If one compiled a list of all car ads that borrowed a tagline from a brand of household supplies, we’d end up with… well, maybe just this example. Using a variation of Dial Soap’s long-running “Aren’t You Glad You Use Dial” slogan, Pontiac aimed to capitalize on what may have been the Grand Prix’s most distinctive feature – a dashboard with over a dozen round dial-ish shaped openings.
The Grand Prix was part of General Motors’ “G-special” range of coupes that sold by the zillions in the late 1970s through the mid 1980s. However, the Grand Prix sold more modestly than its Buick, Oldsmobile or Chevrolet counterparts – in 1985 60,000 Grand Prix coupes found customers, less than 40 percent of Oldsmobile’s Cutlass Supreme production.
From a marketing perspective, the Grand Prix faced a few hurdles. For one, by the mid-1980s, this was really Yesterday’s Car – a traditional rear-wheel drive personal luxury coupe trying to keep its head above water in the front-drive aero age. Additionally, Grand Prix seemed to be overshadowed by its GM siblings. And aside from styling details, little distinguished the G-special offerings from GM’s four divisions.
Grand Prix Ads and promotional literature from the mid-’80s revolved around vague notions of style and luxury, such as shown in this 1984 ad. But even this ad focuses on a particularly notable feature – Grand Prix’s dashboard with more round things than anything other than aircraft instrument panels.
And that brings us to our featured 1985 ad. Again, this shows an image of the car and one of the dash, but with the tagline:
Aren’t you glad we use dials? Don’t you wish everyone did?
“Dials” here refers to Pontiac’s optional Rally Gage (gauge in GM’s unique dialect) package, which supplemented a tachometer for the standard Grand Prix’s giant dash-mounted clock, and added oil pressure, water temperature and voltmeter gauges where round warning lights otherwise resided.
In reality, this looked more impressive than it was. Of the 15 round openings in Grand Prix’s dash, just six were gauges. Eight were air vents, and one contained a pod of warning lights. But still the dash looked neat, and Pontiac can’t really be blamed for showing it off.
But then there’s slogan. Nearly everyone at the time would have instantly recognized it as a variation on Dial soap’s long running Aren’t you glad slogan.
This became one of the longest-running and most successful slogans in advertising history. First used in 1953, this slogan changed Americans’ views of soap. Prior to Dial’s popularity, most Americans considered there to be little difference in soap brands – the Aren’t you glad campaign changed that by convincing consumers of the benefits of antibacterial soap, while tactfully avoiding mentioning the embarrassing effects of body odor.
Dial quickly became one of the leading soap brands in the United States, and Aren’t you glad persisted in various forms as a sales pitch into the 1990s. The above ad was published at about the same time as our featured Pontiac ad.
As noted in small print at the bottom, General Motors obtained permission from Dial’s parent company Armour-Dial, Inc. to use a variation of the soap slogan. Both companies evidently considered it in their best interest to share the promotion.
Whether this ad dialed up interest in the Grand Prix is hard to say. Sales fell 23 percent from 1984, and the next year fell an additional 32 percent – though such a sales decline is hardly unexpected with an aging car model. Regardless, General Motors’ and Armour-Dial’s brief collaboration here left an interesting footnote in the Grand Prix’s history. And I am glad about that.
In our touch screen infested world, where everything has to have one, including refrigerators and washing machines.
New Volvos even require a touch screen to open the glove box. I would be very glad if we got some more dials.
Doubtlessly the best part of this downsized GP was the instrument panel.
But still a retrograde from the 1973-77 dashboard?
The 1973 thru 1977 Grand Prix instrument cluster, shared with the Grand Am and optional on some of the LeMans models.
Has anyone ever dug up any valid reason or justification for GM’s intentional misspelling of “gauge”?
As a child of the 60s/70s I very rarely saw a car with gauges, Chrysler aside. Both GM and Ford thought all drivers needed to know was how fast they were going, and when to buy gasoline.
Probably the same reason one used to see “wheel alinement” signs. Though that doesn’t even save letters like gage or lite.
