I’ve long had it with Audi. Like most cliché-loving car companies that can’t help but sell the sizzle for the steak they hypervaunt their cars to be magical life-changing devices full of sexy. In the past Audi’s claimed their product line can “reawaken one’s long-lost love of driving.” Really Audi? Is that the best you could do?
But then it gets even worse with this most recent ad above — slickly filmed here in Los Angeles to add insult to injury. My wife Susan can attest to how much I loath it. The several times we’ve seen it she’s had to endure me involuntarily contorting, usually followed with obscene gesticulations that underscore a monologue laced with foul language directing where Audi can uber-shove their stupid and stupidly expensive cars.
Do I take it too seriously? Absolutely. But why shouldn’t I what with the cheapshots Audi felt compelled to take at such easy targets as crowded buses (trundling along the 6th Street Bridge), bike commuting (in fake rain no less while going the wrong way up one-way Flower Street south of the Disney Hall), Segways (at 7th and Grand), and veggie-powered wagons (in Griffith Park). Bastards. Go pick on someone with your own overinflated sense of self-importance.
Particularly rankling is the spot’s elitist tag line: “Many people are trying to do their part,” the narrator intones over a scene of a Segway rider having trouble negotiating through pedestrians at the aforementioned downtown corner. Then it cuts to a winding section of what looks to be Mt. Hollywood Drive (ironically closed to vehicular traffic) wherein an Audi A3 TDI “Clean Diesel” five-door aggressively blows by an aged Volvo wagon sporting a “Powered by Vegetable Oil” bumper sticker (passing on a blind curve no less). After that comes the narrator with the kicker: “Some, just have more fun doing it.”
At 5,141 commuter miles biked this year Audi: some of us just have more fun calling bullshit.
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