Car Commercials, the good, the bad, and the annoying!

iluvmysephia1

That Outlander looks choice, toomanyfumes, in the video. Probably not giving you many problems, huh?

fushigi

Mine is that body style but in red (black leather interior).

Just passed 52K miles Saturday. Weather was rain then sleet then snow then hail then sunny all with winds of 20+ MPH with 50 MPH gusts.

toomanyfumes

Yup, same weather up here. (I'm about 90 miles North of Chicago. ) I remember when that body style came out in 2007, seeing the commercials and thinking it looked pretty sharp. We like to think we aren't influenced by advertising, but those commercials made me look at a lesser known brand like Mitsubishi. Yeah, iluv, it's been trouble free in 95k other than tie-rod ends. My daughter doesn't keep it nearly as clean as my wife did, it's gonna get a good cleaning and detail this spring.

iluvmysephia1

My daughter doesn't keep it nearly as clean as my wife did, it's gonna get a good cleaning and detail this spring.

Yup - I have all good intention of doing the above this weekend on our 2011 Kia Soul 5-speed. It's not really that dirty and will just clean right up.

stever

I just damp mopped the garage floor yet again; never was a neat freak but that epoxy just shines up so nice. Next house, I may just do every floor like it.

Too bad we live on a dirt road and the van keeps tracking it in. May just have to start parking it outside.

iluvmysephia1

That epoxy sounds great, it really does, stever. I did the new rental house's lawnmowing over the weekend. The Troy-Built worked great - there was only a few areas with some 4-6" weeds and grass to cut, but the ball is now rolling.

Exercise is good.

jpp75

PF_Flyer said:

When I was getting my first new car, I had a '73 Vega that had ZERO trade in value. It ran, but I was going to scrap it. Someone I worked with was in need of transportation and offered me $25 for it.

I assume they lived through owning it

Ha, I'm sure they did......but probably wished they hadn't.

slorenzen

stever said:

I just damp mopped the garage floor yet again; never was a neat freak but that epoxy just shines up so nice. Next house, I may just do every floor like it.

Too bad we live on a dirt road and the van keeps tracking it in. May just have to start parking it outside.

Yeah, the rats gotta eat too...

berri

I'm sure that epoxy on concrete is nice in your dry climate. But for anyone in a damp climate, you may want to spot check it before applying it. While better on concrete than paint, that epoxy application can sometimes be a problem over time in wetter climates or the Midwest. We've had several neighbors that applied it in the Midwest and they all to reapply it every year or two. But it does look nice when it's fresh.

stever

I would have broken my neck on this floor back in the UP.

The prior owners had it professionally done and my guess is the outfit blasted the floor first with BBs or something first. Gonna miss it if we get an offer on the house (had another showing this afternoon).

berri

Winter - too true!

iluvmysephia1

Where are you guys moving next, stever? One of those offers might just stick.

stever

Just closer to town. Probably.

No offers yet, just a second walk-through today, three months after the first one. But two hot leads from a simple "make me sell" blurb on Zillow is pretty good (had two or three realtors email wanting a listing, but we aren't actively putting it on the market).

We wanna be closer to town, where the TV reception is better so the commercials will come in more clearly (better net bandwidth would be nice....).

iluvmysephia1

Closer to Mesilla Mall, perhaps? And/or NMSU.

stever

Living in/near Mesilla would be great, very walkable/bikeable. The college not so much. Downtown is kind of funky but that's possible too.

Mr_Shiftright

Oh, no, don't ever live too too close to a college.

PF_Flyer

Too late, I've been living too close to a college since 1974! Speaking of the 70's, just saw a movie I hadn't seen since it was first out in 1976, The Man Who Fell To Earth. Weird flick with David Bowie, Buck Henry, Rip Torn, but in one scene there was a car commercial on a TV, and sure enough, YouTube comes through. Sort of presages "hypermiling"


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XUKOUbp_PA

iluvmysephia1

You saw it, PF, excellent. I watched it on one of our DirecTV movie channels while we were in Moses Lake, WA, would've been about a year ago. Strange movie, for sure. Liked the NM setting, around Artesia, NM, for the scenes where David was living in the hotel.

PF_Flyer

iluvmysephia1 said:

You saw it, PF, excellent. I watched it on one of our DirecTV movie channels while we were in Moses Lake, WA, would've been about a year ago. Strange movie, for sure. Liked the NM setting, around Artesia, NM, for the scenes where David was living in the hotel.

What's odd about the first time I saw it was that it wasn't in a theater, but in my dorm area commons in 1976. That's the year it came out, so maybe there was a promotional push of the film on college campuses. But I hadn't seen it anywhere in the 40 years since, until yesterday

iluvmysephia1

What's odd about the first time I saw it was that it wasn't in a theater, but in my dorm area commons in 1976. That's the year it came out, so maybe there was a promotional push of the film on college campuses. But I hadn't seen it anywhere in the 40 years since, until yesterday.

Yeah, it's actually kind of engaging once you get in to it a bit. Like a lot of movies are. Way, way out there but consider the actor.

stever

This one showed up in my warranty news feed.

