How does one learn to write well? I’m still working on that, but it helps to have spent one’s formative years reading the classics, as in classic car ads. The early-mid sixties were a golden era for ad copywriters, and none was better than Cambell-Ewald, Chevrolet’s agency. David E. Davis wrote for them, as well as others. This one may not be among the very best, but it’s typical for the time: B&W picture; if the text doesn’t engage one, it was wasted. Not on me.
I love old ads like these. After reading it I’ve been trying to figure out who would have been best suited to put a voice to the copy. It almost feels British. Roger Moore? Malcom McDowell? Maybe Michael Caine?
I don’t think it sounds that british, Sean….. it just so happens that our language used to be richer years ago—now it reflects the general ignorance about, IME.
Good point, I forgot what it was like before people started speaking in TXT format.. 😀
Will Lyman should be voicing this (and if you don’t know who he is, listen to the opening of any PBS “Frontline”).
(Edit: Or actually, many a recent BMW ad, for that matter.)
YES! Him or Edward Herrmann from the 90s Dodge TV ads.
Mr. Lyman has an incredible voice, good call.
I never thought to equate the Corvette as a foul-weather car until now.
In one of the street-scene series on the Hemmings blog there’s a shot showing a then-nearly-new Corvette Stingray in Long Beach, Washington, with a trailer hitch. Generally, any western Washington or Oregon Corvette is quite likely to be driven in the rain unless it’s a total garage queen.
I was 11 in ’63 and this car was amazing to me at the time. Many older cars just look funny to me now, but not this one.
I write and produce TV/Radio ads in my home studio…(nothing that holds a candle to what we see above!)…speaking from experience, if I can gain some inspiration from the subject, it’s much easier to write compelling copy.
I’m sure for David E. Davis and his co-workers at Campbell-Ewald, finding inspiration to write about Corvette was nooo problem.
From what I understand, Davis had the Corvette account, and claimed (or others did for him) authorship of that and some other ads.
That sticks to mind, as I was late to learn of David E.’s death, and took the time to track back and read the media buzz.
Here and at TTAC, I was in a minority in my admiration of Davis – aside from the reality of the buff books as reader-paid advertising, David E. truly knew how to turn a phrase. He was wrong as often as he was right – his 1979 new car introduction comes to mind – but he could write interestingly, and resisted the urge to become (as many writers on the C&D staff) a mindless cheerleader.
One favorite, of that article – for some reason I memorized it without effort – it sticks to mind for excellent conversational vernacular, dry wit, pithy observations – and for the author being completely, totally wrong:
History will record that the firing of Lee Iacocca, like the firing of dozens of others in Ford’s 75-year-history, was a non-event that made relatively little difference to anyone except the guy who got fired and some of his more visible lieutenants. From this corner, Iacocca always resembled a ruthless non-com suddenly promoted to Generalissimo – he drove men better than he led them. Now Detroit’s unemployment lines will fill up with guys in iridescent Alumicron suits and $50 Dry Look hairdos…
Wow. How can someone be literate, entertaining, informed, caustic and SO VERY WRONG, all at the same time?
I know; I know; it’s a long way off topic from Corvette advertising copy. But…the ads; the man; the mind; the pen. How fortuitous that a former gas-pump jockey and dirt-track racer should stumble into automotive writing…
I remember that passage, too (back in the days when I eagerly awaited each new issue of Car and Driver, particularly the new-car issue).
In all fairness to Mr. Davis, Iacocca appeared to be past his prime when he was fired. The original Mustang was 14 years ago by July 1978, and Ford’s 1978 line-up was hardly inspiring. Iacocca was an enthusiastic proponent of turning every Ford into a miniature Lincoln Continental sedan or Mark V. Ford had attempted to counter GM’s downsized full-size cars with a rebodied Torino and ads touting “road-hugging weight.”
