Crap car, brilliant ad

Automotive marketers, the bar has been raised, because David Johns of Australian agency Chimney has put together a stunner of an ad to sell his 1999 Holden Barina.

With flames coming from its tyres, it is “style redefined” and “luxury redefined”. We wouldn’t argue with that. It has “matching seats” too. He’s also created a website to show off some digital skills and showcase the car further. And the clip has been popular, racking up over 800,000 views and being featured on a range of websites. 

From here, people can tweet what they’d offer him for his car, or directly by using the hashtag #buymybarina

This is just the latest in a long history of homemade car ads riffing on the cliches employed by car companies and their agencies. Here are some others:

A 1996 Nissan Maxima complete with classy ripped seats and haunting headlight shot.

Buy My Volvo was created by a Swedish art director “Castor”, with some serious cinematography. “Do you want to be perceived as rich and cuddly? Of course you do!”

The above creation was for sale on Craigslist, where the cab and hood of a 1962 truck was grafted onto a ’90s Pontiac Grand Am.

This was another Pontiac Grand Am ad: “I know what you’re asking yourself. ‘Am I man enough to handle a car this flawless?’ The short answer is no. I tried to be. I grew my beard to unreasonable lengths, trimmed my nails with a belt sander…”. See the rest of it here.

And not a home-made car ad at all, but really random, is Elijah Wood selling the Toyota Noah to the Japanese with Peter Rabbit: