Fiat ad with a living car

July 20, 2013 • 12:18 pm

This is one of the more amazing ads I’ve seen. It previewed in the ESPN “Body Issue,” and is a Fiat 500 Abarth Cabrio. Made of living bodies.

fiat-1

A detail:

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Here’s the real car:

Picture 1

The picture took five days to put together, involves no PhotoShopping, and is documented on the video below. (There’s more information in the New York Daily News.)

30 thoughts on “Fiat ad with a living car”

  1. I wish more companies would embrace art like this. Coke has had some artistic ads, but too much of advertising is just repetititititive noise that they hope will stick.

    Not that I’m any more likely to buy a Yugo because of this ad, of course. It’s just that, if they’re going to pollute the public consciousness, I’d just as soon they do it with something worth paying attention to for its own sake.

    b&

  4. And in memory of Mel Smith who death was announced today, here is a classic but apposite sketch from Not The Nine O’Clock News

    1. ‘driven by Italians’ – possibly libellous but not without a grain of truth. Italian drivers certainly seem to have enthusiasm. A few days ago I happened to be driving from Domodossola (in Italy) to Locarno (in Switzerland) along the very narrow mountain road through the Centovalli area – my guess is that a lot of Domodossolans work in Locarno and I got caught in the morning rush. I just pulled over whenever I could and let the grand prix go on its way. I noticed that all the Armco (guard rails) as far as Camedo on the border were comprehensively battered; the guard rails on the Swiss side all looked new and undamaged. Curious.

  6. Reminds me (shudder!) of the Nazi projects to make lampshades out of (Jewish) skin.

      1. Well that makes 2 of us, though I was thinking of corpses piled up by the incinerators. I also wonder what message the ad is trying to get through – perhaps “this car is butt-ugly”?

          1. +1

            I found the ad quite tasteful and the sight of the car ‘unfolding’ itself into people fascinating.

  7. sure, amazing photographic technique but for what? Does anybody buy a car because it is perched on a mesa or going 199 MPH on some glacier or something?
    I suppose they must or there wouldn’t be so many idiotic car ads. Their ubiquity is total MEGO.

    1. It’s better than the commercial with the woman in the middle of the road in a bikini who gets apparently driven over by the car being advertised before a scorpion steals her top.

  9. The ultimate use of women’s bodies to sell cars.

    (Well, antepenultimate, but getting there.)

    Now do it with men. And without using computers.

  11. I can hardly wait to hear what FRC and other conservative Christian groups say about this ad. lol.

    I guess lots of car commercials try to use subtle innuendo and suggestion to associate their cars with sex or sex appeal.

    This just comes right out and says driving this car is like being surrounded by an entire orgy of sexy bodies.

    But it’s so literal and open about it that it almost mocks or defamiliarizes the whole idea of using sex for advertising. It says “We aren’t trying to be subtle here. Enjoy these bodies like you’ll enjoy this car.”

    1. I actually didn’t get that from this ad since the bodies don’t seem sexualized. I think it was just going for a unique way of advertising the car in a print ad. Whether this appeals to those who want to buy the Fiat, who knows. What would Don Draper think?

      I always liked the Volkswagen TV commercials, especially this one because it sucks you in and then the last line is hilarious: http://youtu.be/yr5ni-5U7UM

      1. +1 again

        Certainly the female bodies got my attention, but (as you say) they’re not treated in a sexual way.

        Incidentally, I wonder whether the number of bodies used exceeds the number of people who have actually crammed into a small car. There’s a Guiness world record for 28 people in a Mini…

        1. Only 28?

          One summer when I was still in high school, a bunch of us needed to get back from the beach to the camp’s dorms…and all we had was a single econobox. The driver was the only person who had a seat to himself. There were two people straddling the shift lever, two in the “shotgun” seat, maybe even one curled up in the space at their feet under the glove box, four (including me) across the back seat, each of us with somebody on our laps (I got a particularly cute girl), and then at least another three or four, maybe five, in the cargo space under the hatch. Between fifteen and twenty people, all told.

