Why “Top Gear USA” Is Unlikely To Succeed
Watch it if you must, and if you haven’t already: this is “Top Gear USA”. The three people involved are: Rutledge Wood, a television personality best described as “professional douchebag”; Adam...
View ArticleAdventures In Global TV Marketing: The Citroën AX
Sure, Internet video is mostly about dental-fetish porn (particularly the very stimulating “spit sink” subgenre), but when the novocaine wears off and the last vinyl-clad hygienist has put aside her...
View ArticleRoger Moore Gets 10,000 Pounds of Turbo Boost In His ’82 Corona GT
American car ads of the early 1980s came up short in several departments: Burning rubber, jet-engine-grade turbocharger sound, and blatantly sped-up film that made the cars appear to be going 300 MPH....
View ArticleAdventures In Marketing: Ancient Buster Keaton Forces Lion Into Flat-Nose...
Buster Keaton reached the height of his fame in about 1927, but Ford’s 1966 marketers must have figured that nostalgia for the allegedly wholesome silent-film era would be big, what with all the...
View ArticleEl Diablo Went Down To Georgia: The 1981 VAM Rally AMX
Sales of the Gremlin-based AMC Spirit in the United States were pretty dismal, but perhaps that was just the result of the suits in Kenosha choosing the wrong ad agency. Let’s head south of the border...
View ArticleAdventures In Badge Engineering: Mercury and Oldsmobile SUVs!
As Detroit was skipping a decade or two of car R&D by concentrating on packing increasing numbers of 128-ouncer-ready cup holders and faux-wood trim into big trucks, it became necessary to make it...
View Article1979: You Asked For It, You Got… a Toyota Corona Liftback Sedan?
The Junkyard Find ’79 Corona we saw earlier was a pretty nice car, but it was a regular sedan with an old-fashioned trunk. Just as Chevrolet buyers could buy a Nova with a hatchback in 1979, Toyota...
View ArticleMad Men Season 6: For Immediate Release
I was a late comer to Mad Men, AMC’s highly successful and critically acclaimed drama that airs on Sunday nights. It was only as the fifth season was underway and I started to see reports on the...
View ArticleMatt LeBlanc to Host Top Gear
Former “Friends” star and current “Episodes” main character Matt LeBlanc will be heading to the BBC to co-host Top Gear with Chris Evans, Top Gear announced Thursday. The news comes just before Evans,...
View ArticleCar Driven by History’s Most Famous Moocher Goes on the Block
No, not Kato Kaelin. (That’s two OJ references on one day. We’re done. – Ed.) Mouth-watering classics hit the block at Bonhams’ Scottsdale auction house all the time, but few were ever driven by the...
View ArticleDiscovery’s ‘Car Saviors’ Abandons Obnoxious Automotive Programing and Adopts...
Automotive television has developed some extremely bad habits, the worst of which is creating false reality show-style drama among characters with no appreciable personalities. Build shows are the...
View ArticleCutting the Crap: The Grand Tour Loses Dead Weight Segments for Season Two
I’ve said before that automotive television is frequently terrible. Cars don’t have a lot of on-screen charisma without someone inside them, meaning most automotive presenters are forced into awkward...
View ArticlePre-Production Alpine A110 Bursts Into Flames During Top Gear Shoot
Top Gear presenters Chris Harris and Eddie Jordan narrowly evaded injury when a pre-production Alpine A110 caught fire while the duo participated in last week’s Monte Carlo Rally. Apparently the two...
View ArticleThe Show’s Over for Four-door Ford Car Advertising
With Ford Motor Company dropping all but one car from its lineup to focus on utility vehicles and crossovers, there’s little reason to run ad campaigns for both. You don’t see Coca-Cola running spots...
View Article‘Diesel Brothers’ Fined $850,000 for Rolling Coal
The hosts of the Discovery Channel’s Diesel Brothers have been fined $851,451 for selling modified pickups that violate Utah law and the federally recognized Clean Air Act. U.S. District Court Judge...
View ArticleTop Gear Wrecks Lamborghini Diablo During Filming
Television’s Top Gear recently resumed filming on the upcoming season (series 29, if you acknowledge the authority of the Queen), and news of a crash has your author feeling excited about the program...
View ArticleThe Grand Tour’s “A Massive Hunt” Episode Sums Up a Show Well Past its Prime
After a COVID-induced delay of several months, Amazon finally released The Grand Tour’s new episode “A Massive Hunt” on December 17th. Its intended release date was the 18th, but someone at Amazon...
View ArticleNBC Planning Sitcom About Car Company, We Have Questions [UPDATED]
You may have seen reports over the past few days about the planned sitcom from NBC dubbed American Auto. Set for launch for the 2021-2022 season, the show is going to star Ana Gasteyer, Jon Barinholtz,...
View ArticleThe Grand Tour’s “Lochdown” Episode Returns to the Familiar
July 30th saw the streaming release of the third installment in The Grand Tour Presents series, Amazon’s installment rework of the formerly tent-based automotive series. Following up their “Seamen”...
View ArticleThe Grand Tour’s “Carnage a Trois” Episode Falls Largely Flat
The Grand Tour returned this past Friday with the fourth special of its fourth season, entitled “Carnage a Trois.” The French-themed episode follows “Lochdown” of August 2021, “A Massive Hunt” from...
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