat, her ring, her necklace, but wisely stops for chucking the keys to her GTI. A shrewd move, given how much used values have risen in recent years.
Volkswagen Golf – If only everything was as reliable…
YouTube: Volkswagen Golf GTI “This is the man…” aka Casino – UK Advert 1987
Sticking with the VW theme, this 1980s ad plays on Wolfsburg’s reputation for bulletproof solidity, dependability and reliability. A great ad in its time, although for our money it was bettered by Top Gear. Speaking of which…
Top Gear adverts
YouTube: Top Gear: Poor Pitch – Series 13 Episode 7 – BBC Two
When Clarkson and May were tasked with creating a new advert for the diesel-powered Volkswagen Scirocco back in 2008, they managed to create half a dozen genuinely brilliant adverts which, while not passing muster with ‘Nick and Margaret’, made us think twice about buying a diesel Scirocco. A personal favourite is James May’s Scirocco jingle: “Diesel Scirocco, get you down to Morocco, on one fill-up of diesel, at 55-mpgeezle.”
Chrysler Cordoba – Soft Corinthian Leather
YouTube: Ricardo Montalban – 1975 Chrysler Cordoba Commercial
Spooling back to a time when lapels were wide, trousers were flared, and 5.7-litre V8 land yachts were considered economy cars by the US public, this stone cold gem features a super-slick performance by the late Ricardo Montalban (of Naked Gun fame) as a sharp-suited automotive epicure. The big joke: Montalban waxes lyrical about the car’s soft Corinthian leather despite there being NO SUCH THING. Chrysler just made it up because they thought it sounded good. Which it kinda does, to be fair.
Nissan Almera – The Sweeney
YouTube: Nissan Almera Advert – Sweeney Spoof
“Shut it!” Phil Cornwell (Dead Ringers, I’m Alan Partridge) does a turn as Jack Regan from The Sweeney in this classic advert from the 1990s. The only thing that’s missing is the gratuitous pile of boxes in the middle of the road.
Audi R8 V10 Plus – Engine noise
YouTube: The new Audi R8 V10 plus
Audi R8. Exhaust noise. Need I say more?
Skoda Fabia – Cake
YouTube: Skoda Fabia Advert – Original Cake Car
It’s hard to imagine that a Skoda Fabia made entirely of cake would have been a particularly good car. It would have handled nowhere near as well as a Fabia made of metal and presumably would have disintegrated pretty quickly in the rain, like the cake in MacArthur Park. Nevertheless, Skoda claimed the advert made it seem that the Fabia was “put together with love.”
Ford – Driven by You
YouTube: Brian May – Driven By You (Ford Ad)
Finally, this early 90s classic wins brownie points for its hilarious juxtaposition of the bombastic Brian May soundtrack with a video montage of some of the shonkiest cars ever to wear the blue oval badge. “Everything we do is driven by you,” Brian wails. Well, frankly, if the creation of the Mk5 Escort was in any way ‘driven by me’, the only thing I can say is that I sincerely apologise on behalf of the nation.