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The best ads tell a story , and this one for the mid-90s Citroën XM Pallas certainly does that. In fact, it's more of an informercial than an regular car ad, with inspiring music right out of an Early Dot-Com Era shareholder's meeting. Best as we can tell, the Citroën driver here is bringing a box containing a critical mass of our favorite off-brand fissionable material, Uranium 233 (cast in a ring shape, of course, to avoid troublesome criticality events in the back seat) to the local warlord's headquarters in a Damnation Alley -esque post-disaster world.
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newVideoPlayer("/91_Chrysler_Colt_Quebec_494.flv", 506, 423,""); We're pretty sure that the woman driving the '87 Sundance up the Stade Olympique in Montreal is not Céline Dion- though all the YouTubers swear it's her- but this ad for the '91 Dodge Colt does appear to feature Quebec's most famous daughter. First she dances with some scurrilous-looking gents, then leaves a swath of destruction behind her rebadged Mitsubishi, which is powerful enough to melt parking meters .
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newVideoPlayer("/JDM_Supra_476.flv", 506, 423,""); The empty eyes… the evil smile… what does that satanic kid have to do with the Supra? And why is Toyota apparently so proud that the new Supra is about 15 times the size of the 2000GT?
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newVideoPlayer("/Puegeot_205_UK_476.flv", 506, 423,""); You know what feels just like being a hot-rodder American tooling around New Mexico in your chopped pickup truck and then stopping at a redneck diner for a burger? Driving a Peugeot to some crypto-50s-American diner in Newcastle. Bonus points for the rhinestone Peugeot 205 leather jacket!
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newVideoPlayer("/BMW_E39_494.flv", 506, 423,""); British car shoppers in the late 1990s, perhaps not predicting the all-encompassing speed-camera network that would one day render their island unsuitable for M5-grade fast driving, probably yearned for the new factory-hot-rod BMW after seeing this ad. But… don't jet cars go a couple hundred MPH faster than a piston machine?
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newVideoPlayer("/98Peugeot106_494.flv", 506, 423,""); In keeping with the suspend-your-disbelief theme of 90s Peugeots in the American West , we now see a Spaniard's 106 rolling up to a stoplight in what appears to be the neutron-enhanced town of Upshot Knothole, Nevada. Naturally, there's some tattooed redneck in a tunnel-rammed truck representing the USA, sort of reminiscent of Lee Ving's character, Missoula, in Dudes , and it goes without saying that he ain't gonna let no damn frogmobile-driving' Yurpean eyeball his woman. You can see where this is going, right?
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newVideoPlayer("/90_Dodge_Shadow_Quebec_494.flv", 506, 423,""); Imagine a world where Detroit cars dominate, yet French is the language! Yes, Quebec in 1990 was such a place, and Chrysler knew those wacky Habitants wouldn't be able to resist the allure of the Dodge Shadow… provided, of course, that local girl Céline Dion- or a lookalike- performed a very strange baby-seat-summoning dance ritual in their ads.
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newVideoPlayer("/90s_Ford_UK_476.flv", 506, 423,""); Apparently everyone in Britain has seen this ad thousands of times, thanks to the original lyrics by Queen guitarist and astrophysicist Dr. Brian May , but we didn't hear about it until tipsters Stephen and Franzouse pulled our coats. Unlike Jim Morrison, who refused to let The General make a "Come on Buick, Light my fire" ad, Dr. May wasn't such a stick-in-the-mud about repurposing his compositions. You can see how Ford's torture testing and racing hoonage led straight to such world-beating machines as the Orion and Sierra.
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newVideoPlayer("/1990_Hino_JDM_DianeLane_494.flv", 506, 423,""); Paul Newman really did race Nissans and had a longstanding relationship with the company. But how about Diane Lane , star of Ladies And Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains ? In a real test of the whole concept of suspension-of-disbelief, we see Ms. Lane driving a Mondrian-style Hino Ranger delivery truck through a Japanese neighborhood populated by refugees from the suburbs of Des Moines. Was there a rush on Hinos after this ad came out?
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newVideoPlayer("/90_Peugeot_205_476.flv", 506, 423,""); What's the ticket to success when marketing the aging Peugeot 205 ? Why, take an 8-year-old pop song and make a special edition of your car named after the song, that's what! Such was the idea behind the '90 205 Look, and this Italian-market ad was no doubt instrumental in moving literally dozens of them off the showroom floors.
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newVideoPlayer("/90_Subaru_Legacy_JDM_476.flv", 506, 423,""); Here's a pair of Japanese-market ads for the same car, the first-gen Subaru Legacy . First we have an ad packed with screaming engines and spraying champagne, with Subaru doing some heavy boasting about three Legacies driving a collective 100,000 kilometers in 19 days at the FIA track in Arizona and competing in the '90 WRC. But what about car buyers who shudder in horror at the idea of driving fast? For them, we have an ad featuring a tear-drenched singer sobbing out a Rod Stewart song, as a Legacy cruises placidly past what appear to be settling ponds at a uranium mine.
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newVideoPlayer("/94_Chevy_Eurosport_Mx.flv", 506, 423,""); What we have here in this Mexican ad appears to be an Olds Cutlass Ciera with a wing and "Eurosport" badging. Apparently El General felt that Mexican car buyers associated the Oldsmobile name with mystery and adventure, and why wouldn't they? Thanks to Uncle Bo for the tip!
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newVideoPlayer("/95_Peugeot_504_Argentina_476.flv", 506, 423,""); You could buy a Renault-branded '65 Rambler American in Argentina well into the 1980s, which was pretty cool (though not as cool as the Nigerians building them until 2005, of course). But imagine buying a brand-new Peugeot 504 all the way until the end of the 20th century; better still, imagine dirt-road 504 hoonage with a wild-eyed nun behind the wheel! We're pretty sure the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional would have disapproved of this ad.
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As we predicted, the voting in last week's Top Ten Best Car Ads Of The 1980s poll was a bit more competitive than that in the Ricardo Montalban-dominated Top Ten Best Car Ads Of The 1970s. The Black Gold 280ZX made a strong showing, but the Cocaine Factory Duster takes the prize, with 32% of the votes. Now we're moving into the decade of Operation Desert Storm, grunge, and Pets.com, which brings up the question: is it possible to feel truly nostalgic about the decade right before the current one? Make the jump, cast your vote! 10: 1991 Ford Escort GT Have you got a hunger for power? The front-wheel-drive power to go with an incredibly plasticky grille? If so, the '91 Escort GT, with its 127-horse Mazda engine, was the car to drive as you watched gas prices soar during the turmoil of Gulf War I. 9: 1992 Toyota Starlet Apparently all the weirdness that the relentlessly conservative suits at Toyota expunged from their vehicles got forced into their home-market ads, judging by this...
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newVideoPlayer("/VW_Sychro_SouthAfrica_476.flv", 506, 423,""); We caused some disgruntlement among VW Transporter fanatics aficionados when we opined that perhaps the little rear-engined vans were on the sluggish side. Today we're going to regruntle our Type 2-loving friends by sharing this VW ad that demonstrates- in fact, encourages - off-road hoonage of the sort you'd normally associate with a Warlord Edition 4x4 Hilux. In South Africa, you could get a four-wheel-drive, Audi-5-banger-powered VW Transporter Syncro until 2002. Yes, 2002!
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