Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Auto erotic

Do you love your car? I mean really love it. I mean, love it so much that you would like to have sex with it, metaphorically? Then you need to be driving a Cadillac.



Woman: "In today's luxury game, the question isn't whether or not your car has available features like a 40 gig hard drive."

A what? What? A 40 gig hard drive?? We're still talking about a car here, right?

Woman: "It isn't about sunroofs, or Sapele wood accents, pop-up nav screens or any of that."

I rather enjoy the supremely bored inflection she puts on "pop-up nav screens" as though (a) it was like saying the car came with seat belts and (b) the list she just read was 200 items long. Also, it's funny that you feel a need to mention all these things that it isn't about. Guess what? I think you think it's about that. Can't anyone just brag anymore with having to be all arch about it? Fucking post-modernism.

Woman: "No, the real question is... when you turn your car on, does it return the favor?"

Okay, seriously? Gross. I can't believe the unnecessary purring with which that line was delivered. And guess what doesn't appear in this commercial, which spent its first 15 seconds or so listing the features that it wasn't about? Any listing of features that qualify for "car turning you on" status. Do the features listed not play into that? Are we talking about horsepower, 0-to-60 acceleration... what the fuck are we talking about, here? Wait, I know - nothing. Is it nothing? It's nothing, isn't it? I'm just impressed they were able to work in a couple unobstructed shots of the gear shift, given that she seems to spend the rest of the commercial sitting on it.

Here's the thing: the 2008 CTS has gas mileage of 16 city / 25 highway with its standard features. That's not good even by SUV standards, let alone "upscale sedan" standards. (Note that all the 2007 CTS models finish rather low on this list. The 2008s supposedly perform better relative to the competition, to be fair, although with 16/25, I'm not sure how.) So the real question is, when you spend 35 to 40 grand on a car, and then you have to spend 50 bucks on gas every ten days, does it return the favor by buying you dinner on occasion?

2 comments:

Quivering P. Landmass said...

What lazy, tired copy. "Oh, let's just try to cram a bunch of car language in here and then finish it off with some sex appeal." Here you spend tons of money on these hip, flashy visuals, and then you pay it off with a cliched, vaguely erotic line? Hacks.

Anonymous said...

cars have hard drives now? man, where have i been... oh yeah, in a car from 2002 that's paid off. Maybe her car is Kitt from Knight Rider, so yeah, it can "perform". Okay, fuck you car commercial for making me think that about poor Kitt.

dama