…for one brief shining moment…
by Wallace Wyss –
OK I’ll admit it. I was part and parcel of it in the beginning, back in the mid-‘60s, writing ads that gave scant attention to the mechanicals of a new car, trying to sell a car on the fact that it was beautiful, or spacious or, hey, implying that ‘buy one of these and you can live in a nice house like this’ (I still remember the ’62 Thunderbird Sports Roadster ad that showed the car parked next to a nice stone fence, and the implication was, buy a car like this and this is where you deserve to live).
Then Peter Brock came along. Yes, the same barefoot-boy-with-cheek, Pete Brock who was first a driving instructor for Carroll Shelby at the Carroll Shelby School of High Performance, then a t-shirt designer, and eventually car designer (Cobra Daytona coupe). But he also had a hand in laying out the ads and maybe even writing the words.
And I have to say his jus-plain-folks approach had reverberations throughout the ad industry, at least in so far as telling more about the car’s mechanicals in the case of muscle cars. I mean the purity of Brock’s ads is that there is no reference to beauty, no nice house in the background, no pretty girls, just the hard facts on the mechanical bits.
And it was refreshing.
I think it was after that I wrote some similar Chevy ads, like one for a 396-engined car and called it “The Toughest Block on the block” and indeed it was. But I didn’t get into the detail of the Brock-created Shelby ads.
Sadly, Brock left Shelby’s employ just about the time the more sophisticated GT40s came in. He told me himself that “the Shelby employees looked at the guys coming in from Detroit to work on the GT40 as the enemy.” So the result was that J. Walter Thompson, the huge ad agency, started doing Shelby ads and wouldn’t cha know, they were back to the vague generalities and pretty houses and beautiful women.
Maybe Pete Brock’s approach wouldn’t work anymore. It’s too honest. Just specs and nothing else. Who needs wordsmiths for chrissakes? (Or am I talking myself out of a job?)
But I wanted to present these two ads, and the cutaway ad, to show that, damn it, when you are selling mechanical things to mechanically-minded people why not go heavy on the specs?
We don’t need to be razzmatazzed (Hey, I made that word up…but it fits).
Let us know what you think in the Comments.
Wallace Wyss
THE AUTHOR: Wallace Wyss was a copywriter for three agencies. He currently wears a fine art hat, for a list of Shelby-related prints, write mendoart7@gmail.com
As the old G in automotive advertising (that’s “Old gal” and this is year 31 for me), I appreciate this more than most. One thing is clear. These cars were meant to be driven! No touchy-feely needed. We’ve lost a lot of that.
You don’t have to be from BBDO or Ogily to know what any good salesman/saleswoman, selling anything knows–KNOW THY MARKET/BUYER.
Specs are great, but most “regular” people don’t know what any spec terminology actually means. The means to sales success is volume sales, hence people can identify with aspiring to buying nice homes will lead to more sales..
The most successful new model out of Detroit ever sold was the Ford Mustang, 400,000 units sold in its first year. The Ford marketing people accomplished this by promoting the Mustang as a car that can go in any direction – sporty economical car, personal luxury car, or high-performance sports car – you could customize it in any style that suited your own personal taste – every market – more volume, not just the high-performance market.
Glenn in Brooklyn, NY.
I purchased one of the early 1965 Mustang fastbacks in Caspian blue with the 289 high-performance K engine putting out 271 horsepower ( very underrated) from Barnes-Kotler Ford on Flatbush Ave just before the bridge many years ago. I had to wait almost a year for it.
Bob,
Was it worth the wait? And did any advertising influence your decision?
Mike, How are you? The answer to your question is “YES”! The car was very, very fast. I drag raced against Corvettes with 340hp and edged them out. Even though my car wasn’t a GT350 i made it look like one eventually. I then put in the plexiglass windows behind the driver and front passenger, removing the metal vents. I had a 1957 metal T-Bird hood scoop grafted onto my hood. I then became fascinated with Carroll Shelby and the Cobras and then the Ford GT40 beauties. I got the fever. I was “Bitten by the Snake”. I purchased every book on Shelby, the Cobras and the GT40’s. I joined the SAAC. I was “hooked”. At a certain point i felt i must have a GT40 even though i couldn’t afford one. So, i put the Mustang up for sale in order to purchase a Fiberfab Valkyrie replica kit of the GT40 along with their rectangular ladder frame and various adaptors to mate up a spare Ford 289 K engine to a Corvair transaxle. I picked up a Ford-Chevy bell housing and Corvair front crossmember and rear suspension, front windshield and various other parts from an auto wrecking yard that had a fairly new Corvair with these components. I rebuilt all the suspension components and rebuilt the braking system with sintered metallic brake linings and new wheel cylinders. I put 4 new Koni shocks all around. I installed a fairly new Jaguar XKE radiator and electric fan set-up angled at the front in front of the Corvair’s gas tank. Right above the gas tank i installed a competition gas cap like the competition CSX Cobras had. I then drove the running chassis, less body , to a friend nearby that had alignment equipment in his garage in back of his house. I then was ready for the finishing of the body and a paint job. The body was very rough with plenty of tiny pin holes. I had these twin brothers who worked at a body shop nearby come to work on the body after their day job. They worked on it for a few weekend until it was ready to be painted. I drove it to their bosses’ body shop where they painted it “Sebring Silver and told me to only wash it with mild soapy water and not anything else and to wait for an entire month until the painting its’ metallic pigments settled before they were ready to rub it down with compound. When they were done i actually had the “balls” to drive it to Canada with my 1st wife. We were on our way to Quebec City. On the way there i stopped at a Renault dealership and purchased a pair of Cibie rectangular headlamps, which at that time weren’t legal in the USA. From there i drove on to Quebec City and back to Brooklyn,NY with no problems at all. Later on, my friend Tommy the Greek, who also built a Valkyrie at the same time as i removed my present headlamps and modified the opening to accept the Cibie headlamps. Then i sprayed the area around the Cities and under the plexiglass covers with flat black paint and the rest is history.
Read more about Bob Wachtel’s Mustang and Valkyrie here: https://mycarquest.com/2020/11/acquired-ac-cobra-427-csx-3129.html