Collection
Cars & Driving
Car makers, tyres and rentals — a category known for ambitious, big-budget craft and unforgettable demonstrations.
2020s
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2022Plug Inn
Renault wanted to reassure French electric-car buyers that they could charge on long trips, beyond the thin public network.
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2020Groundhog Day
Bill Murray wakes at 6:00 a.m. to the same clock-radio song and runs into Stephen Tobolowsky’s relentless Ned Ryerson — but this time Phil Connors…
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2020Smaht Pahk
The new Sonata could slip into a tight space at the click of a button, but the feature had a forgettable name: Remote Smart Parking Assist.
2010s
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2017Daughter
A girl in a battered helmet races a soapbox cart downhill against a field of boys while her father, in voiceover, wonders what to tell her: that…
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2016Meet Graham
A road-safety message you can walk around.
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2015The Greatest Interception Ever
Volvo bought no airtime in the 2015 Super Bowl, so it borrowed its rivals’.
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2015LifePaint
A car maker that built something for the people outside its cars.
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2015The Safety Truck
A truck you can see through.
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2014The Other Side
One film, two stories, one key to flip between them.
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2014Eyes on the Road
A text message that crashed the car.
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2013Chicken
To Diana Ross's "Upside Down", handlers lift, sway and twist live chickens, and while the birds' bodies dance in every direction, their heads stay…
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2013Farmer
Essentially a two-minute slideshow that never speaks its brand name, "Farmer" lays the late broadcaster Paul Harvey's original recording of "So God…
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2013Sound of Honda / Ayrton Senna 1989
In qualifying for the 1989 Japanese Grand Prix, Ayrton Senna set the fastest lap yet seen at Suzuka, and his McLaren Honda MP4/5 recorded it as…
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2013The Epic Split
A B2B truck feature — dynamic steering — demonstrated by Jean-Claude Van Damme doing the splits between two reversing trucks at golden hour, in one…
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2012Halftime in America
A lean silhouette walks down a darkened stadium tunnel and Clint Eastwood's rasp begins: "It's halftime in America, too." For two minutes,…
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2012The Invisible Drive
A car that seemed to vanish in traffic.
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2011Born of Fire ("Imported from Detroit")
A bankrupt car company from a written-off city bought the longest Super Bowl ad to that point — two full minutes during Super Bowl XLV, February 6,…
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2011The Force
A pint-sized Darth Vader tries to use the Force on the laundry machine, the dog, a sandwich — and finally, apparently, on the family Passat,…
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2010Embrace Life
A father sits in his living room pretending to drive while his wife and daughter watch.
2000s
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2009COW ("Only Stwpd Cowz Txt N Drive")
Cassie, a 17-year-old driver, sends a text at the wheel, drifts into oncoming traffic and causes a three-car crash on the outskirts of Tredegar that…
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Fiesta MovementFord2009
Fiesta Movement
Before the new Fiesta had even been unveiled in America, Ford handed 100 European-spec cars to 100 social-media-savvy 'agents' for six months, set…
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2009The Fun Theory ("Piano Stairs")
Volkswagen Sweden turned the stairs at Stockholm's Odenplan subway station into working piano keys, filmed commuters abandoning the escalator, and…
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2008eco:Drive
Rather than advertise fuel economy, Fiat and AKQA built a tool that taught people to use less fuel.
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2007Pinkie ("Speeding. No One Thinks Big of You.")
Young men show off behind the wheel, and everyone they hope to impress, from young women by the road to an elderly woman and the mates riding with…
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2004Grrr ("Hate Something, Change Something")
A diesel-engine ad built on hate.
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2003Cog
Two minutes of Honda Accord parts toppling, rolling and swinging into each other in a flawless Rube Goldberg chain reaction — ending with a finished…
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Small but tough. Polo.Volkswagen2003
Cops
A squad of American cops is pinned down in a street shoot-out, and every one of them has picked the same cover: not their own patrol car but a…
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2002The Sculptor
In India, a young man falls for the Peugeot 206 he has seen in a print ad and sets about turning his boxy Hindustan Ambassador into one.
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Let's Motor.MINI USA (BMW Group)2002
Let's Motor (MINI USA launch)
How do you launch a tiny British car in the land of the SUV without a television budget?
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2001BMW Films: The Hire
The campaign that invented branded entertainment as a discipline.
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2000Mano (¿Te gusta conducir?)
Filmed from inside the car, the spot never shows a BMW.
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2000Autostadt
Volkswagen opened Autostadt beside its Wolfsburg plant on 1 June 2000, timed to Expo 2000 in nearby Hanover.
1990s
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1999Bugger
A farmer tries out his new Hilux around the property and keeps underestimating its power: a fence goes down, a tractor tips over, a tree stump flies…
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1995Bob ("It's Party Time When Bob Drives")
Instead of frightening drivers, Belgium gave the sober driver a name.
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Power is nothing without control.Pirelli1994
Power Is Nothing Without Control (Carl Lewis)
The fastest man in the world, crouched in the starting blocks, wearing red stiletto heels.
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1993Tested for the Unexpected
A tyre ad as art film.
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1991Glug Glug
A small boy playing in his bedroom fills a toy red Ferrari with Sasol Super 100, the fuel going in with a "glug glug".
1980s
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1989Girlfriend ("If You Drink, Then Drive, You're a Bloody Idiot")
A young woman, injured in a crash caused by her drunk boyfriend, is rushed through a hospital emergency department while a trauma team works on her.
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1989Hamara Bajaj
Ordinary Indians go about their day with their Bajaj scooters, polishing them, checking their hair in the mirror, haggling over fish; a woman rides…
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1985Vince and Larry, the Crash Test Dummies ("You Could Learn a Lot from a Dummy")
Two talking crash test dummies, the cynical veteran Vince and his eager young partner Larry, who take every collision so that viewers don't have to.
1970s
1960s
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1969Funeral
A procession of limousines heads to a funeral while the dead man, Maxwell E.
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1964Snow Plow
A Beetle ploughs through thigh-deep drifts while an unhurried narrator asks a question nobody had thought to ask: "Have you ever wondered how the…
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1964The Pirelli Calendar
In 1964 Pirelli's British subsidiary, looking for a way to stand out from local tyre rivals, hired art director Derek Forsyth and Beatles…
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Avis is only No. 2 in rent a cars. So we try harder.Avis1963
We Try Harder ("Avis is only No. 2")
The founding document of underdog positioning.
1950s
1930s
1920s
1910s
1900s
1890s
About Cars & Driving
The best car commercials and ads, plus tyres and car rental. Car advertising has long combined big budgets with ambitious craft, from Volkswagen's print work of the 1960s to Honda's "Cog". The best examples sell a feeling about driving rather than a list of features.