Most of us of a certain age have a relationship with car billboards. To be on the street, cruising, or worse, stuck in traffic, with your tips at the wheel, looking at some model you desire lovingly displayed up on a billboard. I’m pretty sure we can recall the sensation.
The billboard is, of course, a byproduct of our market-driven society. As we know them, the 24-sheet billboard was the result of technology first shown at the Paris Exposition of 1889. It then appeared at the World Columbian Expo of Chicago in 1893 and was quickly adopted for circuses, traveling shows, and movies. With the advent of automobile and highway systems, cars and billboards became inevitably intertwined.
Here is a short series of billboards showcasing that long-standing relationship. From standard print-outs, to elaborate cutouts with neon glows, there’s a good variety of displays in here.
When we see these ads, then we realize that we have missed them. The Chevrolet billboard touting performance is funny because it is above what appears to be a truck repair place. I can see that old Dodge zooming along!
Sure like that “Cougar”!
Apparently the billboard wasn’t enough to save DeSoto.
Cleaver how they up sell some by making the car itself slightly larger than the bill board .
-Nate
As a little kid, when billboards for cars were still around, I never felt they were effective advertising. After the era of the elaborate custom billboards of the ’50s and ’60s, with cutouts, special lighting, and 3d effects. Later more mundane billboards, never caught my attention for long, as they were so static compared to more exciting TV ads. They’d occasionally catch my eye, if there was a special offer, or unique package. Otherwise, they rarely drew me to look at them.
And brochures and magazines, were chock full of photos, content, and data. Easy to see why these faded away, decades ago.
Found this recently- was displayed on the showroom wall of my family’s dealership-9.5’x3′- sort of an inside billboard
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The lady in the Corvair ad is so excited about the car, she is aiming the garden hose inside the garage.
Great shots.
Looks more to me like she’s aiming it at the guy in the blue shirt.
It seems like 90% of the new electric billboards are pushing pot shops nowadays!
or religion.
The Cougar sign is missing the mountain lion, just sayin’.
Chevy had the biggest billboard of all in the ’30s, a 23-story skyscraper with programmed digital displays.
https://archive.org/details/Behindth1935
Interesting the Plymouth GTX is pictured with those homely looking wheel covers, you would think on a billboard they would show the best available wheels, the Magnum 500s, as usually seen in the magazine ads or brochures.
On Lombard St, in San Francisco, US 101 and the main route into The City, on a building near Divisadero St.: a billboard showing the front of the car, and in prominent lettering, “Beautiful new 1964 Studebaker.”
Of all the car billboards, that is the one Ui remember best.
I love the dynamism and artistry that went into each of these billboards. I’m sold on all of them. I especially love the angle / perspective on that Plymouth GTX. *Chef’s kiss*
Who remembers the one on the “PA turnpike”,for “Ted McWilliams Motor City”? The “VW beetle” body bursting out from the signboard. At night, the headlights Illuminated.