Having grown up obsessed with cars and car magazines in the late 90s and early 00s, I decided to pay homage to something that sits at the core of my copywriting brain – the 90s car ad.
Often awash with outlandish claims, clever wordplay and striking imagery, these ads helped ignite a love for creative advertising. You could often find 7 year old Ben scribbling away with felt tips, drawing and writing my own car magazines and adverts back in 2002.
So, what better way to stretch my creative legs than to mock up some 90s car ads? This time, I’m armed with more than crayons and printer paper. I’ve got 6 years of copywriting experience, and some mediocre Canva skills…
Ford Escort RS Cosworth
One of the most iconic cars of the 90s, was the ‘Cossie’. It had the bones of a common Escort: a safe, economical and relatively boring small family hatchback. But the Ford Rally Sport treatment, combined with the incredible engineering at Cosworth, created a monster.
The result was a car that far exceeded it’s hot-hatch credentials, and saw it rival cars like the BMW M3 and Audi Quattro. It was essentially a practical, every-day sports car. Here you’ll see that I’ve played on the duality of this iconic car, with a nod towards it’s humble beginnings, but a firm reminder of it’s WRC-winning pedigree.
Here the focus is on two things:
1) Practicality – the target audience has a family. They need to be able to fit the shopping in the boot and the kids in the back. It has to be park-able and be able to go over speedbumps.
2) Status – Cosworth is a big name in motorsport. From F1 to Rally, wherever they contribute their engineering know-how, sporting success isn’t far behind. Buying into the name Cosworth is a big deal for pistonheads.
Lamborghini Diablo
Lamborghini are an advertisers’ dream. They’re hyperbolic in every sense. They build some of the fastest, most technically brilliant and outlandish cars on earth. Their naming conventions are also great. Instead of uninspiring numbers and letters, Lamborghini used the names of famous fighting bulls to name their cars.
The Diablo was the follow up to the infamous Countach – a car immortalised in cinema and TV, thanks to its futuristic looks. It was a tough act to follow. The crazy air scoops and brutalist styling were nowhere to be seen in the Diablo. It’s styling was far more subtle . But underneath it was something far more unhinged than it’s predecessor.
Here I’ve played on the common phrase: The devil is in the detail, as ‘El Diablo’ is of course Italian for ‘The Devil’. The remaining part of that saying also refers to the finer details of the Diablo’s predecessor – the gull-wing doors, the aggressive door-wedge body shape and the toned-down cooling vents.
The wants and needs of the target audience for this car are much more linear. Status is all important. A supercar purchase is made purely in pursuit of social status. I suppose adrenaline/impulse play a big role too.
Volvo 850
The Volvo 850 was just one in a long line of bulletproof, tank-like estate cars made by the Swedish marque. They may not have been the best looking, nor the fastest, but they marketed on two key traits:
- Longevity – you still see these things on the roads today, and some owners report 400-500k miles on the odometer!
- Safety – Volvo literally invented the seatbelt, then made the patent public so that every car company could use their design. They are SERIOUS about safety.
They also have more room inside than a 5 bed house, which is great for big families and St Bernard owners.
I tried to reflect these qualities in my ad copy:
The angle I took was to make the car feel like an old timepiece or family heirloom that is passed down through generations – something that will appreciate with time. Anecdotally, I also know of three people who have inherited a Volvo, so it checks out in that respect.
The Volvo target audience in the 1990s was largely older drivers. They value safety, quality and reliability, and don’t mind paying a little more to get it. They want to feel safe when they drive, and they want thier kids to be safe too.
Ben Greenwood - Copywriter 
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