SELLING THE DREAM

The glamour and excitement of the automobile first had an impact on me through car advertisements. Growing up on Auckland’s North Shore in the conservative early ’60s, there wasn’t much dynamic stuff going on. Everything was pretty bland and socially constrained, but there were glimpses of a world beyond that lay just out of our grasp. One of these early influences was a pile of late ’50s National Geographic magazines. We received these on subscription from a generous uncle in North America. It wasn’t the articles we were poring over though, it was the advertising, particularly the art-styled American car adverts.

The evocative, lusciously coloured and boldly styled auto adverts hit me like a juggernaut. The cars were extravagantly stylised, mirroring America’s fascination with space rockets. The artists exploited fad to the max, depicting the cars’ aggressive long and low stance from exotic angles.

The scenes in the ads were always fun or exotic, and the people gathered around or in the cars were always reduced in size to emphasise the grandeur of the vehicle. The message was loud and clear — own this fine example of American auto design and engineering and your life will be filled with action, you’ll draw a super attractive wife and friends like a magnet, and you will be totally fulfilled. Who was I at age 10 to question this utopian American vision? I took it all at face value, and the allure of a hot set of wheels captured