It’s a variant spelling of gauge which was fairly common at one time in mechanical engineering. I guess GM just kept using it longer than most. Merriam-Webster says:
The earliest evidence we have for the noun gauge goes back to the 15th century, when English spelling was not yet standardized, and the word in question was spelled gauge and gage with roughly equal frequency. Gauge began to be preferred in the late 19th century for most general uses. Some claim that gage appears as a variant more frequently in the U.S., though our evidence shows that the vast majority of uses for gage are from specialized and technical industries, such as mechanical engineering, manufacturing, and electronics, and that these uses of gage are global, not limited to the U.S.
I’ve never been able to figure out the reason GM’s spelling of gage. Most dictionaries do list gage as an alternate spelling of gauge, so it’s correct, just uncommon.
Like Rollfast mentions above, gage seemed to have been used more in older times, so I’ve often wondered if there were some old timers at GM who were just adamant that the proper spelling was g-a-g-e.
Ford did it too, the catch all dummy light in the Thunderbird Supercoupe’s tachometer says “Check Gage”. Funny enough in 1994 when the interiors were refreshed with the basic instrument cluster carried over it was changed to “Check Gauges”
Kind of. I reckon Noah Webster was partly to blame. He tried to reform American English spelling to make it more logical (hooray!) by removing unnecessary letters and peculiarities carried over from other languages, but (to my mind) only succeeded in creating distinctly American spelling of certain words. Ben Franklin was in there as well. There was some newspaper editor guy too, forget his name. If you google spelling reform you’ll find quite a few prominent Americans over the years have stuck their oar in, and many suggestions were made that thankfully either didn’t find traction or didn’t stand the test of time. ‘Gage’ is one that failed.
From what I understand, one word from that spelling reform movement that did stick around is “thru”, as in “drive-thru”.
Most dictionaries I’ve used seem to still flag “thru” as misspelt, although in actual usage it seems a widely-accepted informal variant of “through” (but not “threw”.
And Volkswagen. Idiot lights for voltage and oil pressure.
When I moved to Tulsa in the 1970’s, I had to get a phone. When I asked a colleague if he knew the number to the local phone company, he laughed and said that for us transplanted northerners, it was listed as Fone Company in the directory. I thought he was kidding, but checked anyway. Sure enough, the directory cross-referenced Fone Company to Southwestern Bell.
This has absolutely nothing to do with cars, but for some reason this discussion about gage vs gauge triggered a long dormant memory.
Yes, I know that I am “getting old”; but I am always pleased to see the pointers twitch and move on my daily driver’s gauge filled instrument panel.
Getting old here too, Mark… but gauges are the best, and I’m glad my 2007 Mustang has old fashioned gauges…
Looking good here!
One of my favorites of these cross-promotional ads was the one done back in 2002 for the W-Body Impala, featuring the Maytag Repairmen (including the outgoing (RIP) actor that played Arthur Carlson on WKRP)…
https://adland.tv/adnews/chevy-impala-maytag-guys-2002-030-usa?page=1
Priceless.
My Dad had an ’85 Grand Prix with the EXACT dash (right down to the color) as the car in the ad. That was one thing I loved about driving his GP, and Dials were something I too would’ve wished that Ford used on its Aero Bird. My ’83 T-Bird’s dash was quite boring by comparison to his Grand Prix’s.
Ironically, Maytag (a former car manufacturer, BTW!) reliability went down the tubes around the time this ad ran, with their products drawing numerous big black dots in CR surveys and several retailers (Best Buy included) no longer selling Maytag appliances due to customer complaints. What was left of the money-losing company was soon bought out by Whirlpool (who wanted the well-known brand name more than the money-losing factories, some which were shuttered after the deal closed), and they wanted to keep the brand out of Chinese appliance manufacturer Haier so a bidding war ensued but Whirlpool prevailed, paying more for Maytag than they were worth. Instead, Haier later bought General Electric’s appliance unit at a lower price.
Since it’s not too often we discuss both Pontiacs and Maytags in the same comment thread, I figured it’s a good place to share this picture from a local shopping center, circa 1987:
No.
