The arrest of Chris Gore this week in a Prius reminded me of a TV commercial idea I had two years ago:
We open on a Prius zipping along, and the driver hear sirens. He looks in the rearview mirror– it’s a cop. The Prius and cop pull over, and the cop gets out of the car and heads over. The cop pokes his head in the driver window.
COP: “You were doing 85 miles an hour in a hybrid car, and there’s not a judge in the state who’ll believe me. Now get out of here and stop speeding.”
The driver starts the Prius and drives off, carefully but smiling.
VOICEOVER: The Toyota Prius. Good for the environment, and good for your wallet. In more ways than one.
Officer walks back to his car and tries to start it, but the engine won’t turn over. The gas tank reads “Empty”.
COP: “Ahhhhh, nuts.”
VOICEOVER: Did we mention it gets fifty-four miles to the gallon?
Hahaha… priceless.
Apparently the Prius is governed to a top speed of 103MPH to avoid running down the battery too fast.
(Although the engine *does* run while it’s running at highway speeds, i suspect that at that sort of speeds the battery would be supplementing the drive.)
My favourite “incongruous” commercial was one my mother showed me years ago when she was Copy Chief at Leslie Advertising in Greenville SC – opens with a motorcycle gang roaring through the night.
The bikers stop in the parking lot of a roadhouse.
They enter en masse.
They take off their helmets, and it’s a bunch of litle old ladies and they order Lipton (i think) tea.
(This was about ten or more years before the Pythons did the “Hell’s Grannies” sketch.)
That commercial idea is kinda brilliant.