1967 was a long time ago, and these ads prove that. “Mercury, the Man’s Car”? I always thought the original Cougar was quite appealing to women.
What’s this question got to do with the ad? Seems like a stretch.
But then this Rover ad is even more obscure.
An MGB/GT can save your marriage! Good to know.
How about something a bit more to the point, like the brand new BMW 1600 (1602). It was a steal at that price ($19k adjusted), and the start of BMW’s rapid rise to the top of the premium brand market. There was a young priest at our church in Towson that bought one in early 1967, and I vividly remember him driving a couple of us to a CYO retreat out in the country. He drove like the devil. No wonder he left the priesthood a couple of years later.
Lamborghini has certainly come a long way since this very early ad.
Mercedes’ arrogance was on full display already. Of course there was something to their claim.
This one is a classic.
A very prescient ad.
And of course the inevitable VW ad
Too bad about the sexism, but in a culture that was rife with “Take my wife, please” humor, these were certainly a reflection of their times. And those times are thankfully over.
One thing that always surprises me about older advertising – and most of these car ads conform — is just how much text they had. I am amazed at how much people would read back then…and that must have been true, otherwise the ads – which simply reflect cultural norms – wouldn’t have been so text-heavy.
Naturally, I find it rather disappointing just how little modern consumers are expected to read.
Very limited TV and radio. No home video. If you had something to read, you read it, because it was the best available entertainment. You might read it twice, because there wasn’t anything else in the house you hadn’t read twice but the newspaper. That’s why “The Godfather’ was a sensation as a book before it was a movie: It was a book that read like a movie. My parents weren’t bibliophiles, but they bought the latest big (literally) mainstream middlebrow novels by Uris, Michener, etc. The Sopranos or Breaking Bad serve that market today, and you can easily time shift them when they broadcast, or watch a whole series from beginning to end at your own pace from a computer service that costs less per month than a hardback book.
For specialist magazines, the readers were a captive audience for advertisers. They’d read long copy and thank you for it, if readers had been entertained or thought they’d learned something.
Which is why the literary decline of RT and CD (but not MT) has been long lamented here at CC. We soaked up their writing and demanded more, with their most memorable stories becoming legendary.
Now? I get disgusted by how much I paid for the latest C/D. It’s not a value anymore.
Subscribing at $1/mo is about 85 cents too much.
I mostly only get the Brit old car magazines, as ezines. They still have some old school writing. I’m losing interest in them now because even a chucklehead like me can only read a finite number of articles about the Hillman Imp. The magazine with Quentin Willson is on the cut list because it’s very heavily biased toward market information, which I don’t care about.
The funny thing is that I had ezine subscriptions to several of the specialist titles that were killed when the Motor Trend company just cut down to Hot Rod and Motor Trend, but I don’t like Motor Trend any more now than I did when I was a teenager. They comp’d me with extended subscriptions to Motor Trend.
The quality of contemporary mass-market automotive journalism is actually a whole different subject.
I rather was talking about a broader issue of literacy, and tolerance for expository text, in advertising in general.
If you spend time looking at advertising prior to the current age (as I do), you’ll find that what we have now is virtually nothing more than a small number of words, and mostly images. We have become a Twitter-ized culture. I find that fascinating (and frankly, as a geezer, somewhat depressing). Historians 100 years from now – if there are such people – will find it rather difficult to interpret what our current age thought and felt.
I don’t owe advertisers any of my time or attention. If I want to know about their products, I’ll ask.
Very limited TV and radio? In the ‘60s? Not where I lived, anyway. People were even already getting the majority of theirs news from television newscasts by then. But people still read a lot more than they do now.
Surprised the (in)famous “Mother warned me” 1969 Dodge Charger ad wasn’t included. It wouldn’t have been so bad but for having the leggy female model standing in front of the car suggestingly pulling up her short, white dress with her left hand.
I see nothing wrong with those times and still live that way to the extent possible. The future has largely turned out to be a bust.
One family on the block had a green Cougar XR-7 and a Rover 2000. Guess what, the Cougar was hers and the Rover was his. Go figure.