The Pinto story had…exploded…earlier in the year. (Some say that the Pinto episode was the final straw regarding Henry Ford II’s tolerance of Iacocca.)
Granted, Iacocca wasn’t entirely responsible for Ford’s slide in the late 1970s. Henry Ford II and Ed Lundy were reluctant to match GM’s downsizing effort. By the fall of 1978, GM’s full-size and intermediate cars had been shrunk, and were huge hits. The downsized E-bodies (Eldorado, Riviera and Toronado) were scheduled to debut that fall, and they would be huge hits as well. But Henry Ford II liked big cars, and he didn’t like spending large amounts of company money. Ford quality was also at a low point in the late 1970s, thanks to aggressive bean counters cutting corners in every way possible.
Under these circumstances, it’s not surprising that a fair amount of the luster had worn off Iacocca’s image by the summer of 1978. At that point, we didn’t know what he would achieve at Chrysler. Heck, Iacocca probably didn’t know, either. He admitted that if he had known how desperate the situation at Chrysler was, he never would have taken the job.
Iacocca’s firing also probably saved Ford, as Iacocca had simply grown too complacent at Ford, and the company needed new blood and some radical changes to survive the severe recession of 1980-82. I doubt that Iacocca, for example, would have approved the aero-look for the 1983 Thunderbird and Cougar. And he tended to give lip service to the need for improved quality and reliability (Chrysler hardly shone in these areas under Iacocca).
Davis’ assessment of Iacocca actually went against the grain of opinion in both the popular and business press at that time, so I give him credit for having the guts to put it out there for all to read.
Well said. The seventies were a terrible decade for Ford, which resulted in a brush with bankruptcy. You’re absolutely right: I cannot imagine Iacocca doing what had to be done to basically re-invent Ford in the eighties.
Certainly Lee brought some needed leadership to Chrysler, but let’s face it: the K-car was already developed, and he spent the next ten years spinning variations of it, most of them trying to look like little Lincolns.
I don’t disagree with any of that. Iacocca was a mixed blessing in both the places he worked.
He used to say that the two best things to happen to Ford, was when Robert McNamara was hired; and when McNamara resigned. The same could be said of Lido – both at Ford and at Chrysler.
There’s no real question he had something of a dearth of imagination – but I don’t think Hank the Deuce cared much about cars or the car business by 1978. I think it was one-hundred-percent vanity…one other comment David E. made in that same article, was in regards to Henry Ford’s “Kill ’em off when they get too big” approach to career development.
Lido inspired confidence in Chrysler and Chrysler’s staying power. And he DID understand systems; and he knew that the bureaucracy in Chrysler was like the cobwebs in a bookkeeper’s mind. No matter the cars, the Lincolnized Ks…he did clean up the operation of the joint.
And as for David E. Davis…I don’t criticize him for what he said at the time. His observations were defensible and, to some extent, insightful – it’s just that reality, as it played out, had a little joke and made his opinions the punch line.
He was a great automotive writer. Narcissism? Perhaps…with a busy life and limited budget, with reality closing in, I ceased to have times for buff-books and dream catalogs. So when Davis jumped ship and founded Automobile I lost track.
But…self-absorption is a reasonable prerogative of the successful, much-admired elderly.
There is no question that both Iacocca and Davis were highly talented, very intelligent and great at what they did.
There is also no question that both had huge egos, and needed someone – or at least a committee – to serve as a check on their tendency to turn their respective occupations into a pulpit to promote themselves. Both men are prime examples of talented individuals who simply didn’t know when to retire.
Davis was obviously highly talented. His narcissism did increasingly become ever more tedious. My little tribute: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/aficionados-are-made-not-born-a-david-e-davis-memorial/
I liked the VW copy best. Pure advertising poetry. To my taste the Corvette ads were okay but not in the same class.
The adds these days prefer to tout “iPod connectivity”. Way back when, they touted the cars’ actual strengths!
I wish I could write half as well as Mr. Davis.