I may be in the minority here, but I find many TV commercials from the 1960s hokey. Certainly there are sophisticated things from the past (witness quotes from Mark Twain, for one), but much of the marketing from Detroit hasn’t aged well—this is coming from an advertising industry refugee who generally ranks the USA Today best Super Bowl ad list inversely from the general public.
These Ford ads from 1969 certainly break no ground, but there’s a bit of humor worth mentioning to enthusiasts of the era. In the first spot, we’re presented with Ford’s new Cobra, a Fairlane-based model that played two roles: as one of Ford’s new “image” cars, and as Ford’s competitor to the Plymouth Road Runner. Complete with cartoonish snake-on-wheels decals (soon to be replaced by metal badges), we bear witness to the Cobra devouring a mystery bird in the American Southwest while wholesome “Sunshine Pop” music plays in the background.
The music appears to be sung by The Going Thing, a studio vocal group commissioned by Ford for several years to market its products. They appear as “Bright Young America” in the following spot highlighting the Torino GT, a more luxurious sportster compared to the Cobra.
The third spot was inspired by The Graduate with, dare I say, a cooler car than the Alfa Romeo that Dustin Hoffman drove in the movie. The fourth tips its hat to the sporty car market as it claims the road seems like a jungle filled with strange creatures like bugs and birds and cats and fish, and none other than the Ford Cobra—the new King of the Road—could clear the way.
Check out those and even more commercial spots in the above compilation. Can you dig it?