Economic considerations in 1964:
VW marketing was really out of the box in the sixties. One of the most famous was the one with the caption of the sole word “Lemon”.
Chrysler had some good ones, too, like the one of a cartoon rendering of a Hemi engine with the caption “Beat it”.
The original Mad Men: Doyle Dane Bernbach. Wikipedia:
The agency’s first ads were for Ohrbach’s department store exemplifying a new “soft-sell” approach to advertising – with catchy slogans and witty humour contrasting the repetitive and hard-sell style in vogue until then. The new agency was initially successful in winning business for clients with small budgets. Their campaigns for Volkswagen throughout the 1950s and 1960s were said to have revolutionized advertising. Notable campaigns included the 1959 ‘Think Small’ series of Volkswagen advertisements, which was voted the No. 1 campaign of all time in Advertising Age’s 1999 ‘The Century of Advertising’.
Roader:
Quite honestly, when my wife (who didn’t grow up in the States) learned to drive at age 28, I chose a VW Super Beetle with the (semi) automatic transmission for her, on somewhat the same theory expressed in the ad. It was not an unwise decision.
Even today, decades of driving later, her grasp of velocity, closing rate, braking efficiency, approach angle, and the subtleties of various traffic signals and signs remain somewhat hazy. She has mastered acceleration quite well though.
I remember when VW’s semi-automatic was introduced. There was a television commercial which showed nothing but a hand on a shift lever, rowing back and forth between high and low ranges with a voice-over explaining how it worked, specifically, how there was no clutch pedal involved.
Adjusted for vehicle miles traveled, I think men and women have about the same accident rate. It used to be that teenage boys had a much higher accident rate than teenage girls, but I think even that has evened out over the past couple of decades as girls have taken on riskier behaviors like aggressive driving and driving drunk.
I blame Thelma & Louise.
thanks for downloading all these. a few unconnected thoughts: 1) i want a real cougar to pat and hear it purr and pat some more. 2) i still laugh at that conical steering wheel hub pad that ford did for 1-2 years to meet regulations …did ford ever mention it in ads? must have been tough to be the interior designer and have that foisted upon you! what other “obvious” kludges can we name? citroen ami 6 headlight position? that jeep pickup with the roof spacer? 3) since when does a bmw w semi trailing arm suspension NOT have camber changes? 4) rover p6 are one of my favorite “different looking cars”..they look like they were inflated 10psi and have very interesting front and rears 5) why did ford and chrysler seem to be slower to use rear anti roll bars… All things equal the addition or beefing up of a front sway bar will increase understeer. BTW I have increased the the diameter of the front sway bar and Added a rear bar to a 1987 Volkswagen golf and A 1984 ford CrownV. In both cases It was massively transformative..cutting down understeer and getting the chassis to make ups it mind instantly and getting the tires the message faster!
The Renault ad is the old “Fool me once…” saying epitomized. lol
The Renault ad was right about the car, wrong about the dealers. The R10 did fix everything that needed fixing on the R8 design. Two things needed fixing: the weak clutch cable linkage and the unsync’d first gear. They fixed both, and then the R10 was actually perfect.
But they did nothing about the total lack of dealers and parts, so the perfect car was irrelevant.
Well, maybe not perfect….but my Dad bit, he bought a new ’68 R10 after his ’59 Beetle was totalled.
You are right about the dealership, it is hard to completely avoid them. My current car (a ’00 Golf I bought new) had only a 2 year bumper-to-bumper warranty but I considered that a plus since our dealer here is so bad. The Renault dealer in our town (South Burlington, Vt.) was more like buying from a non-descript garage, though can’t fault them too much with a pretty small (population wise) town and not a very popular make.
My Dad kept the car through beginning of 1974, which was right before I got my learner’s permit (so I never got to drive it). We’d moved from Vermont to Virginia in the meanwhile, but the Renault was really only used as a commuter car by my Dad, so it had very low (maybe 22000) miles on it when he got rid of it, ironically due to the 1st fuel shortage. It got great gas mileage, but it was a standard, and my Mother (who just stopped driving this year) though she originally learned on a semi-automatic Chrysler, was never really comfortable with standard transmissions (she was a backup driver for my Uncle when the 2 of them went to Poland/Slovakia in 1998, weird things seem to happen to my Uncle on trips so I gave my Mother refresher lessons on my ’86 GTi in parking lot so she could be a little more comfortable should she need to drive it)….and my Dad wanted her to drive something that got better mileage than her ’73 Country Sedan with the 400/2bbl….which meant another small car, this time with an automatic.
