Every weekend, we look back at car ads from the past and rediscover what it's taken to sell cars over time.
Sometimes they're sexist, insensitive, outright lies, or Tina Turner endorsing a Plymouth. Viewed separately, they're a reminder of how far we've come. But have we really come that far?
International Business Times compiled a video of clips from car ads from the 1950s to today (2012, actually) and it just shows the same old tricks being used to get you into the driver's seat of a brand new whatever.
Sure, there were more original songs in the past (how long did they take to write that catchy song, Taurus for Us!) and the days of Lee Iacocca bashing the imports are gone. But promoting features like power steering to take all the effort out of driving are still here. Chevy used lots of sentence fragments to sell the '64 Corvair. Sentence fragments popular. Words thrown around. Buyers like.
If you have three-or-so minutes, take a look at the video and see if you notice the similarities between ads from history. Are we hitting a turning point in car commercials or still basically coasting?
[Thanks to Alex for the tip!]
This Video Shows How Little Car Ads Have Changed Over The Decades