I hesitate to do this, for the obvious reason that all publicity is good publicity it when it comes to advertisements, but I was struck by the awesome stupidity of the following commercial. There is lots to high(low)light. The misappropriation of Albert Einstein, who never learned to drive a car, much less a a behemoth truck that depends on physics well settled before he was born, is one obvious choice. But the crux (yes) is the “dodge” of the glass half full / glass half empty trope. Here goes [wince]:
See, according to the tired old geezer who narrates, the RAM’s tank is FULL, goshdarnit, meaning, one must suppose, that it is beyond mere optimism (not to mention pessimism), and onto something w/ much more gusto, something down right spirited. What is it?
See RAM’s parent company, Chrysler, has lost half its sales over the past few years, has ranked consistently low in customer satisfaction surveys and just recently exited bankruptcy. That after receiving more than $9 billion in taxpayers loans, which it is unlikely to repay anytime soon, and selling itself to an Italian company. What could be more brawny, brainy and overacheiving than that?
More likely, the “my tank is FULL” thing merely indicates that Chrysler is in a manic phase.
Because in truth, RAM’s tank is full at exactly 26 gallons. That will take you 351 miles. Enough to get lost, certainly. Compare to a Toyota Prius, which will take you 536 miles on 11.6 gallons . (Respective combined miles per gallon are 15 and 50 for the mismatched autos). So the tank isn’t full for very long, folks.
More to brag about from EPA’s fuel economy website:
Sorry drink this glass half empty, but unfortunately for Chrysler, RAM (and the dude who buys it) is more Forest Gump than Einstein, more Sonny Liston than Muhammad Ali. How many dudes like that are out there?
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