Car commercials come in all sorts of varieties, with typical ones often emphasizing a characteristic such as speed, power, luxury, handling, fuel efficiency, space, or fun-to-drive nature, whether or not the subject car actually possesses any of these qualities. But every once in a while there comes along a car commercial that’s just plain weird.
Last year’s Lincoln MKC commercial with Matthew McConaughey certainly tipped the scales towards the strange end of the spectrum. In fact, I think that Ellen’s spoof of it actually makes more sense.
Another one that has always stood out in my mind is this 2002 Chrysler Concorde commercial. It’s just plain gross. No child wants to picture his or her parents having sex, let alone in the back seat of the family car. There’s plenty of other weird ones out there, so let’s hear your’s.
In my mind nothing will top the bizarre Infiniti ads that didn’t show or even mention the cars.
They must have watched too many Terrance Malick films, what with the random images of flowing streams and swaying grass.
Absolutely They had one that was something like “Consider the urushi tree, is it not like a luxury car?” What in the world ere they thinking???
My wife and I still laugh about this one.
The Grace Jones ad for the Citroen CX is famously bizarre… and therefore just right for the car:
+1. LOVE this ad.
I like the way the tires squeal on sun baked mud.
That’s definitely an odd one. Appropriate for today as A View To A Kill premiered 30 years ago to the day.
YIKES…..kinda scary.
http://www.google.com/url?q=http://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DHqGsT6VM8Vg&sa=U&ei=6IdfVePgO4ysogSx8oGwBA&ved=0CBAQyCkwAA&sig2=yXS2qnviMIAxevuN4Ssu9w&usg=AFQjCNGR1f3MBMgTIaCIx2TJ51EnwNDQww
Those ads where the couple drives their pickup downtown and work right iin front of some place without any trouble.
The current Caddie ad with the grubby urban street scene is pretty off.
I can remember tons of funny ads, and some that presented the car well…but weird??
Well…there was that one VW ad that you kind of have to watch closely to get what’s going on.
Nissan JUKE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSOgGhZL9t4 I’m guessing the end of the ad means if a guy thinks the JUKE is a “chick car” he will gladly cross-dress because it’s so fun to drive.
OK, now the brain cells are kicking in. Brit market Civic ad, with a choir of humans providing the sound effects.
By the way how do we post a YouTube video here so that the image shows up in our post instead of just the link?
What I usually do is type my text.
Then do a couple carriage returns to separate the link from the text
This one does make a valid point about the product, but presents it in a weird manner. Brit Honda again.
The Old Wives’ Tale series from VW on their diesels is pretty strange, informative and funny. As a diesel lover I think these are great.
I love them. They remind me of my Italian aunts, and great-aunts.
Probably the new Cadillac commercials that show the streets of SoHo in New York with the car as an afterthought. VW spots are pretty strange too. And lets not forget those old Infinity “zen” commercials that didn`t show the car. They were also out there. The most annoying? Those Buick commercials with the girl walking into the wrong Buick with the guy eating a sandwich,or the elderly woman saying “thats not a Buick”. I absolutely HATE that ultra annoying disco music in these commercials. Makes me want to throw my shoe at the TV screen.
Agreed. I made a reference to that Caddie ad above and the Buick ads are really obnoxious. Isn’t the guy eating the sandwich in an old Taurus?
I never even noticed.BTW Jan, the “Toyota woman” is really starting to get on my nerves.
Actually, I think Jan is a stroke of genius. Vapid yet mildly attractive. Perfect for their customer base.
Heh! I’m definitely not the Toyota demo, but find “Jan” incredibly interesting. Nowhere near as interesting as Jill Wagner (Mercury Division commercials), though…
I assumed “that old Taurus” was a Buick Regal from before the LaCrosse.
Yeah, that marketing campaign has me totally baffled. The valet that can’t find the Buick parked right next to him, all of those people who don’t recognize the vehicles as being Buicks, the girl who mistakes a mid 2000s Taurus for a new Buick ??? What in the world is in there that would pique someone’s interest in a Buick? Think I’ll buy the Taurus. Looks like a new Buick and a heck of a lot cheaper.
VW did have one that made me cringe almost as much as the Chrysler ad above, but I was laffing too hard. Looks like adland doesn’t upload to this site like youtube does.
http://adland.tv/commercials/vw-volkswagen-lick-2001-030-usa
From a branding/image perspective, this one always seemed strange to me. Not a way to re-establish the marque’s long-lost heritage, nor a way to build the brand with a new generation of clientele.
