Future archaeologists’ jobs will certainly be made easier by our advertising. As I thumbed through my May 1964 copy of Car and Driver, a magazine where the ads tended to focus on power, speed, handling, and mechanical specifications rather than a car’s practicality, it became clear that “car enthusiast” will definitely rate a subtype in sociologists’ lab reports.
Compared to a general consumer magazine such as Life, or a glossy, exotic choice such as National Geographic, the ads in Car and Driver pale in color, literally. This ad for the E-Type, or the XK-E as those of us in the States tend to call it, is one of the few that is printed in color, and it’s on the inside of the cover page. The ad copy starts with a pun but gets into the statistics fairly quickly, at least the important one: it can top 130 miles per hour. When it comes to Jags, price is also important because they were inexpensive considering their capabilities: $5,625 for the coupe, $200 less for the roadster.
It would have been rare to see a Citroen ID or DS in America, but if anyone were to buy one, they’d most likely have a subscription to either Car and Driver or Road & Track. Once again, this ad starts with a bit of a pun on the Goddess’s front-wheel-drive and goes on to brag about its 100 mile-per-hour capability and superb fuel mileage: 28 to 34 miles per gallon.
Of course, showing the car’s engine is a surefire way to get to a car guy (or gal)’s heart. This ad seems to have been purchased by Max Hoffman’s famous sales and distribution outfit, and it’s a reminder that the Neue Klasse BMWs were excellent performers, “[masterpieces] of German engineering.”
Even Lotus has a sense of humor, and you’d have to given the number of jokes that have used its name as an acronym (OK, I’ve heard one: “Lots of trouble, usually serious”). Since I live in the past, even in regards to my TV watching, I always think of Emma Peel in The Avengers when I see an Elan, but here we’re reminded that its not just a slinky roadster with a beautiful and famous driver; it’s a genuine high-performance sports car. I love this stat: “Fourth gear can pull from 17 mph.” Not 16, not 18, but 17.
This is one of my favorite ads of this bunch, and it’s a famous one involving the Corvair Monza Spyder. Even today, anyone who sees my ’65 Monza asks if it’s a Spyder, regardless of the fact that the Spyder was renamed as the Corsa in 1965. Everyone remembers the turbocharged model, and this ad not only invites us to sit in the Corvair’s sporty bucket seats, but it also reminds us that to own one, you have to be proficient at driving a car with a manual transmission. It also reminds us of a fact that many forget: turbocharged Corvairs came standard with a non-synchro-first-gear three-speed. The four-speed was an option (that most of them had).
It wouldn’t be a copy of Car and Driver from the 1960s if it didn’t have an ad for one of the affordable Little British Sports Cars, and this one is for the Triumph TR-4. As in most of the ads, we learn the price ($2,849), the acceleration (“0-60 in 10.5 seconds”), and the top speed (110 m.p.h., which seems a little optimistic based on road tests I’ve read).
Although “The Grand Mercedes” pictured here (the 600) was unlikely to find a buyer among most car magazine subscribers, it might have brought you in to the showroom to look at a “lesser” Mercedes. No acceleration times are given here, but the $19,500 price tag for the “5-passenger Sedan” is, in addition to the $24,000 rate for the “7-passenger Limousine.” Ouch, I think I’ll buy a Sedan DeVille, thank you.
Volkswagen always had cute, self-depreciating ads (“Think Small,” etc.), and when they involved the cute little Karmann Ghia, a car that looked faster than it was, they were always worth a chuckle. “Volkswagen, Italian Style” is a play on the period movie Divorce, Italian Style, which starred the Italian movie star Marcello Mastroianni. No acceleration times in this one.
I’ve intentionally not included the myriad ads for parts suppliers, but I like this one from Robert Bosch Spark Plugs. Think of it, a spark plug going out with models…ah, the ’60s.
It would be easy to think that this Pontiac ad for their bucket-seat biggie, the 2+2, was lampooning Timothy Leary’s famous quote: “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” However, that was still two years into the future in 1966 as far as I can tell, unless it was already in use in underground channels. Whatever the case may be, this ad gives us a final opportunity to see the four-speed Hydra-Matic’s unique stamp on the gear-selecting world.
This should be one of my favorite ads, but I’m not on speaking terms with my personal 1800S; it’s not running right now and I’d rather not talk about it, but I will when I get it running again. This is a bit of an uncommon ad in the enthusiast magazine world because it includes little text, just a picture of the car (which is beautiful in its quirky way) and the price. The implication is that the 1800S was inexpensive considering how good it looked, but $3,995 was actually quite a lot of money in 1964 for a car with 108 horsepower pushing around 2500 pounds.
Ah, this is more like it. Peugeots would have been more common on the coasts, and few in my home state of Michigan would have bought one, but just in case, Peugeot told you all about it. There’s no condescension, just a list of the greasy bits (along with a few pictures) and why they’re important.
