Night road - when speed was a selling point
At a time when Renault, after Volvo, decides to restrict its cars to 180 km/h, let's change the era of a few ads which, rather than concealing the performance of the cars, put them forward.Your...
04/03/2022
At a time when Renault, after Volvo, decides to restrict its cars to 180km/h, let's change the era of a few ads which, rather than concealing the performance of the cars, put them forward.
Your pulse quickens, your heart beats harder… In 1984, the launch campaign for the Golf GTI 2 did not beat around the bush: speed is emotion.Please hide this counter that I cannot see. Today, any reference in advertising to a car's performance, top speed or acceleration capabilities would immediately condemn its manufacturer to the pillory. And no advertiser risks it anymore. It is also a paradox: at a time when cars have never been so efficient, the performance in question has never been overlooked so much. But it has not always been so. Back on some "advertisements" from the time before, among hundreds of others.
In Capri, speed is not overThere was a time when speed was a guarantee of quality, even if it meant taking some liberties with reality. Thus, the Ford Capri maintains the ambiguity, in this 1973 ad. Is it the one that reaches 240 km/h at Le Mans, or its very very modified version? It's obviously not the standard Capri, but you never know.
Move over when you see my BMWAt the very beginning of the 1970s, aggressive driving was not a problem. It is even claimed on board a BMW. And when a grille decked out with a bean stuck to the train of a car that was driving too slowly, its quiet driver had only to push himself, or also afford a BM.
Alfa, a car for guysA real man drives an Alfa Romeo. This is obvious in those years. mastering the machine, pushing it to its limits cannot be the responsibility of a woman. But it's also about keeping your feet on the ground, affording a car at a reasonable price and maintenance that is no less so. There again, these are considerations of a boy, since he is not only more athletic than a girl, but also less spendthrift, it is well known.
Who of our striatum?The 70s and 80s are long gone. Today, car ads carefully avoid any reference to speed. aggressiveness is banned, performance is excluded, and there is only question of the frugality of the engines and the conviviality of the interiors. But what about our striatum? This nervous structure located in our brain pushes us since the time of the caves to compete with others, to win, and to reproduce ourselves. Today, it tends to be stifled by a lid of civilization. Some people think that's a shame. To the latter, we will simply remind two figures: in 1972, there were 18,000 deaths on French roads. In 2019, France recorded 3,239 deaths.
With all our thanks to Nicolas Bergon and the auto-pub.net site which has found and classified hundreds of automobile ads.