And this one is strange (and offensive) when you look at it from a 2015 perspective, yet it probably raised nary an eyebrow in 1964. Today it would spark a firestorm – and rightly so – and not just from La Raza and the Anti-Defamation League…
http://youtu.be/MB7paAIO4Ns
You may have a winner, BuzzDog.
Ugh! Yes!
And the commercial’s tagline invoked memories of the “Dr. Lisa Catera” character on Chicago Hope, brought to you by…Cadillac, and your local Cadillac dealer, who invite you to test drive and “lease a Catera.”
A really bad joke. Only it wasn’t a joke.
If i were a billionaire, I would create a company whose job would be to track down and buy every remaining Catera, and then set them on fire. What an atrocious automobile…
All of the helpful Honda ads. I just don’t get it. How does that make me want the car?
There is the famous Honda UK commercial “the Cog” – loads of postings of it on YouTube – here’s one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl2U1p3fVRk
It does happen to show a car at the end. A fairly prosaic Euro Accord wagon.
But maybe someone here knows of a link (I can’t find one) to what I think is the strangest car commercial ever made, a late-50s French (bien sur) TV ad for the Citroen DS and its suspension. No voice over, just odd surreal music and a combination of sepia-toned live shots and comically simple animated sequences.
always a Favorite
Being from the south I should find that offensive. But it’s funny.
I still wouldn’t touch a Saturn vue.
Toyota “Human Touch” ad for the Japanese market. Creepy and cute:
The Volkswagen Routan ad with Brooke Shields (“birthing babies for German engineering”) that managed to (1) offend couples dealing with infertility issues and (2) remind them and everyone else of the Nazi era and Volkswagen’s origins therein. Epic fail. The ad was apparently developed by a US agency for the US market and was rightly pulled by Volkswagen in short order once headquarters in Germany was aware of it.
Never saw those before, but I just watched it on YouTube, and WOW is it offensive on so many levels.
The amazing Datsun 280ZX “Black Gold” commercial:
SNL’s spoof of the McConaughey Lincoln ad is brilliant. All that’s missing is a callback to the Dan Aykroyd “Royal Deluxe II” ad parody…
So good.
1984 Plymouth Duster “Cocaine Factory” ad:
Beat me to it! For you Millennials out there in CC Land watching this commercial, all I can say to you is what people of my parents’ generation always said to me about the ’60s…….you just had to have been there.
Agreed, that 2002 Chrysler Concorde commercial is terrible. They just needed to add a comment on how the back seat cleaned up easily to really freak the kid out.
I nominate the 2005 Ford Freestyle in “The Vehicle of Marital Discord.”
https://youtu.be/CLVa3cZyGIo
I feel the ’02 Concorde commercial is good, it’s more of a joke happening to promote a larger family car. ( and I’m glad the little baby doesn’t get a name like LeSabre otherwise she would be 70yo when born )
As a LeSabre owner, I resent that. Your kid would just be really plush, comfortable, and smooth. Wait, that sounds weird….
Only 95% of Buick drivers are older than 70! 😉
There is one right now that equates your car to a giant live baby, as in “We know your car is your Baby” , I think that one struck me as weird.
The Ad for Toronado Trofeo With Harry and Shari Belafonte Ryming his song “Dayo” to Trofeo was a bit of a stretch.
This isn’t something I’ve thought much about.
I’d nominate the old Ford Edge spots with the car driving on rooftops, on two wheels and seriously cheesy “Unce..Unce..Unce” music.
How about most idiotic Car spot?
That has to go to Buick with the “I don’t see a Buick” ads.
The best part of those Ford Edge driving on rooftop ledges commercials was the fine-print warning at the bottom: “Professional Driver; Do Not Attempt”.
The old Hyundai Toy Boy commercial is worth a re-visit. It was a bit ahead of its time (perhaps not in Europe):
\[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmLgnbm8yNg&w=560&h=315%5D
Oh man does anybody remember Joe Isuzu?
Odd that there were no Chevy Spectrum-badged ones coming down the line behind him (those were 90% of the ones I saw back in the day).
Somehow, I don’t remember a lot of strange commercials. Tasteless, yes. Offensive, yes. Stupid, yes. But not really strange.
