Cool "Car Art" Illustrations

1966 Plymouth VIP

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I work in advertising and it's interesting to me that automobile ads almost always used illustrations instead of photographs. That is until DDB created the Think Small ad for Volkswagen in 1959. It's been called the best ad of 20th century. In its campaign for VW, DDB only used photographs.
 
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Fishfan said:
I work in advertising and it's always been interesting to me automobile ads almost always used illustrations instead of photographs. That is until DDB created the Think Small ad for Volkswagen in 1959. It's been called the best ad of 20th century. In its campaign for VW, DDB only used photographs.
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We can't get into it in this thread, but to your point this older piece at link takes a viewpoint using that VW photo ad from 1959.

VW could not make its marketing message - counter to the big FINS, space-age pointy tail lights, wide-track, chrome everywhere. and other excesses of the '50's - thematically work with "art" .. they needed a photo to add simple "credibility" an illustration could be questioned on.

source: A Brief History of Automotive Marketing

"In 1912, Henry Ford said: “Ford advertising never attempts to be clever.”

However, as the ’20s arrived and the adverts became brighter with beautiful Art Deco illustrations, even Ford couldn’t keep it simple. Ad agencies were brought in to drive the creativity of the adverts forward.

Even in the ’30s when America was struggling with The Depression, streamlined car ads cut through the darkness of the erat was after WWII that car adverts looked to the future with illustrations that became more ridiculous and futuristic.

Cars were still a luxury, but there was more competition, and car makers’ efforts in the war were used to promote new consumer offerings (e.g., longer, wider, bigger, more luxurious, etc.

Car ads were getting bigger and more over the top through the ’50s — much like American cars of the time — but it was Volkswagen that changed all that with its iconic 1959 advert for the Beetle with the tagline “Think Small.”

This is where the motoring world and the marketing that went along with it split."

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There was a famous lecture called "9 ways to improve an ad." It was a tongue-in-cheek speech intended to show how the new advertising of the 60s creative revolution was superior to the old thinking that had dominated the industry for decades. I've shown this to students for years.

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Fishfan said:
I work in advertising and it's interesting to me that automobile ads almost always used illustrations instead of photographs. That is until DDB created the Think Small ad for Volkswagen in 1959. It's been called the best ad of 20th century. In its campaign for VW, DDB only used photographs.
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I think one of the reasons advertisers used illustrations so much in those days is that they made the cars and the settings seem more dreamy and lush than actual photography could. Photography is generally grittier and more realistic and I think auto makers were trying to sell images and illusions of various lifestyles. I actually prefer illustrations to photography for the most part. Of course there are some exceptions such as the Volkswagen campaign which was legendary.
 
67newport said:
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these 1950 Nash Ambassadors, as an example of many different cars/brands, are exaggerated "low and long" depictions.

In their defense, they WERE long/lean designs in real life .. the illustrator however gave them just a bit more length vs. height (in the illustration they almost look "chopped") than they really had.
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