Are these the best car adverts ever?

Car adverts tend to follow certain tropes, but some stand out from the fleet for their originality. A Twitter thread has gone viral after collecting together some of the best car adverts, and most of them have one thing in common.

While the array of media available for advertising has expanded hugely with TV, radio and the web, most of these clever car adverts demonstrate the enduring power of the best print ads and billboard advertising – especially when they have witty copy.

George Mack of digital marketing agency The Marketing Plug and author of Mack's Best Ads on Twitter says he only shares 0.1% of ads or marketing he finds, so we know we're dealing with a select batch of car ads here. For each of the 13 ads he's chosen, he identifies a principle that they demonstrate. 

That ranges from Volvo showing its USP in an extreme environment by demonstrating its car surviving being run over by a monster truck to Toyota making fun of statistics with its very specific claim that "93% of owners of a Land Cruiser can't remember the original color of their car".

From BMW to the Volkswagen Golf, many of the ads highlighted are successful because of their clever copy. Be it Porsche's humble brag of winning nine of 10 places at Le Mans 1983 or Audi's "can't stop driving" on an image of two bank robbers searching for their getaway car, the copy is the star of the show (see our article on why copywriting is important and also the world examples of one particularly annoying copywriting trend. We've also made a pick of the best car logos of all time).