The Early Days: Car Commercials from the 1960s

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Warning: GM Content - It's still fun stuff

http://www.streetmusclemag.com/news/...t-tickets-now/

(Maybe something happened to how youtube vids are embedded. The youtube "button" is not rendered, so I put in the links. The vids are the best part.)

By Greg Acosta February 21, 2018



(Editor’s note: Vintage television commercials can be as classic as the cars they promoted back in the day. This is one in an ongoing series of muscle car commercials we’ve found on YouTube.)

With the recent flurry of ads from “The Big Game,” which always provide me with hours of entertainment long after champions are declared, it got me to thinking about vintage commercials, specifically, those for Muscle cars. I have done a few “quick looks” at television commercials from bygone eras for some of today’s most popular muscle cars and always seem to be left wanting to showcase more. Thanks to the far-reaches of the internet and YouTube, I have been able to find a solid assortment of commercials for a walk back in time. However, due to the crazy amount of archived footage, there’s no way to really capture an entire decade in a single post.

The 1960s was a decade of significant change and political turmoil. It was arguably the greatest decade of all time for the classic muscle car – manufacturers had heated battles with one another, color TV was rapidly becoming the norm in American households, and automakers took to the red, green, and blue airwaves to advertise their latest and greatest automobiles in some unexpected ways. These are a few of the commercials that caught my interest during my last trip down the rabbit hole, mainly because of how different they were from what any of us would expect when marketing a muscle car.

https://youtu.be/iYXLmm35Pyc

Starting off our list, is a single video with multiple commercials from 1962-‘63. As you know from our recent article on cool longroofs, we love wagons, so it’s very cool to see an ad for a Buick LeSabre Estate wagon, which is advertised as having the stout 401 cubic-inch Nailhead out of the Wildcat. The advertisement touts its versatility and performance in relative luxury, for “just a little more than those low-priced cars.”

The following commercial introduces the relatively short-lived Buick Wildcat. The ad for the 1963 model carries-over the same “Field & Stream” theme from the LeSabre Estate commercial, but definitely appeals to the sportier segment of the market, with the Wildcat bombing down dirt roads and the commercial featuring it’s “hot look, sports-car console and a tachometer, of course!” While the Wildcat itself only lasted for eight model-years, it was based on one of the best-selling platforms (1965-70 B-Body) in history.

You’ve got to forgive the atrocious color of the third commercial as they were still figuring out mass-market color videography. The Chevy II Nova Sport Coupe is featured driving around the streets of San Francisco while the announcer espouses its sporty ride and improved handling, thanks to its new suspension. The car’s “lively” performance is displayed by cutting a streetcar off in traffic, and it is advertised as both compact and roomy, at the same time. And really, when was the last time a Chevy II was considered a “sensible” car, let alone “lively, luxurious, and low-cost”?

Again with the outdoor theme, but this time it appears Chevrolet teamed up with the U.S. Forest Service to pitch their new line of 1962 station wagons. The Bel Air wagon was advertised as having a “king size” sleeping area in the rear as an alternative to a tent or hotel room, while the Impala wagon was being touted as a kid-hauler and an “economical vacation-mobile.” For all four cars featured in this video, it’s wild to see the cars portrayed so differently than how we perceive them these days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_c...&v=_p-Am92fkx0

In contrast to the outdoorsy family-mobile campaign for the 1962 Impala Wagon, this advertisement for the 1967 Impala Sport Coupe caters to more of what we think of when we think of Impalas – that they look so good you want a garage with clear walls so that you can see it all the time. The ad talks about the Impala’s “bold, modern look” and features some vintage special effects to create the “glass garage,” making this one of our favorite commercials of the bunch, even if it is on the short side.