Adventures In Marketing: The Cocainiest Car Ad of All Time!
Right before AIDS and Reagan ruined the party, the early 1980s were a time of meaningless random sex, 20% inflation, sub-100-horsepower midsize sedans, Quaaludes, and— most of all— mountains of white powder (in imagination, not in the reality of the ’81 recession). This ad for the 1981 Ford Mustang captures the spirit of its time.
Right down to the sanitized cover of the Donna Summer song and the 80-pound Mustang owner, it’s all here. Hot stuff, baby!
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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...and the Diamond Blue mercedes W108 at 021 belonged to the Ad producer.
What, no mention of the "unique" Michelin TRX wheel/tire concept, in the very nearly unobtainable size of 390mm? Michelin tire dealers needed their coke fix too