Still, he did have issues with it even in 22000 miles…lost a clutch when driving home from a Washington Senator’s game (kind of a father/son outing, my Dad really didn’t follow baseball, Football was his preference). We lived 35 miles away, and he tried timing the lights so he’d not have to shift much. He also carried a battery charger in the (front) trunk; not sure if the car had 6v or 12v system, but of course it wasn’t driven much and maybe that’s why he kept it.
It had great visibility, but my Mother hated how it looked (like you couldn’t tell if it was going forward or backward). Seats were great (maybe that’s a French trait?). I think my Dad bought it because he started travelling to France around that time on company business; he really enjoyed the trips…he really wasn’t a car guy, would buy what I would consider impulsively (wake up and decide he wanted to buy a car and would have it bought by the time he went to sleep that night). Still the Renault wasn’t the worst car he ever bought (that would be an 84 Pontiac Sunbird also bought new that went through 2 engines in less than 80K miles despite being maintained per the book). Plus it had rear engine/rear drive which was good for traction up in Vermont before many FWD cars were around (Saabs were popular starting in the 60’s up there; my Dad later bought a new ’76 Subaru DL with FWD when he didn’t care for the Datsun F10, the Civic and Accord were expensive (ditto the Rabbit/Dasher) and he wasn’t likely to buy a Fiat 128 after my disasterous experience. Probably he should have just bought another Beetle, in the years before the watercooled VWs they weren’t perfect but really not many choices…maybe a Saab?
While I’m not surprised about the sexism and the tired old trope about women drivers (particularly in the VW ad), I am a bit surprised that the “bad women drivers” stereotype hung on as long as it did.
I can remember the insurance companies charging more to cover male drivers by the early ‘70s (and possibly even prior to then). But then again, attitudes often change at a slower pace than reality.
The “bad women drivers” trope is not without some statistical support
Here is a 2019 article regarding a study:
https://www.syracuse.com/news/2011/07/women_worse_drivers_more_crashes_than_men_less_driving.html
And it’s not a new phenomena; see page 31 of this 1990 study
https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/1007/83596.0001.001.pdf?sequence=2;analysis
Essentially raw numbers show more male accidents, but when adjusted for miles driven, women are somewhat worse than men.
However, mens’ aggregate behavior is riskier, and that may be a reason why men are much more represented in traffic fatalities. This suggests men have worse accidents than women.
I’d enjoy seeing a distribution curve, but I can’t find one.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/qvdpgv/people-think-women-are-worse-drivers-than-menstatistics-say-otherwise
The Cougar ad makes me smile, and think of my late mom. In 1967 she and my dad had been dating for two years and she was getting a little impatient. She decided that if he didn’t propose by X date, she was going to break up with him, move to San Francisco, and buy a Mercury Cougar. I loved the specificity of the Cougar. (She would have been trading in a 1965 Corvair…) Anyhow, luckily for me Dad (1966 Pontiac Catalina convertible) popped the question and San Francisco became their honeymoon destination instead.
“Man’s car” – ha!
PS: The VW winter road ad depicts my mom’s experience with her Corvair. On the snowiest Pittsburgh mornings she was usually the only one who actually got to the office by 9.
The live cougar shtick for Mercury was genius.
The MGB-GT was a really great looking iteration of the European style fastback coupe. Lucas electrics, variable build quality, and an uneven dealer/repair network doomed the thing. Still on my automotive bucket list.
The BMW was $2500. The BGT was $3100. Even if the other stuff were fixed, the BGT would lose that fight in a knockout.
The BMW traded on superiority in design and dynamic road performance. The MGB-GT traded on styling (the mechanicals were old school and not particularly capable). Two different marketing directions. The BMW was definitely more successful in its niche, but I think this might be an “apples and oranges” comparison.