          And there was room for more, if either we curled into the fetal position and were stacked like boxes or were stretched out and stacked like cordwood….

          b&

          1. Darn and I thought I was proud of stuffing 12 people into my 1971 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme with front bucket seats. Eight people stacked two by four in the rear seat, two people stacked on the front passenger bucket seat, one sitting on the center console near the gear shift, and myself driving in the driver bucket seat.

          2. I once got 11 people (most of a netball team) into my Ford Cortina for a 3-mile drive across town. Changing gear did require a certain amount of dexterity. Possibly fortunately no policemen saw us. Probably five people in the rear and six in the front (it had bench seats and the front was slightly more roomy than the back).

  12. I just took a quick look at the specs of the car. Honestly, it seems like nothing so much as a modern version of my parents’s 1955 VW Beetle, down to the same basic dimensions and fuel economy. Of course, this newer car is faster (but no faster in traffic) and has air conditioning and presumably a more comfortable interior and suspension…but that’s about it, really.

    Still, it’s good to see a company aggressively marketing a small, relatively inexpensive car. Now, if only they’d aggressively market a small, relatively inexpensive fuel-efficient car, I might get excited.

    Me? About the only cars on the market that would interest me are the Volt and the Teslas. And, though the prices are fair, no car is worth anywhere near that much money to me.

    So, I’ll be putting in a new interior in my ’68 VW Westfalia once I finish a few other more pressing projects, and I’m saving up to buy a Karmann Ghia and do an electric conversion on it. I won’t rule out the possibility of a new car if something exciting happens between now and the time I’m ready to spend money on the Ghia, but I’d be quite surprised if anything comes out that I’d rather have than an electric Ghia for that kind of money.

    Cheers,

    b&

    1. I’d say it’s got way better performance and handling than your parents’ old Beetle, and probably makes far better use of the interior space.

      I know which I’d rather be driving.

      1. My point was more to bitch that, in the past six decades, we’re still building cars with the same basic footprint and body shape that have the same basic passenger and cargo capacity that’ll get you where you’re going in the same amount of time and use the same amount of gasoline to do so…just with a bit more creature comfort. It’s all evolutionary, not revolutionary.

        Frankly, the Chevy Volt should have come out in the 70s and today’s high-end Tesla should have been an entry-level vehicle in the 80s — and, by now, cars should be fully automated and self-driving.

        That’s ignoring the huge balls we’ve dropped in the realm of mass transit. Rather than all these freeway expansions, we should have 150+ MPH commuter rail lines, light rail on all the major arterial streets, and circulator busses on all other streets; do that, and 80% of traffic can be handled with rapid mass transit at far less cost with people getting where they’re going in a fraction of the time with negligible environmental impact and more than ample room left for bicycles, pedestrians, and the few remaining cases where a car makes sense.

        But that’s crazy talk, I know….

        b&

        1. I would agree that car development sort of flatlined after about the seventies. That is to say that every decade before that, cars improved in performance, handling and comfort by a significant amount. About the seventies, they got it pretty well right (so far as conventional IC engined vehicles goes) and any improvements after that have been incremental. This happens to all technology sooner or later.

          (But, IMO, the original Beetle was well before that point).

          Styling, meanwhile, went backwards. My 1970 Cortina gave the driver excellent views in all directions; one of the many reasons I hate the Prius is you can’t see out of the bloody thing.

          Apropos of your point, I was reading that a French TGV at 60% load factor has a ‘passenger miles per gallon’ equivalent three times better than a Prius with three people in it. And though I love driving – on uncluttered roads – so far as driving in town is concerned, I’d much rather take a train. The enjoyment value of driving in traffic is zero.

  13. Surely an interesting and inventive ad, and a welcome relief from some of the ads used to sell cars. Has this general approach been used with anything else before?

    Otherwise, Cabrio implies ragtop, and I don’t see one. Is a sunroof enough to qualify for that appellation these days?

    1. Oh, and I forgot to add, I’m holding out for Ford to bring the Ka to the US. Till then, I’ll keep driving my Festiva (= Mazda 121, Kia Pride).

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