Skip to main content
Gerry | Vanagon
Checking account...
← vanagon.com home · Continue the discussion in the forum
Subject:RE: VWs in ads
From:Joel Walker
Date:Thu, 04 Jan 96 12:48:18 CST

On Thu, 4 Jan 1996 12:05:22 -0600 Maher, Steve (SD-MS) said:
>My own favorite has to be the ad done by VW themselves, to sell Volkswagens

yeah. they had an ad agency that really had some good ideas. too bad they
got rid of that agency. :(

>Another excellent ad done by VW didn't even have a car in it. It was
>designed to tout the VW's excellent economy, and simply showed a gas
>station. The caption read, "Last one in is a Volkswagen".

i love these understatement ads. like the one that showed a 198? vanagon
with no people around, but all of the doors and hatches open, and the caption
read:   Space Shuttle.
(and, of course, this was about when the space shuttle was being readied to
be sent up).

another favorite was the Microbus ad, showing nine nuns (you could tell from
their habits) getting into a bus, and the caption read:  Mass Transit.  :)

i have a softbound book of vw ads, but most are beetle and karman ghia ads,
with few bus ads. wouldn't it be nice if someone published ALL the bus ads
for ALL the years?? :) including the "overseas" ads (some of which are really
neat) ... i've got some ads from Der Spiegel, a german magazine, and they do
some really wierd effects ... like a syncro bus, covered in roadsigns (for a
paintjob; all sorts of different roadsigns). and another showing a beautiful
blue vanagon, with star-twinkles on some of the reflections, and a sort of
night-sky with stars paint job, and the caption is:  (T)Raumschiff.  :)
<which is a german play-on-words. Traum is "dream", Raum is "room", so you
get either a Dream-ship, or a Roomy-ship.>

joel