They’re functionally similar products selling to exactly the same people.
These buyers also would consider a Mustang or a GTO–however briefly.
Unless a buyer happens to be locked into the MG name and the idea of a coupe that looks like a popular convertible, I think the styling is a toss up. The MG is pretty, the BMW is dynamic–you pays yer money, you takes yer choice. The novelty of the BMW styling is a bonus while the MG has been around for a few years.
But the $600 difference would buy you a new Honda CB160, too.
I always thought the original Cougar was quite appealing to women.
Hence the ad. They were afraid of their pretty kitty being pigeon-holed.
Chevrolet spelling out the entire engine warranty must be unique. The angle of the Camaro pic is not flattering.
^This. I was actually a little surprised to find the big “Mercury, The Man’s Car” caption when scrolling down to the end of the ad. It’s also somewhat telling that they used the Mercury-brand, and not ‘Cougar’ in the text. If you just look at the photos, the stylish interior shots quite look like something that women would like. Particularly noteworthy is the feminine-looking cougar peering into the interior. Clearly, the agency wanted to cover all their bases. In fact, I can easily envision DeLorean seeing this ad and it being the inspiration for the smaller, intermediate-sized Grand Prix.
Conversely, with Bunkie Knudson at Ford, could he have been the reason the Cougar (and Ford’s specialty coupes, as a whole) got away from the PLC image and, instead, clung to the performance angle? Something like that could have easily rubbed Hank the Deuce the wrong way and would have been a big reason Bunkie was cashiered in short order.
IOW, imagine if Knudson hadn’t switched to Ford. The Cougar might have continued with its PLC direction much sooner and given Ford something of a coup for an early, smaller, ponycar PLC (which is exactly what HFII had envisioned the Mustang to be as a ‘small Thunderbird’). Neither of the Cougar’s main competitors’ brands, Dodge (Challenger) or Pontiac (Firebird), had the same luxury caché as a Mercury.
It’s worth noting that it wasn’t long after Bunkie left before the Cougar was positioned in exactly that manner when the Mustang dropped down to the Pinto chassis and the Cougar was moved up to the intermediate class in 1974.
I remember most of these, Paul, and it’s fun to see them at a half-century’s hindsight. I’m still not certain what percentage of media/advertising *reflects* public attitudes, and what portion *reflects* it, but they’re all certainly “of their time.”
I don’t, however, remember the Renault mea culpa—interesting!
It is fine to appeal to a gender when it matters. It is never fine to denigrate a gender. So, I have no problems being told that as a man, I’d like this or that product.
What is unique about the Mercury ad is that today, we rarely see masculinity as a selling point. We see femininity as a selling point instead. Perhaps in another 50 years, they’ll finally get a balance celebrating both.
More like sexiest, am I right guys?
The Shelby ad is revealing about the direction of the 1967 cars as vintage reviewed a few weeks ago, where the 65 and to slightly lesser extent the 66 Shelby Mustangs were brawny hardcore manly man machines the 67s softened up, both in less emphasized performance and in extra luxury appointments. To their credit though, the ratcheting 3 point seatbelts belts were pretty ahead of their time. As were the side markers but those didn’t seem to make it onto many production models.
Having started my advertising career as a copywriter, these ads remind me of why I moved on to strategy – nobody writes actual ad copy anymore. The Mercedes ads were done by Ogilvy back then, and you can see David’s love of long copy in full force. Even DDB gave you a well-written copy block to build on their clever headlines.
I’d heard about the Renault apology ads but this is the first time I’ve seen one. Ouch.
My 1970 Toyota Corona Mark II did 110mph (as proven by police radar) and still cost less than a BMW 2002, and with higher build quality.
By the time the 2002 came along, it was being sold explicitly as a high performance car and as an alternative to traditional sports cars.
A Duster 340 also was faster and cheaper than a 2002, but I don’t think buyers considered them interchangeable.
The Toyota might be more reliable and durable in long term ownership, and less expensive to repair, but the visible materials and build quality of the BMW are better–which it should be, at the price.
Wouldn`t it be a hoot to have seen ads for the ‘new’ VW Beetle being billed as ‘The Woman`s Car’??