Google to the rescue. Searched for “bizzare” and wow did it deliver. Like the odd Honda commercials, it’s from the UK
Here’s my candidate – The AMC “Hey Javelin!” Commercial from 1970
I -guess- the point AMC was trying to make was,
“Everyone thinks the Javelin is a sporty car, but it’s really not”?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2j04v2XrVwg
Toyota’s commercials lately come off as creepy and just insulting. The very idea that some out of touch corporate tool is trying to push the Camry as ‘bold’ or the corolla as bitchin is as cynical as GM ever was. And that sappy, diabetes inducing prius commercial proclaiming ‘a prius for everyone’ literally made me want to throw the nearest piece of furniture at the TV. But then, I do have my biases….
It’s not as weird as some of the ones above:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR5Cejq2uyc
But, I don’t see what it has to do with a Honda Civic at all….
The ’60s…..JDM style…..
I like that better than Marsha Brady saying “Su-bar-u, Wow!” over and over…
https://youtu.be/zLPp-NFInXw
Then there’s this 1971 Toyota Crown ad. I’m sure there’s a reasonable, perfectly innocent explanation in Japanese, but on the surface it looks like the creepiest car ad ever made. Selling the Crown as the ride of choice for an aging salaryman and his young…….assistant
These are two of my faves:
This one is even better
Not sure if those were officially released by Ford. Very much like this VW commercial:
I always thought the first Infiniti commercials were goofy. They were very existential and actually not too different from the recent Matthew McConaughey Lincoln MKC, except in those, you actually got to see the vehicle. Here’s an example:
So, it’s the late 1990s. The British economy is booming, and Vauxhall is an effective competitor to Ford in the UK pretty much across its range, the result of 20 years hard work since the first Cavalier and Chevette were introduced.
But there’s a problem. You just aren’t attracting the moron buyer any more. How about replacing all the advertising, for all the ranges, across all media, with a series starring unfunny comic Griff Rhys Jones as a stereotypical beardy know-all/know-nothing boffin? People will be sure to talk about those ads. They were almost as good (ie cringeworthy) as John Cleese’s stint for supermarket chain Sainsburys, shouting abuse at customers through a megaphone. As the YouTube poster notes, the ad for the excellent VX220 sports-car is particularly dire. And I thought GM understood brand equity…!
I can’t believe the Chrysler Concorde ad. So gross!
I’m not sure if these ads are weird enough, but they are somewhat unusual and kinda cute.
Like this one for the Renault 5.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvBrx2kBeUI
(By the way, I see the Japanese ads are starting to appear! The weirdest car ad must surely come from Japan)
This one is strange, but cute. Renault 5.
The witch
I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s the strangest commercial I’ve seen, but it’s pretty weird. The music in this commercial is what my brain sounds like when I’m overwhelmed at work…
https://youtu.be/VpJAd_pMbm0
Oh, I forgot about this one…
https://youtu.be/QJs6xXIsIUA
Fiat did a bunch of these commercials…
https://youtu.be/MJvNE5mXK_s
Nobody has mentioned the Kia Soul hamsters.
I considered mentioning it, but have always thought of it as a blatant ripoff of this classic spot, which in my opinion is many orders of magnitude better:
https://youtu.be/1XCKSXvhbQU
This is the weirdest series of car ads I have ever seen. Infinity 1989-1990
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rIUAuW6vLk&w=420&h=315%5D
I find it hard to believe that those circa-2010 ads for the Toyota Highlander, the ones with the curly-haired kid critiquing minivans, station wagons, etc., as “dorky,” could possibly have generated positive sales results.
One of the spots is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80pNUxIczig ,
That spoiled brat was one of the most obnoxious advertising characters I’ve ever come across.
The Volkswagen Jetta – for you and your loser friend!
Keep ’em coming ! .
What about the 1960’s (?) MoPar adverts with chicken thieves down South ? .
-Nate
VeeDub, getting a bit strange again.
That’s a cute one .
-Nate
I hope and pray that I’m not imagining this – it was 35 years ago – but I recall one for the Austin Allegro about 1980 with the slogan “Vroom for Five”, I don’t remember the whole of it but it did include an Allegro against a back projection surrounded by a chorus line. The production values were such that I initially thought it was a public information film on the dangers of drink driving. Whether it had any effect on sales I have no idea, as the Allegro had already attained music hall joke status by then.