Unreal cars

Do you know what really grinds my gears? The current trend for car adverts that don’t actually feature real cars. This Nissan advert is a prime example: a bunch of CGI cars being flung around with no consideration for the laws of physics or the fact the consumer might actually be interested in how the car really handles.

There’s a good reason why advertisers use CGI. They can start work on the adverts before the cars have even been produced, and they have more control over how it looks. However, when that control is mishandled and the physicality of what the computer model is representing is lost, it just looks a little bit pants.

With cars, reality will always win. I watched Mad Max the other day – not a great film (that’s the second one), but the action scenes are thrilling because you’re watching actual drivers in actual cars doing actual stupid dangerous things. Compare that to, say, Gone In Sixty Seconds, in which Nick Cage overactingly jumps a cluster of pixels over another cluster of pixels. Yawn.

And while we’re on the subject of stupid car adverts, there’s this, which has quite possibly the most desperate unique selling point ever: The cars “look like they’re moving even when they’re not”.

What? No they don’t. If they did, I imagine they’d be something of a hazard. Is this the best you can do? Who even looks for that in a car? “Hmm, I would buy this otherwise perfect car, but when I park it just sits there looking so very stationary. I want people to think my car is ALWAYS MOVING. My friends and neighbours will cower at the ungodly force of perpetual motion at my control!”

Now this is a good advert. In fact, not only is it a good advert, I think it should be spliced into the last act of Terminator Salvation, a film that looked like it was moving, even when it wasn’t.

And that is what really grinds my gears. Good day to you.