ArcaMax

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGWSXNBh6es

The ad was part of Mercury's Imagine TV campaign. It got people's attention; it just didn't do much to get them into Mercury showrooms.

* Nissan Z-car/GI Joe and Barbie -

Scene: a little boy's room, strewn with toys. Cue Van Halen soundtrack. A GI Joe action figure comes alive, jumps behind the wheel of a miniature T-topped 300ZX turbo, adjusts his look in the rearview mirror, pops the clutch and fishtails across the floor to the girl's room, where Barbie awaits.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylyvWXcoOWQ

Ken gets left on the balcony as the 300ZX peels out, blasting past a smiling "Mr. Z" - father of the original 1969 240Z.

* Chrysler Cordoba, "Rich, Corinthian Leather" -

Everyone knows this commercial - or at least, has heard about "rich, Corinthian leather." The commercial is the apotheosis of '70s cheese. Ricardo Montalban, leisure-suited, wide-collared, holding forth in his bedroom voice about his "needs" while cruising around in a chocolate brown, vinyl-roofed '78 Cordoba.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfKHBB4vt4c

He "requests nothing beyond the thickly cushioned luxury of seats available even in (wait for it) rich, Corinthian leather. By way of Joliet, IL - or wherever it was that Chrysler obtained the hides. It wasn't from Spain, in any event.

Even funnier than the dialogue, though, was watching the sea-sick Chrysler's nose rise and fall as Montalban rolled to a stop. This was with brand-new shock absorbers (one assumes). Imagine how the car wallowed after 50,000 miles or so. "Yet, it is on the highway where Cordoba best answers my demands," Montalban tells us.

Cue picture of him (off camera) mashing the pedal to elicit some signs of life from the flaccid two-barrel "lean burn" 318 under the Cordoba's hood. A classic, never to be topped.

========

www.ericpetersautos.com or EPeters952@aol.com for comments.