That grossly excessive number of circular openings was bad design and looked dumb.
You might not want to pilot a pre-glass-cockpit Cessna 172 then. 😉
I would, actually. But then all of those round openings had important and useful gauges. These don’t. There’s a big difference.
True that… 😉
I’m a fan of analog gauges. But I agree, I really don’t like the way this looks. Pontiac did the same thing on the 80s Phoenix dash.
https://oldcarmemories.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/autos_pontiac_phoenix_198284phoenixsjse-3.jpg
Although square, the 1980 Bonneville had a similar abundance of gauges.
My Dad had this exact cluster (right down to the color) in the car that preceded his 1985 Grand Prix mentioned in my comment above.
If you think this is complicated you’ve never driven a Bluebird Wanderlodge motorhome. It’s definitely intimidating the first time out, but every gauge is actually important.
Once again, Paul and I agree on a car.
The base Pontiacs had a clock instead of tachometer and idiot lights aside from the fuel gage.
Poor ergonomics. But distinctive by GM at the time!
If only this dash were a continuous strip of walnut veneer with an iPad containing 100% of the data and controls superglued to the middle of it, now that’s a good smart dash design!
Ahh, the late great, lamented GM. Yeah, by the mid-eighties, RWD body on frame cars were on the way out–unfortunately, at least for the RWD part. I had an ’87 Cutlass in nearly perfect condition as last as 2018 when I decided to sell it for more garage floor space. (Haven’t regretted it either!) It did have a speedometer gauge but it wasn’t round, it was linear. GM loved those linear speedometers and I much prefer the round!
Was there ever cars with more AC vents in the dash than mid 80’s Pontiacs?
At least Pontiac offered a gauge package and worked into their dash design. But most people by this time at least, had no idea what those gauges communicated. Even more so today.
My father special ordered our 1981 Olds 98 with the gauge package. They were not well-integrated under the speedometer on either side of the steering wheel. Olds had an array of idiot lights top and center of the dash, which they felt most buyers were OK with. As a kid I tried to see what each light represented when light would leak from neighboring lights. I recall that the headlight/taillight monitor system was $12, that he ordered for me. I really thought that system (with fiber optics I didn’t understand at the time, I thought tiny bulbs were in there) was a clever system.
Interesting that the GP dash has nearly a dozen circles yet the exterior has none, except for the wheels/tires! Design by committee, to say the least!
^This. Of the final generation of GM’s G-specials, while I generally like the Grand Prix the least, it did have the best gauge package. The Buick Regal followed with an acceptable pointer-and-scale speedometer, small horizontal roll-type tachometer, and the excellent turbo V6.
The Monte Carlo and Cutlass, while the exteriors were okay, had the worst instrument clusters with tiny, round gauges set into a horizontal dash.
I, for one, love the ad. I don’t remember seeing this back then, but then it was probably because I saw an ad for a Pontiac GP and just tuned out the rest of it.
I am in favor of any instrument panel that gives more information rather than less.
Much as I applaud having full-ish instrumentation, and good cockpit ventilation, there’s something intellectually dishonest about having so many of those circular openings stuffed full of vents. Did Pontiac really give you four separately adjustable centre vents, or were there two vents and two dummies?
Actually, that would have been a meaningful point of differentiation for Pontiac; full instrumentation standard throughout the range, to subtly reinforce the ‘driver’s car/excitement’ theme.
Oh, did the soap guys ever complain about Pontiac hijacking their slogan?
Yes, the straight slats within the round frame opened and closed in usual venetian-blind form, and the outer round dials could be rotated 360 degrees in either direction. Similar to the 2nd and 3rd row ceiling vents on some minivans and CUVs.
I liked the jingle Pontiac as using at the time.
Brilliant connection, and I’m glad you wrote about this ad. This essay is the intersection point of things I enjoy – GM G-special coupes and vintage advertisements. Nicely done.
Thanks! I saw an ’84 Grand Prix on I-70 last week – the first one I’ve seen on the road in years. Since I was able to get a few pictures of it, I figured I’d write it up, and that’s how I came across this ad.
