Car brands’ favourite drive-time hit?

A car commercial song so effective it’ll likely never leave the fast lane.

Car companies use songs in their advertisements to brand their car to a particular demographic.

Up-and-comers looking to attract young professional buyers might choose a more obscure, hipper musical selection to accompany their ads in an effort to convey that their cars are more relevant and ‘in the know’ than other brands.

More established marques, on the other hand, might select a more straightforward song that reflects solid values their target customer will relate to.

A new trend started where music artists, responding to the rapidly changing music business, use car commercials as a medium to get their new songs into the mainstream. The use of songs in car commercials has a long history and is continually evolving.

And so to today’s story, triggered by being sent a link by a neighbourhood mate who thought I might have interest in this neat ad America’s retail giant, Walmart, had put together, apparently in tune with Covid-19.

Actually, that’s not quite true. For sure, the grocery pickup scheme it spruiks is certainly not a bad idea in these times of social distancing and in places – such as the US, where Level 2 and Level 3 practices are still being entertaining in some places.

Yet in fact the ad and the idea were conceived and actioned a year ago. So well before Wuhan and the viral nasty were in the headlines; very probably even before Covid-19 had transferred to humans.

Even so, the ad is still worth featuring, not least for the obvious reason that it’s highly-quirky, extremely humorous and features all these cool classic movie cars. The Batmobile, the DeLorean from ‘Back to the Future,’ Scooby Doo's Mystery Machine, the yellow VW Beetle from ‘Bumblebee,’ the Flintstone car …

Turns out Walmart worked with several Hollywood studios to gain access to the vehicles, which mostly are replicas but deemed by studios as most like the ones in the actual films.

So there’s that. The second angle arrived when we hit YouTube and used the name of the soundtrack as a search reference. 

The old label of ‘sellout’ often accompanies the use of a song in a car commercial, but it’s clearly one New Age (kids, ask your parents) pop figure Gary Webb is happy to shoulder, given the royalties he has received just from the song featured in this effort.

In fact not just this effort. Walmart was not alone is selecting this synth classic.

Turns out the discount hypermarket operator was by no means the first to see the potential of ‘Cars’, which was quite a hit for an English singer, songwriter, musician, composer and record producer who goes by the name of Gary Numan when he’s performing.

Evidence from a very cursory web check shows three other brands – Diehard Batteries, Nissan and Oldsmobile - beat Walmart to using this new wave hit of 1979 in an automotive association for America-centric ads.

Remarkably, in today’s lockdown reality, ‘Cars’ has an eerily prescient theme. Numan/Webb says his intent was to impress “about how people use technology and material goods to isolate themselves from human contact.”  Music to the ears of any Pet Goat II-level conspiracy theorists, right?

BTW, ‘Cars’ was Numan's only hit in the US, though he had many others in England, where he retains a large cult following and is recognised as an influence on artists like Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails, which does a nice cover of it.

Anyway, check out all four ads and decide which you like best. Hint: There’s no contest, really. Oh yeah, and as a bonus, also included is the Holden NZ ad that used Numan’s other big hit. Can you pick it? Clue: Volt.