Tyres have changed a lot, so has the advertisement

Tyres are one of the products that have changed dramatically during the development of the automobile. So has advertisement for tyres. Here's one from 1949, most people probably don't even remember the brand "India". It probably disappeared a long time ago. Interestingly though some of the very early tyre makers such as Michelin and Dunlop, having influenced the development quite significantly from the beginning, are still here and still successful. And mind, it's the square of four postcards that connect your car to the street, so maybe picking the right tyres should be as much an important consideration as picking the car as such.

Tucker - the untold stories

Remember the movie "Tucker"? It's about a visionary man reinventing the car and coming up with something quite revolutionary considering the year 1948. The story behind the movie actually is quite true. Tucker existed and the (prototype) cars as well. Not only was these car more aerodynamically shaped than almost anything else, it also had a few engineering ideas incorporated that made it special, i.e. a small helicopter engine taking much less space in the back than the usual 6 or 8 cylinder engines and leaving a lot of boot space in the front. But the car had also a few problems, including not being able to reverse. And the development was funded by people putting a deposit. And these people, and there were some even in Switzerland, never got their car, but the deposit of course had gone. The illustration here is an actual ad for the car in a car catalogue in 1948. It really looked good!

Advertising the BMW 507

As you probably have found out, I really love old car ads. Here's one showcasing the BMW 507. It was BMW's attempt to compete with the mighty Mercedes 300 SL and it actually had a magnificent 8 cylinder engine and the gorgeous design of Goertz. But it didn't sell well in the 50ies and disappeared after only few cars produced. I know of people having been able to buy one for less than 40k Euro and selling it for ten time as much a number of years later.

New Corvette commercial - tradition, engineering and performance

We don't have such commercials, too bad. But I love it, as I actually do admire the car as such.

Picture of the Week: Women and Cars in advertisement

Here's an example showing that in the second half of the 20iest century a combination of women and cars was key in automobile advertisement. The ad shown here is for GM cars, displaying a Pontiac, an Oldsmobile, an Opel Kapitän and an Opel Rekord. The ad was published in 1957 in Switzerland, when GM cars were actually assembled locally in Bienne and proudly showed "assembled in Switzerland" on a sticker. They woman in the picture at least seems to enjoy driving a GM car.

How advertisement for cars has changed during the years

Things have changed, a lot. Comparing car advertisement in the sixties with today you can recognize a couple of significant differences. Text and explanations were much more important 40 years ago then today. You can find car ads from the sixties that barely used pictures but had long texts in small print to explain specific features or advantages. Today, this barely exists anymore. Today's car ads come with large and well done pictures (note, that the Mercedes from 1966 in the upper ad isn't even in focus!) and very little text and description. This makes a lot of sense, as anyway cars do not really differentiate on the technology and feature level anymore. When you read car comparison tests today the differences between the cars in the field are really small, be it performance, size or any other parameter. Equipment of cars is coming in quite standard as well, every car has ABS, ESP, electric windows, air condition and stereo, no big inventions need to be explained. The biggest difference is probably the price and there's not too much to say about this in an ad. And of course the car design is an important buying factor even if we think that all modern cars look alike.

Unrelated - how unique is the country you will visit during your holidays?

I spent a day in London this week. And of course I used the Tube. There's a lot of advertisement, as you can imagine. One of the ads caught my eye. Austria Tourism displays an old farmer house and a couple of old fashioned musicians walking by. It says "it's got to be Austria". Well, I was really wondering whether the picture has been taken in Austria after all. For me it looked like a house you would usually find in the central part of Switzerland. So this leaves two questions: Are Switzerland and Austria so similar that you couldn't tell from a photograph? Or were the Austrian advertisers so sloppy to pick the wrong picture and to display a Swiss house on their ad? To be fair, the differences are probably not that big between the countries and both places are great destinations to travel to. Also it must be said that in both countries you will be able to find great driving roads - which brings us back to what this blog is all about.

David against Goliath - the Smart versus Ferrari Enzo battle

This is a funny story and shows the dedication of Ferrari to demotivate people leveraging their products for advertising. Apparently an impressive number of lawyers threatened Smart to not use the Ferrari Enzo any more in their tv spots. No problem for Smart, they will use a Mercedes SLS next time, painted in Ferrari red!

Lancia - known for its traditional quality

When you look at the tagline of this 1964 advertisement you probably have to smile. Lancia is certainly not known for its quality reputation. Too many things went wrong, specifically in the 80ies. Rust, bad reliability and all kinds of funny things that could happen with a Lancia killed this quality reputation, especially in the UK where the picture it taken. Too bad actually, Lancia was a synonym for advanced engineering in the 50ies and 60ies and we all remember the Lancia Stratos for winning the rallye world championship, the Lancia Fulvia and the 037 Rallye.