I figured the ad was interesting enough to be its own article, and I’ll hopefully get to the Grand Prix itself one of these weeks as well.
After 1977 the Grand Prix magic was gone, and I’m being kind with the date. After that this car could have been named Corn Pone or Clam Cake. They could have put 10 more vent holes in the dash. It wouldn’t have mattered. The magic was gone.
The subtext this ad relates to was that in the mid-1980s, digital speedometers and bar-graph displays were starting to replace traditional analog dial gauges with physical pointers. This was especially true on American or Japanese luxury-trimmed cars, but a backlash was forming against them amongst sporty-car buyers. None of the German brands used digital gauges (that I can think of), which was probably enough for the buff books to turn against them or at least deem them inappropriate in sporty or serious European-style cars. Pontiac was chasing a sporty image in the ’80s, thus this ad for a car they were trying to avoid being perceived as a ’70s personal-luxury throwback.
Could be – though the irony is that whether the text related to digital dashes or to poor analog gauges, Pontiac wasn’t innocent of Crimes Against Instrumentation.
Pontiacs without the Gage Package typically came with just a speedometer and fuel gauge, and meanwhile those Pontiacs equipped with digital displays ended up looking like the abomination below.
I like what Peter said above: That if full instrumentation came standard throughout the Pontiac range, that would have been a good reinforcement of the “driver’s car/excitement” theme.
My Uncle bought an ’86 Regal coupe new.
I drove it once….It had the 3.8 V6 and automatic.
I think that engine was rated somewhere around 110 or 115 hp. It did alot of downshifting in normal driving and did not feel especially peppy.
Almost 20 years later, I bought an ’05 Impala with the 3800 V6 which had 200 hp.
GM did a decent job upgrading the old 3.8 into the 3800 series but they cheapened out on some things along the way such as inferior quality intake manifold gaskets.
My car needed those gaskets changed as they started to leak internally.
Oh to have a new car wth gauges for easy reading and knobs for use of audio and HVAC systems. My 2011 Ranger dashboard functions are easy to use and I don’t need to take my eyes off the road to make adjustments. Gauges have dials and knobs have clicks which provide tactile feedback when adjusting fan speed, cabin temperature, air flow, etc. My 2018 Infiniti Q50 is a pain the ass. Just about everything is accessed thru two seperate screens which have multiple functions. Can’t access audio and HVAC systems without changing screens. I have to determine when it’s safe to take my eyes off the road to change the screens and make changes. I do have the option of using voice commands but of course I have to locate the correct button on the steering wheel and know the correct magic words to tell the system what to do.
Always add at least one more gauge than you’re comfortable with -TRD
Our first new car, 83 GP, special ordered by us, with buckets console and gauge package. We loved it, but then we saw the Monte Carlo SS with TTops and traded it in 85.
My first car was a 1981 Grand Prix, and the only dashboard instruments that it has was a fuel gauge and a speedometer. Everything else was warning lights. I had never seen that ad before and I can’t believe how they described the 3.6 Buick engine as lively. One of my friends had a 1987 Chevy Monte Carlo SS with a 180 horsepower 305 engine. It ran the quarter mile in the low 17’s and the top speed was around 115. I can’t understand why the 350 Chevy engine was not offered in the 1981 to 1987 Regal, Cutlass, Grand Prix or Monte Carlo. I swapped a 455 Buick engine into my Grand Prix. I added a few more goodies like 3 inch exhaust pipes with 12 inch glasspack mufflers and a 160 MPH Autometer speedometer. Later I put horseshoe spacers under the front coil springs to raise it up by 3 or 4 inches. This turned it into a squatter and later I added reverse offset Crager SS rims to make the tires stick out past the fenderwells. This is how we did things around here in the 1980s to mid 1990s. Most squatters were 1981 to 1987 G body cars along with an occasional 1977 to 1979 Thunderbird or Cougar. I took this photo in 1998. It was just after the front end shop installed the horseshoe spacers but I didn’t have the 14 x 8 Cragers and the 245/60 tires yet.