After many years of service as an ad writer it probably comes as no surprise to learn that I'm fascinated by old car ads. New ones too, though I'm not impressed with the current crop. It seems that many other folks also enjoy old car ads, judging by the thousands of vintage magazine pages sold by collector outlets like McClellan's. But I didn't realise, until son Philip Jr. forwarded a link plus an image of a Ford Cortina advertisement, that there exists a site where hundreds of ads can be viewed, all neatly cataloged by decade and make. He thought maybe I'd written this one and possibly a Ford Torino ad from the early 70's but no such luck, although I'd worked on Torino in New York and Cortina in London. In fact, not long after arriving in the UK to creative-direct the Ford of Europe account, I was involved in launching the next generation Cortina and its Ford of Germany equivalent, the Taunus (ten days supervising photography in the south of Italy was not hard to take).

The above ad was intended to announce the Cortina's launch in the US, probably in the early 1960's. Obviously a spoof on Volkswagen (in those days everyone called it the Bug, not the Beetle) it emphasised the Cortina's obvious advantages, such as a large trunk, four doors, and considerably more power. Referring to the liner Queen Mary, the ad also made much of the car's British heritage. To put this in perspective you must realise that most North American domestic car advertising was then very conservative, image-related, lacking in humour. So the ad was a brave move by a Ford client and a few agency suits who risked their jobs fighting for an honest creative approach. Unfortunately the mainstream Cortina failed to dent VW sales in the US, probably because of apathy on the part of Ford dealers.