I love this ad because it assumes that the readers are “with it” enough to get the reference to the Great Train Robbery (which happened in 1963) and know what the word “sybarite” means (a person who loves luxurious, expensive things). Even so, I’m not sure that I’m not missing something, and I’ll guess the attempt at humor was lost on 98 percent of the readers.
I have included this ad for Champions because I’m a student of historic rallying and the sight of Paddy Hopkirk’s Monte Carlo Rally-winning Mini breaks my patriotic heart. Bo Ljungfeldt’s Falcon Sprint was fastest, by far, on almost every special stage in 1964 and still came in second because of the grand rally’s performance metrics. I know it wouldn’t be fair otherwise, but I’m sore and there’s nothing you can say to make me feel any better about it.
I still like Minis though, and I don’t hold Mr. Hopkirk or the good folks at BMC to blame. Carry on.
Although you’re never likely to see one in person (in America), the Imp was a cute little car that was fraught with issues, from labor to layout. Still, the specifications are here for all enthusiasts to read about, including the probably dubious “100,000-mile durability” claim. Imps made decent rally cars, so they must have been somewhat tough; Paul N. talks about them in-depth here.
FIAT had a wide-ranging model line in 1964 for export, including the pretty Pininfarina-styled 1500 and the cute little 600D. It might just be me, but I’ve always preferred the 600’s looks to the 500’s, and it has a “peppery engine and oversized brakes.” Also, it’s cheap at $1,262.
This “Total Performance” ad from Ford made the rounds in 1964; I have quite a few copies of it. The Ford GT was new enough that a rendering is used rather than an actual photo, but a Thunderbolt, the aforementioned Monte Carlo Rally Falcon, a Cobra, a Ford-powered Indy Car, and Dan Gurney’s Riverside-winning Galaxie are all offered as proof that Ford took enthusiast motoring seriously. Unfortunately, not much that you could buy on the showroom floor verified that claim, at least not as of May of 1964.
This is a great ad featuring the “high performance” Saab, the Monte Carlo GT 850. Erik Carlsson won two Monte Carlo rallies (1962 and 1963) in Saab 96s, and their loose-surface traction was legendary. Always quirky, the two-cycle three-cylinder made enough power for the 96 to be a threat wherever the tarmac ended. Being an ad in an enthusiast magazine, there is talk of carburetors, cylinders, and horsepower per cubic inch.
Renault was one of the most successful foreign automakers in America in the early 1960s, and although their reputation for quality and reliability was…spotty, a lot of people found their way into cars like this Caravelle or perhaps a Dauphine. This advertisement is probably meant to soften the blow of owners’ bad experiences by reminding potential buyers that they’ve been building cars a long time, and they haven’t forgotten how to do it.
Finally, we end the magazine with one of the most long-lasting and well-respected of British sports cars, the MG, in this case, a Mark II Midget. It was big news (to MG) that they finally had windows that would roll up and down (although I like the looks of the Mark I better), and a zero-to-sixty time of “less than 16 seconds” was also their idea of fast moving. Being a Car and Driver ad, it behooved marketing to mention the Midget’s success in SCCA amateur racing.
As much as we all like lush advertisements including colorful images such as Fitz and Van’s Pontiac illustrations, there’s something honest and hale about advertising for the car enthusiast. It’s a completely different assignment for the ad man, but most of them did it well.
Further CC Reading
Advertising Classics: April 1963 Car Ads – “April Come She Will” (by me)
CC Advertising: 1963 “Look” Magazines – Cars And A Cultural Education (by me)
Advertising Classics: August 12th Magazine Haul — Part One, 1965 (by me)
Advertising Classics: August 12th Magazine Haul — Part Two, 1964 and 1967 (by me)
Love all those old ads! They bring back some fond memories. Even when I was a kid back in the 50’s and it’s I was a car guy.
A 1964 XKE for $5625 wasn’t exactly cheap back then.
Enough for a Fiat 1100 and three Fiat 600s.
No, it wasn’t cheap, but it was inexpensive considering how much other foreign models with similar capabilities cost. What else would come close at the price, a Corvette maybe?
This is right from the time I discovered car magazines in the drug store rack.
I’ve always preferred the Fiat 600 to the 500; it’s a vastly better car. But there’s something about the 500 that makes it so endearing.
Yes, that ’64 Pontiac ad does rather echo Leary’s mantra. They should have done an update in ’66.
In the Pontiac 2+2 ad, there’s a sneaky little pricing trick that GM played across the board with its high performance cars.
The 4-speed manual is “optional at extra cost”. So is the automatic. But these are the only 2 transmissions available with the 2+2; the 3-speed manual was not available in the top model.
So you can’t buy a 2+2 for “base price”. You *had* to order and pay for one of the two “optional” transmissions. That feels just a tiny bit scammy to me.
You’re misreading the ad or it wasn’t very clear. The $291 2+2 package came standard with either the automatic or the 4-speed. See attached image below.
