Best car adverts ever made: the coolest classic car commercials
We’ve rounded up some of the best car adverts in recent times, plus some golden oldies
When was the last time you saw a truly great car advert? We’re willing to bet it was a while ago. Manufacturers seem to be a lot more risk-averse when it comes to marketing these days, and it probably doesn’t help that TV viewing figures aren’t what they were amid the rise of streaming, making it less palatable to splurge a load of money on a brilliant car commercial.
That’s why, although we’ve tried to focus as much as possible on amazing car adverts from the last couple of decades here, most of the true greats towards that 20-year-old mark. Thankfully, there are a few modern exceptions, and we’ve revisited the all time classics at the bottom of the page.
Let’s have a look at the greatest car adverts of all time…
Skoda - Cake
Skoda preempted the viral ‘is it cake’ craze by years with this one. The multiple award-winning advert was done for real, as well, with the construction of a cake-based Skoda Fabia filmed over four days in Shepperton Studios with an incredible ingredients list including 100kg of flour, 10kg of white chocolate chunks, and 180 eggs. Along with probably making a lot of people hungry, the campaign was credited with significantly improving Skoda’s public perception in the UK following its first airing in May 2007.
Jaguar - Villains
The 'Villains' commercial by Jaguar made its debut in the US during the 2014 Super Bowl but soon appeared on British telly. The brand played up to its British heritage by employing domestic star actors Ben Kingsley, Mark Strong and Tom Hiddleston to play ruthless, tea-drinking villains to promote its Jaguar F-Type Coupe. Despite this brilliant bit of advertising, the F-Type Coupe wasn’t ever a strong seller. But we very much appreciate the effort put into this one, regardless.
Volvo Trucks - The Epic Split
OK, so it’s a truck advert, but given that the Volvo brand is primarily known for cars, hopefully you’ll excuse its inclusion here. And also because it features Jean Claude Vanne-Damme performing the splits on two reversing Volvo FM lorries, with Enya’s Only Time providing the soundtrack. It was filmed in a single take at the infamous Ciudad Real International Airport during its bankruptcy-forced seven-year closure. By far the most popular in Volvo Trucks’ ‘Live Tests’ series of adverts, The Epic Split has been viewed on YouTube some 128 million times.
Audi - R8 dyno
Created exclusively to run in cinemas, this fabulous effort from Audi must have been a real treat for the ears when listened to through a theatre surround sound system. It’s disarmingly simple, featuring a first-generation Audi R8 (minus its rear bumper) going through several gears on a dyno until its silencer-less exhaust system glows red hot. “Evolution on the outside...Revolution on the inside...The new Audi R8 Plus,” is the extent of the on-screen copy. Sometimes, less is more.
Volkswagen - The Force
Originally aired during the 2011 Super Bowl, this sweet and simple advert depicts a young boy dressed as Darth Vader attempting to use The Force on various things around the house, to no avail. Until, that is, he’s confronted with his parents’ Volkswagen Passat, which, to his surprise, starts up in response to his outstretched hand. As the audience, we see that his dad has cheekily started it remotely with the key fob. Brilliant.
Uber Carshare - Valtteri Bottas' Aussie 'Second' Car
Not an advert for a single car, but instead for the Uber CarShare service in Australia. It’s a rare example of a very recent and quite brilliant car-related advert, with Bottas proving that while he’s far from the fastest F1 driver on the grid, he’s surely the funniest. He genuinely does ‘love the Aussie lifestyle’ as claimed in the advert, too - he’s married to Australian professional cyclist Tiffany Cromwell and owns a home near Adelaide.
Shell/Ferrari - The Circuit
Another more car-adjacent effort, but as one of the greatest of all time, it has to be here. Depicting Ferrari F1 cars from the earliest days of the sport right up to the then-current F2007 (the last to bag either a driver’s or constructor’s title, as any Tifosi would be reluctant to admit) tearing around city streets, it was shot over a month, all over the world. Locations included New York, Hong Kong, and - of course - Monaco, and the whole thing cost millions of dollars. Worth it? Absolutely.
Land Rover - Dragon Challenge
They say imitation is the highest form of flattery, so perhaps Land Rover should be pleased that Chery attempted to recreate this incredible 2018 advert. Even if the Chinese carmaker failed quite spectacularly. In any case, it’s hard to imagine how the original could be bettered. It shows a Range Rover Sport becoming the only vehicle to successfully drive up the 999 steps of Tianmen Mountain’s Heaven’s Gate, and it’s just as compelling to watch now as it was back then.
Golden oldies: great car ads from the distant past
This is where some of us start to feel extremely old. We’ve looked at car ads from the last 20 years but the true golden age of the TV advertisement for motor vehicles was some time before that. These efforts have aged gracefully but surely they can’t have been that long ago?...
Honda - Cog
Honda has made some incredible car adverts over the years, but it’ll probably never top 2003’s ‘Cog’. Featuring bits of a seventh-generation Accord arranged as a ‘Rube Goldberg machine’ (AKA a complicated way of achieving something extremely simple), the two-minute advert took some seven months to produce. And after all that, few would have originally seen the full advert in full on TV, owing to the high cost of advertising slots.
Peugeot - Take My Breath Away
What does driving through burning crops have to do with a Peugeot 405? We’ve no idea, but this advert, and its backing of Take My Breath Away by Berlin, is simply iconic. It probably helped that Take My Breath Away was written for the Top Gun soundtrack. So the message is, if you want to be as cool as a fighter jet pilot portrayed by Tom Cruise, you need a compact Peugeot saloon. Or something.
Peugeot - The Bombardier
We won’t apologise for going straight into another Peugeot advert, as this one cannot be beaten in terms of extravagance. The 1984 effort features a real Peugeot 205 GTi getting dropped onto snowy terrain before being chased down by an also very real and low-flying military transport plane. There doesn’t seem to be a firm answer on how much this James Bond-inspired effort cost to make, but we can hazard a guess at it being a rather lofty number. Peugeot’s remake in 2014 to mark the 30th anniversary and the release of the new Peugeot 208 GTi was an underwhelming CGI fest that contrasted with the practical effect-laden original for all the wrong reasons.
Saab - Nothing on Earth Comes Close
We should bring up Top Gun once more, because the director of this 1983 advert for the Saab 900 was none other than Tony Scott. It was his involvement in this flattering comparison between the 900 and a Saab 37 Viggen jet fighter that led to him helming the camp action flick shortly after. The aerospace bit of Saab had precious little to do with the now-defunct car maker, of course, but that wouldn’t stop the fighter jet comparison coming up in many future adverts, even after the two were completely split.
Renault - Papa and Nicole
Actually a series of marketing efforts for the Renault Clio rather than a single, the whole Papa/Nicole saga ran from 1991 to 1998 and became a pop culture phenomenon. There was a ‘finale’ featuring Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer in a parody of The Graduate, and such is the popularity of the adverts, that they are thought to have prompted a surge in the number of babies being named ‘Nicole’ in the 1990s.
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