The one for the Outlander, where they put it on “The Most Dangerous Road.”
If you haven’t seen it, they take a couple of Mitsubishi Outlanders to a narrow mountain road in Bolivia and show them driving. The announcer says " If our Outlanders can handle this road, imagine what they can do on yours!"
But, come on! Look at the road! It’s graded! I don’t even see any washboards or rocks bigger than pebbles. Sure it has some steep dropoffs (very steep). But at one point they show their Outlander navigating past a bus. A bus! “If a bus can handle this road, imagine how it would do on a city street.”
The impression I get from the commercial is that they are telling me that their vehicle can drive on a graded road in the hills without plunging off the side of its own volition. And can navigate around a bus that it happens to meet up there. Wow.
Not deserving of a full-on pitting but I wanted to point out this particular mundane point. As a commercial for the “world’s most advanced all-wheel control” system I just don’t feel it. I think the Ford and Chevy commercials showing their crossovers or SUVs plowing through snow or rainy streets speaks more to what I might encounter.
Well, most car commercials have the disclaimer “professional driver on a closed course.” If Mitsubishi closed that road in Bolivia and staged the encounter with the bus, that makes it doubly sneaky. If they didn’t, I’d say it gives them a little more integrity than usual.
I once saw that disclaimer on a commercial that didn’t involve any stunt driving at all. It was just a car driving around a city street but I’m sure their legal department put that on every commercial sent out. I think it was before I joined here or I’m sure I would have posted that one with the “So I shouldn’t drive your car on a city street?” rhetorical question.
It is just a take-off of the “TOP GEAR” special from a couple of years ago.
Rather lazy of them. And for those familiar with the Top Gear episode they’ll be thinking “errr…a knackered Suzuki Jimny, Range Rover and Land cruiser did that far more impressively”
There was a cable show (Discovery or maybe History) about the worlds most dangerous road. I’m pretty sure it was the one in Bolivia.
What made it dangerous was the drivers more than the terrain. It was the only route into that region of the country. People were driving very recklessly and there was a lot of road rage. Truckers were literally pushing cars off the road that were stalled or driving to slow. I watched the cable show and it was just nuts. There was not effort to police that road at all.