That very much wasn’t “across the board”. The 2+2 was an unusual package, to have the 4-speed or automatic as standard. And that was only in 1964. Almost invariably the hi-po V8 cars came with a HD 3-speed manual, including the GTO and all the Chevy SS models, etc.. Even the Grand Prix came with the 3-speed as standard.
And one could order higher performance engines with the 2+2. Actually, the 2+2 package wasn’t really a hi-po package; these 389s were pretty basic. It was mostly a deluxe interior/appearance package that included the 4-speed and automatic.
Looking at the brochure, it’s certainly not clear. The standard 2+2 engine is a 389/2-bbl. It’s listed with the 3-speed as “Not Available”, with the 4-speed as “Mandatory”, and with the Hydra-Matic as “optional”.
My inference was that if you ordered the 2+2 package, it required a “mandatory option” of the 4-speed. I assumed that meant it wasn’t included in the base price. I must have been incorrect. Sorry.
It looks like this issue is as clear as mud. Here’s a Motor Trend road test of a 2+2 that says that the four-speed was indeed a $231.34 option on top of the $290.52 2+2 package.
https://over-drive-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/1964-05_MT_Pontiac_Cat_Test_1-6.pdf
It does come across as ambiguous and confusing. Aaron S. most likely has the AMA specs to clarify it. But actually that’s a bit of a moot point as I was mainly responding to Evan’s claim that this was “a sneaky little pricing trick that GM played across the board with its high performance cars”. I can think of maybe a couple of situations where this applied (the 1961 Chevrolet SS package required a number of mandatory options), but it was very far from common or across the board.
The 2+2 Sports Option isn’t in the 1964 AMA specs — since it was an option rather than a separate model, at most the AMA specifications might have listed the weight difference of the option, probably not its content.
However, the 2+2 package was primarily an appearance group, with bucket seats, a center console, and special interior trim, plus dual exhausts and wheel covers. It listed for $290.52. In 1964, Pontiac charged $231.34 for either the 4-speed manual or Roto Hydra-Matic. This means that if those were included in the price of the 2+2 option, you would be getting the bucket seats and other stuff for less than $60. That would have been a screaming bargain, since ordering just bucket seats on a Bonneville convertible (the only model where they were a standalone option) was $116.21, and thus seems very unlikely. In later years, GM offered option-group bargains like that, but Pontiac had no reason to in 1964. (The 2+2 was within $5 or $6 of the price of the GTO package on the Tempest, which didn’t include the four-speed either.)
So, in this case, the brochure’s reference to the 4-speed or Hydra-Matic being “standard” almost certainly meant “mandatory.”
Here’s another description of the ’64 2+2 package from Hemmings:
If there are two seats and some room for luggage for a fun, performance road trip, I consider that practical.
Most of the foreign manufacturers of 1964 probably chose black and white because of the cost, while the bigger ones (like VW) were cultivating a countercultural/underdog image. I wonder if the US performance car ads were purposely aping that European look – in their advertising if not in their cars.
Thanks for putting this together. Several years ago (when I had more spare time than I have now), I actually indexed all of my old car magazines, so that I can find ads quickly. Being a data guy, I enjoyed looking at different ways I could examine all these ads, and it was fascinating to see how color gradually seeped into these buff magazines during the 1970s.
That Mercedes 600 ad definitely seems out of place in a car buff magazine. Other Mercedes… sure. But the 600?
Renault had some great ads in the 1960s – this Caravelle ad was definitely one of them!
I’m not quite organized enough for an index, but I do keep my ads separated by year and corporation. In each packet, I have the car, color, bodystyle, and season it best represents on a handwritten note to myself. I guess that’s a form of index, now that I think about it. 🙂
I don’t think I have the mental capacity for that any longer – my spreadsheet has over 14,000 entries (includes ads, road tests and other features). Here’s what one of the ad segments looks like for 1968 Road & Tracks – I included the ad slogan too, which is handy for figuring out just what ad it is before I go digging around the basement for the original magazine.
Took me a few years to get this done. I’m exhausted just thinking about it!
Yep, that is definitely more thorough than my slapdash system. Good on you for doing it!
This is an illustration from one of my favorite Renault ads from this era. Renault hired well-known illustrator Rick Meyerowitz for the ad (which is why it looks like a political cartoon, because that was one of Meyerowitz’s specialties).
The ad’s title was “St. Renault and the Dragon”:
The flood of imports that began in earnest in 1958 saw America jammed with so many cute little cars most of which were unsuited to our driving needs, the joy of a tiny little econobox wore off rapidly .
I still love them , some were pretty crude yes and parts & service simply were not good then .
People used to put 40HP VW engines into those tiny Fiat 500’s, made them scary fast but fun .
-Nate
The reason why that Jag ad is one of the few in color is because it was printed with the color cover. Outside of picture mags like Life or Look or the fashion, shelter, and travel mags, most pubs were printed in b&w only, because color was still expensive and time consuming.
Good post.
Outside of the intro of XKE, the old school Austin Healey MK III 3000 had the best lines.