QOTD: Who's Your Favorite Celebrity Huckster?

If a famous person sways your purchasing behaviour, you’re likely an idiot. Actors and other celebs rake in great coin shamelessly hocking products to the teeming masses, be it life insurance, Preparation H, overpriced jeans, or underperforming vehicles. To them, the suitcase of cash emits the siren song, not the product. (Don’t start up about athletes and sports-branded clothing. We’re not going in that direction.)

No company covets celebrity endorsements quite like automakers. Whether it’s longtime Anglophile Tom Brady shilling for Aston Martin or LeBron James’ sudden love for Kia’s spectacularly slow-selling K900, nothing gets eyes on the product faster than having someone famous stand next to it. Surely, none of us would ever fall for such a thing.

Celebrity endorsements, if you want to call it that, only bolsters a non-mouth-breather’s buying decision if it reinforces a previously held position. Already angling for a Chrysler Newport? Well, your favourite star from, say, Barney Miller, agrees it’s a sensible purchase. And several dollars less than Caprice! However, if said celebrity is someone you desire, rather than just respect or admire, it could be argued that there’s some subtle, subconscious influence at work. It it enough to tip the scales in favor of a certain product?

That’s something only you can answer.

The list of celebrity pitchmen (and women) is nearly endless, so you’re spoiled for choice here. There’s the cast members of NBC’s Bonanza or Bewitched selling themselves out to Chevrolet in the 1960s (Robert Vaughn just loves the second-generation Corvair), or Rod Serling’s post-Twilight Zone money grab for Ford’s Thunderbird.

Nice, but what about something the American everyman can really sink his teeth into? What about…a Mazda…from the 1980s? This could be a tough sell to those weaned on Oldsmobiles and Pontiacs. Better get Jim Rockford James Garner on the case.

Sure, he exclusively drove a Firebird Esprit on the show, but that’s only because of a distinct lack of Mazda 323s in the late ’70s.

Garner’s a Grade-A guy, but Dennis Hopper and Sean Connery are likely to get overseas buyers into a new car. Classy.