Introducing the Mercedes AA class, a luxury car powered entirely by batteries. (NBC)

fintail

SNL still knows how to do good commercial parodies.

I am sure I have posted this before, this is one of my all time faves - when I was a kid, this was the height of hilarity. I remember we'd even sing the theme song:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/273955

Mr_Shiftright

I think Steve had an Adobe, but one day he parked it in Santa Fe, and when he got back, someone had turned it into an art gallery.

stever

I did have one of those briefly but Toonces stole it and drove it into the arroyo. Not an issue ordinarily but it had rained in the mountains the evening before and there was still a trickle of water in the ditch.

Fortunately the Bass-O-Matic didn't get a scratch on it.

Mr_Shiftright

Hmmm...HMMM...that's good fish!

kyfdx

You can tell who us old guys are.... the ones that reference the '70s seasons..

Mr_Shiftright

Yeah, ok, but SNL was funny back then.

tmart

It hasn't been funny for several years, unfortunately.

berri

...Maybe more like a decade or more!

Mr_Shiftright

Like a friend who was very successful in the advertising industry told me: "For a creative person, the wastebasket is your best friend".

fintail

Glorified blog pretending to be credible Jalopnik posts a good takedown of the latest dopey Chevy ad - will this series ever stop?

Mr_Shiftright

Oh I don't know. A quick spin around Facebook seems to suggest that this ad is a fairly accurate representation of American culture at the moment. Think of it as charades for the brain dead.

fintail

I suppose even the average reader here isn't who they are targeting. To paraphrase an old saying: think about how dumb the average person is - half of the country is dumber.

This "real people" (maybe real as in not SAG members, but these people were not randomly picked off the street) campaign is awful. Whether it be the power tool one or the debaged Malibu being mistaken for a BMW/Audi/Lexus, it's loathsome. Maybe in good company with most Nissan ads over the past decade, and sappy Subaru ads.

berri

I think the average viewer probably views those supposed comparisons as bull....

Mr_Shiftright

I don't think it's EVER a good idea to mention your competition by name in advertising. You might have to eat crow.

fintail

People still talk about this memorable campaign 40 years later:

roadburner

I remember a few Ford and Chrysler campaigns in the '80s that compared their cars to BMWs. And, like the Granada campaign, 30-40 years on, which cars are remembered as classics? A Granada with a fancy "Euro" trim package?

Mr_Shiftright

Well you could tell the difference once you opened the door and closed it. Ka-CHUNK versus THWANG!

berri

Well guys, they talk about those ad's while laughing!

sda

A friend of mine in high school had a 76 Granada with the 250 six. It seemed to be a nice car at the time, however it had no power, and you had to saw at the wheel to keep it in the lane. True to Fords at the time, it was quiet, soft riding and had a cold a/c. He wrecked it when he entered a curve too quickly and plowed some trees. Did I mention poor handling?? No injuries, Granada totaled.

ab348

Well, the Granada was (I believe) the last variant of the old Falcon/Maverick/original Mustang platform to be produced by Ford. So it had the typical Ford slow, numb power steering, wallowy handling, terminal understeer, and poor chassis dynamics that most of those vehicles had back then. The "saw at the wheel to keep it in the lane" comment above was exactly true of our Maverick as well - any speed over 50-55mph felt decidedly unstable.

berri

I remember having several first gen Granada/Monarch rentals and recall them being overly firm and stiff to drive. Not very comfortable at all. Never experienced the latter models though.

toomanyfumes

A friend of mine had a low mileage Granada in the early 90's. I remembered the Mercedes comparison ads, he looked them up in the library or somewhere. (Pre-Internet.) We always called it the Mercedes after that, it was a burgundy two-door in really nice shape, totalled when someone turned in front of him. He actually got a decent settlement after fighting with the insurance company, he had spent a lot on repairs.

ab348

This commercial is running in Canada for the Hyundai Tucson - not sure if it also airing in the US. The music is different and I quite like it!

https://youtu.be/oVhgPiEG_LM

Mr_Shiftright

Are the lyrics "one day baby we'll be old" ??

Anyway, backflipping off a cliff is not recommended.

fintail

Looks like Hyundai is seeking market share from Subaru, aiming for how Seattle area Subaru drivers see themselves.

ab348

Mr_Shiftright said:

Are the lyrics "one day baby we'll be old" ??

Anyway, backflipping off a cliff is not recommended.

Ah, you're just old (like me)!

The lyrics are as you state. The complexity is astounding. I like the song because it doesn't sound like anything I ever heard before. And it's not Pomplamoose!

stever

Very impressive, er, crossover. Except for the stalling part.

stickguy

finally, another good commercial. The GTI one with the guy driving in a dream, and the dog next to him with his head out the window in the dream, and at the end he is puffing out his cheeks in front of a fan.

helps that I am a sucker for any commercial with a dog in it!

sda

I like the commercial that shows the owner coming back from a tiring trip and happily reunited with his Mazda 6 and Patsy Cline singing 'Back in Baby's Arms'. Very clever and tastefully done.