The 80's in Car Advertisements

It was a zany time, a decade before I was born, but I read the stories afterwards. I saw the flourescent workout clothes and heard the synthesizers that backed up a moody Phil Collins. The 1980s were a time of discovery, and the decade sticks out in history as a time of life in color.

Car advertisements, of course, reflected that time. New, exciting, red, fiery, a blast to drive--these words could've been used to describe a Pontiac GTO or Pontiac Fiero.

One of the first things I noticed about these ads, which are lifted from 1985 and 1986 issues of Road & Track magazine was the sheer amount of information still present in ads at that time. Often, several paragraphs touted things like the oddball Peugeot 505's lackluster 0 to 50 time (it was still measured in that before the national speed limit was upped). Instead of slow, they said their customers cared more about just the power anyways.

Sadly, though, the 505, like a lot of strange cars for sale in the United States at the time, didn't sell very well at all. But those bad sales numbers weren't just limited to imports. This was a time when the auto industry in our country was having a bit of a struggle.

Japan had swept over the United States like a Kevin Bacon Footloose number. Honda, Toyota, Nissan, and even Subaru had started to make a name for themselves here and in Europe, because buyers realized they could have a car that sipped fuel, was inexpensive to maintain, iron-clad reliable, and inexpensive to buy in the first place.

Echoes of the fuel crisis were still being felt in the late 80s, and American carmakers simply couldn't adapt as well to the small car market. Think cars like the Ford Grenada, the AMC Pacer, and the abysmal Cadillac Cimarron. Advertisers touted these cars' abilities like you wouldn't believe, even going so far as to suggest buyers were somehow "un-American" for choosing a car from an overseas maker.

Muscle cars were where the US held strong, though. The ad agencies knew this of course, and plastered the magazine with scenes of bikini-clad women surrounding a guy in a Camaro, edgy, almost Tron-inspired ads for cars like the Dodge Daytona, and slick spots for the fox-body Mustang that touted its handling prowess.

Indeed, this time in history marked a bit of a shift back to the gas-guzzlers that were alienated in the late 1970s. No longer was it as unwise to own a Corvette or a big Cadillac or full-sized pickup, but the market had certainly expanded further. Cars like the Plymouth Conquest, a six-cylinder turbocharged hatchback coupe, represented a new age of affordable sports cars that could hold their own on a road course.

Of course, the Conquest jumped into the ring with Japanese sports cars like the Toyota Supra, the MR2, and even the Isuzu Impulse, which all offered affordable, forced-induction performance.The high-pitched whines of those engines combined with the constant squealing tires must've meshed pretty well with the Miami Vice soundtracks of the era, I imagine.

And the Vice was certainly an inspiration for many an ad agency as well. BMW mixed that with James Bond to appeal directly to the types of folks they figured bought BMWs--slick, business types who liked to party. And of course, they were right.

Truthfully, though, most of the ads were pretty straight-laced. One or two pages, they usually featured a visual that took up 50-75% of the page, accompanied by quite a lot of text, as mentioned before, and usually a catchy slogan that went with the campaign. During this time, Dodge used "An American Revolution," which would interestingly enough be used by Chevrolet in the mid-2000s. Toyota liked the question: "Who could ask for anything more?" And  my favorite, from Hyundai: "Cars that make sense." Although, at the time, Hyundai's cars weren't doing very much more than that.

You can catch more of my vintage automotive advertising finds on my newly-minted Tumblr blog, Car Advertisements in Print.

Cruisin' with Creepers at The Strand, 7-18-2015

Today the historic Earl Smith Strand theater in Marietta, Ga hosted a classic car show. Two main arteries through the square --North Park Square and East Park Square-- were blocked off to other traffic, but open to pedestrians so that they could see some great examples of classic Detroit steel. Creepers Car Club, founded just down the road in Smyrna back in 1960, was well-represented on this hot Saturday afternoon.

What caught my eye, then? Well, the atmosphere was the first thing. These streets, normally bustling with afternoon traffic, instead funneled a diverse crowd through the small show area. I ran across two older gentlemen with sons in-tow, explaining the straight-8 Buick we were standing in front of. Then it was on to a beautifully-redone Chevelle, 1966, with the appropriate year-of-manufacture license plate. The silver Chevelle had a corner spot, and rightfully so. Red pinstripes on the tires accented the Torq Thrust style wheels beautifully, and further proved that you don't always need a lot of flash to be noticed.

But there certainly was a fair display of flash elsewhere. A custom, chopped top Mercury convertible turned the heads of everyone passing by. Further down the lane, however, I found something even more interesting.

Rat rods are almost always head-turners, because they go against every single rule we know about classic cars. Classic cars should be clean, well-preserved examples of what used to be. But rat rods, on the other hand, are the exact opposite.

Examples like this sedan and pickup are often made to look even more ravaged by the elements and years than they already have been. Intentional surface rust, broken glass, stickers, and ripped up upholstery are all staples of the rat rod.

Shows like this one are the hotbeds of Americana. Located in a historic town square --one spared by Sherman in his march to the sea-- these events are the epitome of small town America. They're the picture you see on the postcard. The cars are simply display pieces, testaments to what used to be. I overheard a guy my age drop the token phrase: "They don't make them like they used to." While on the whole I like to disagree with that statement ("Look at our technology nowadays!" I say. "Don't live in the past!" I say), we do benefit a lot from looking at the past.

You see, even the rat rods are being preserved. Underneath all of that surface patina (to put it nicely), there's often a modern, sophisticated chassis and drivetrain. But history repeats itself. Undesirable cars are filtered out; they die off one by one, then hundreds by hundreds until only several are left. These several remaining Ford Tempos are kept running by their faithful owners (for some reason), but then expire to the pages of history. Only the staple cars--the Pontiac GTOs and the Camaros and even the Falcons-- are kept going because they light that spark. It's a spark that's ignited from a combination of factors.

The way these cars look, or the way they drive, or even television shows and movies they appeared in. They inspire a collective group of people who can afford to fix them back up to their former glory. And then they're passed back down to us, the masses, in hopes that we'll catch a glimpse and become compelled to stay a little longer and truly examine these pieces of history.