I can't believe this would actually motivate someone to buy this car.

I was just thinking of these shit cars... can you imagine walking into a showroom and seeing a mint Mercury Topaz? Seriously, can you imagine someone test driving one? Then willfully buying it? A TOPAZ!

IIRC, for the time the Taurus was a pretty OK car, especially when you consider the fuel-crisis inspired crap that the neighbours were still pushing (Chrysler had its K car and Chevy had the Celebrity).

I don't care how bad the competitors cars might have been, that ad would stop me from ever buying any Ford product ever, ever.

Some products (such as detergent) don't need to be sold through commercials. All they have to do is create awareness for the product, especially at the time this ad was made, which was a particularly unsophisticated time period in the history of marketing. However, I will say that most "awareness" ads with annoying jingles were for low involvement products like detergent, soap, etc. I'm not sure how it works with regard to high involvement goods such as cars. I'm guessing it did its part as the Taurus was the best-selling car in the US for a long, long time.

Yeah. Back in those times, jingles sold things.

Pretty sure there is no American car made in the 80s that I have any desire to drive.

I wouldn't mind a spin in a C4 'Vette, Fiero, DMC-12, IROC, Vector W8, Cadillac Allante, if you want to count it, the Chrysler Conquest...I'm sure there are others, I just can't think of them right now.

NO none. Zero interest in any of the cars listed.

Buick Grand National

Stop drinking that Haterade.



Haha...I actually found that on Google Image Search. VAGinas.



Ooh, can't believe I missed that one.

ZERO

I don't blame aircooled.....

I'm with Aircooled on the 80's American car thing...

That add was pretty bad, it's got to be tough selling a car like that. How about this awesome add:



A good one from the 80s, haha:



EDIT: That didn't work, what the hell?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5742lkExarc

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmYPS1orNiw

Why? It may seem pretty crappy now, but the Taurus was actually light years ahead of its competition back then.

Actually there are very few cars from the 80s in general that I would want to drive, some exceptions would be say a GTi or 325i.

Ferrari F40, Porsche 959, Lamborghini Countach 25th Anniversary Edition, Ferrari 288 GTO...?

I'm talking common cars here Razor, not Ferraris and Lambos etc.

...yet somehow Ford did better then than it is now

Dodge/Chrysler made some nice cars in the 80s. Basically all the Carroll Shelby inspired ones. My brother has a 89 Shelby Daytona, a friend has a Spirit R/T (granted that was early 90s). But my personal favorite is the Omni GLHS, 175hp/tq from a car that small and light made for a nice track car, plus the car was easy to modify for the extra hp.

I'm not saying they were better than muscle cars or better than today's cars, but for back in the 80s, for having good gas mileage and performance they were pretty decent IMO.

http://www.allpar.com/omni/GLHS.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWV0D5yrhxk

I'm a big fan of all the turbo Dodge cars from the 80s

Ford Fanboy would buy '80s Ford cars:

Thunderbird (Took my driving test in an '84, Turbo Coupe is also nice)
5.0 Mustangs
Broncos (But not Bronco II, nasty)
F-series (duh)
Crown Vic/LTD (natrually)

Heh it's a cheesy ad but I can see how it could sell cars. It's actually pretty true, "an american car with a shape and a feel we've never seen before"...that was the Taurus in the '80s.

what about omni GLH?