Possumblog

Most idiotic car ad ever?

Possibly--I just can't quite get a grip on what they could have been thinking.

My newest Automobile magazine came in the other day, and last night was the first time I've had a chance to thumb through it. As I paged along, I came to a nice slick Saab ad--a new 9-3 silhouetted in front of a Saab fighter jet. Cool. Dark and forbidding and techy, all in one. Up at the top, the Saab logo and the tagline "Born From Jets."

Well, Saab has over the years often made mention of their aeromotive history in close association with their cars--one of my favorite ads is a shot of a Saab car on the ground with a fighter blasting by, inverted, just overhead.

Anyway, the ad in the magazine was a fold-out, so I did--nifty--a color poster inside of a 9-3 on a runway. (I assume the ad was supposed to commemorate Automobile's 20 years in print since it had a "20" logo with the magazine's logo and the dates. I might have missed the ad in previous issues, but this was the first one I can recall seeing.) I folded it back over and saw the ad copy, which had a picture of a lumpy Saab J21 and a lovably homely 92 sitting beside it on a runway.

The caption?

"Before Saab made cars, Saab made jets."

Well, it was kinda comical to me, because as you can see, the J21 in the photo has a very obvious propeller sticking up from between the tailbooms. So, there was that, and I also thought that they started making cars before they got into the jet business. Well, whatever.

Then I turned the fold out over to the back, and saw this corker, which is really what got me all worked up enough to post all this crap--"After World War II, there wasn't a demand for jets anymore. So Saab decided to compete in what the believed would be a postwar automotive boom."

WHAT!?

Now you don't have to be a car guy, or an airplane guy, or a World War II guy to recognize that first sentence doesn't make a lick of sense. After World War II, there wasn't a demand for jets!? Jets were the Next Big Thing! That's just stupid. Sure--every manufacturer was concerned about what to do after military orders dried up, but jets were where the technology was going. And further, it made it sound like everyone, including Saab, was making jets during World War II, which is stupid, too--the only operational jet fighters during the war were the German Me262 and He178, and the British Gloster Meteor, and (barely) the Lockheed P-80.

To the Googlemachine!

In five seconds, I found this website that details the timeline of the J21. Read it, and you will note that it did not enter service until 1946 and stuck around until 1952. Which is interesting, in that WWII ended in 1945. Also note that it was one of only two fighters successfully converted from prop to jet power. The resulting J21R entered service in 1947, which is the year that the first 92 prototype was made, and hung on until 1955, when the J32 took over. (Update--the J29 entered service in 1953)

Anyway, in the greater scheme of things, it really doesn't make that big of a deal, but to those folks who are sticklers for such things, it seems like such an easy thing to NOT try to manufacture an alternative corporate history just to suit an ad tagline. If anything, the 92 and the transition to jets at Saab happened together--it was born WITH jets--why not emphasize it as a big brother-little brother relationship?

I blame GM.

Posted by Terry Oglesby at February 15, 2006 09:09 AM