Car Lust

Great Commercials--Subaru XT

Submitted for your consideration, a memorable commercial from the 1980s pitching the "oddball" Subaru XT6 sort-of-a-sports car.

Mercury Lynx

The world belongs ... to Lynx.

Does anyone, other than me, remember that tagline, the commercial it comes from, or the car it was pitching, the Mercury Lynx?

I'm not seeing a whole lot of hands raised out there.

I can't show you the commercial because it's not available through YouTube or any of the other video sites.* If you're old enough, you might remember it if I describe it to you. It showed the car in an abstract white-on-white setting, with a live lynx walking around while the announcer told us, in a voice that would not be out of place in a Carl Sagan science documentary, that the world belonged to this car. The soundtrack was a lovely bit of electronic "planetarium music" by Vangelis, a track called "Chung Kuo" from the album China. (You can listen to it here; the part used in the commercial begins at about 1:47.) 

Not only can't I show you the commercial, there's just not a whole lot of Lynx links out there, period. The Wikipedia entry for the Lynx is only five sentences long, and two of those are about the car that replaced it. When you run a Google or Bing search for "Mercury Lynx," only about half the results have something to do with the car--the rest are about WNBA basketball. When I ran the commercial's tagline as my search term, I got exactly one hit, on a Google Books archive of a magazine ad.

This is all very unfortunate. The Lynx was not a great car by any means, but it was the sort of honest everyday iron we celebrate here at Car Lust. This post is my attempt to rescue it from obscurity, so that this little Mercury is no longer so much of a ... missing Lynx.

Great Commercials--"Joyride Dream"

Submitted for your consideration, my wife's all-time favorite car commercial. Its official title is "Joyride Dream," and the soundtrack is the James Brown-esque "How You Like Me Now?" by The Heavy.

Minivan=Swagger Wagon

Minivans--for manly men only. What says virility better than pulling up in your ride filled with your offspring? 

0:22--He nails the look of fear.

0:30--"I roll hard through the streets and the cul de sacs..."

0:58--Pegged the cute meter

1:13--Keep the pinkie up!

1:53--PB&J just keepin' it real.

2:27--Nothing quite like spiking a child's toy to emphasize your level of cool.

Don't hate the playa, hate the game...where my mother-fathers at?

--Big Chris

Great Commercials--Steve Wozniak's Datsun 280ZX

Yesterday we deconstructed a disco-era Datsun 280ZX 10th Anniversary Edition commercial. Today I'd like to discuss another commercial that features essentially the same car but a completely different tone. The video follows here, with my comments after the jump.

Great Commercials--Datsun 280ZX "Black Gold"

I stumbled across this commercial the other day and thought it worthy of a Car Lust commercial deconstruction. My thoughts are after the jump.

Our Cars--VAZ 2101 (Lada)

Submitted by Kaloyan Ivanov

(Chris: Kaloyan is a new co-worker of mine on the Amazon Auto Parts & Accessories team; he originally hails from Bulgaria and as a result has a slightly different perspective on Car Lust.)

Car Lust has featured quite a few Bond cars, and technically the VAZ 2101 is one, since it appeared in The Living Daylights and Goldeneye. But really, I'd call it From Russia With Love. It would have been a big change of pace for James Bond, but as a child coming of age in Eastern Europe, this vehicle was a ubiquitous part of my childhood. As with many Europeans living on the other side of the Iron Curtain during the 1970s and the 1980s, the VAZ (known as the Lada when exported) conjures up memories of my youth.

1953-54 Studebaker "Loewy Coupes"

Whenever one of the buff books runs a "most beautiful cars of all time" feature, or someone puts out a big honkin' coffee-table book on the subject, the car we will be looking at today usually makes the list, alongside such lovelies as prewar Talbots and Bugattis, boat-tail Auburns and Cord 810s, curvaceous Italian sports cars, E-type Jaguars and 1961 Lincoln Continentals. We could debate which of them is the absolute loveliest all day and into the night and halfway through tomorrow's breakfast and never settle the question, but I would submit that today's subject stands out from the rest of this elite category in one respect.

A prewar Bugatti or a Cord looks like something from the 1930s--beautiful, yes, but clearly a creation of a particular era. Likewise, the Ferraris and Maseratis on the list, they all have that late-60s-early-70s groovy-mod jet-set thing going on. The E-type is clearly a product of the late 50s and early 60s, while the Continental's styling practically screams "Kennedy administration!"

In contract to these, today's subject isn't quite so obviously tied to a particular year. It was designed as a show car and was clearly "ahead of the curve" when it rolled out nearly 60 years ago--and if it's not quite "ahead of the curve" today, that's only because the "curve" may have finally caught up with it. Take out the triangular vent windows, dial back on the chrome, give it headrests, three-point seatbelts, cupholders, and power remote mirrors, slap on a Honda or Toyota badge, and you could plausibly pass it off as a 2010 model.

Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Car Lusters of all ages, I give you the stunningly beautiful Studebaker "Loewy Coupes," the 1953-54 Starlight and Starliner:

Great Commercials--SsangYong Rodius

We recently had our fun mocking the bizarre looks of the SsangYong Odious--er, I mean Hideous--no, no, I mean Rodius!--a Korean-built SUV whose ah, challenging styling almost makes the Aztek look normal. That posting included a surreal Korean TV commercial in which the very oceans themselves rage against it.

That's not the only Rodius commercial to appear on Korean television. In the course of writing that article, I watched the others, and some of them are--you won't believe this, but it's true!--they're quite good.

I'm not being ironic. The commercials are very good. The car is hideous, but the commercials do an admirable job of making it look ... dare I say it? ... not just normal but ... almost (but not quite) ... desirable.

Don't believe me? Keep reading.

SsangYong Rodius

Some cars are beautiful, and some ... well, not to put too fine a point on it, some cars are not beautiful. The proportions are off, or the detailing is overwrought, or a prominent design element clashes with the rest of the styling, or it's bland and boring, or something's just ... not quite right.

And then there are those select few that are total aesthetic disasters. Not just ugly, but dog ugly. Butt ugly. Warthog-beaten-with-an-ugly-stick ugly. Cars it hurts just to look at.

Today's subject is such a car. It was voted "the ugliest car ever made" by the readers of CarData, Whether that's exactly right or wrong--I can think of a few other contenders for that dubious honor--this car is nevertheless one whose body panels insult the very steel they were stamped out of. Continue reading only if you be men and women of valor, for the styling of this automobile is so just plain wrong that it would make even an Aztek owner recoil in horror. So, brave readers, if you do doubt your courage or your strength or the durability of your retinas, come no further, for true hideousness awaits you all with ...