It’s hard to make a car commercial stand out. Beautiful people, beautiful landscapes, the promise of adventure. Every company portrays their wares as thrilling to drive, even when they’re duller than dry dirt. What happens when you have cars that are actually fun to drive, but end up producing cringey ads that don’t really get the message across. It’s a predicament, especially when you have to talk to people who think a “V4” is a common engine. You have only 30 seconds to convince them to go visit your dealership.
How would you make a Mazda ad?
The most entertaining comment by next week will receive a prize. Scroll down to see the winner of last week’s QotW, “Have you ever seen Japanese government vehicles outside of Japan?“.
The most common Japanese cars operating under government authority are probably the RHD imports of the postal service. In many rural areas RHD Subarus have served as letter carriers, as Hachibrokeyou pointed out. There are also Toyota and Mitsubishi vans, as Walt noted, but those are less common.
We didn’t know that Subarus are used as local government vehicles in Vermont until nlpnt clued us in, a perfect fit for the region. Negishi no Keibajo taught us that the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard uses kei trucks, though not on public roads. We’ve seen the Honda Civic Hybrids operating under the various California government agencies that Andre mentioned, but we didn’t know that some police departments also use unmarked Camrys, Altimas and RAV4s. Scary!
Outside the US, エーイダン alerted us to Mitsubishi fire inspector sedans and VFH Authority Priuses. And we learned, thanks to NBx, that in France the National Forestry Office uses Toyota Hiluxes.
The winner this week is dokydoky, who revealed a vehicle that we see all the time in Los Angeles but didn’t know was Japanese:
My favorite vehicle built by a Japanese company and operated by an American governement agency would probably be the Kinki Sharyo P3010 operated by Los Angeles Metro on their light rail lines!
Omedetou, your comment has earned you a set of decals from the JNC Shop!
The shot fades into a Soul Crystal Red Miata convertible with the top down in a white room. The THX sound affect starts playing just as the camera starts to move toward the car and it turns to face the camera. The camera moves over the hood and points toward the interior and just as the THX effect comes to creshendo the camera zooms, focuses, and holds on the manual shifter.
As the effect fades out, text appears at the bottoms of the screen that says “We also make crossovers.”
The commercial starts with the whole “Zoom-Zoom-Zoom” phase that Mazda had before abruptly cutting back to the current premium phase they are in now. Then both phases goes back-and-forth, seemingly fighting each other until the whole screen fades into black like it’s some kind of skit. And yet, no matter what kind of phase Mazda is in, the Miata is somehow the only one that stays in the middle despite the whole chaos surrounding it.
ZOOM ZOOM
curves of a red body
various shades of red
various generations of RX including the Vision
You can’t see which model it is, only curves
It is finally revealed that it is the Mazda ICONIC SP when its headlights turn on
black screen
MAZDA – HIROSHIMA SPIRITS – NEVER GIVE UP – PURSUE EXCELLENCE
could be applied to several models of the current line, it would be the frame of reference for each “product family”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_0_auNzom4
If they can convey the idea, the feeling that in a heartless world their engineers still think of vehicles beyond being a simple “appliance” would generate a different empathy.