Rocky Hillside

Post details: Masculine, Powerful, Bigger, & Wider

10/15/07

Masculine, Powerful, Bigger, & Wider

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Here's the latest in our continuing series, "Cagers Are Nuts," more accurately known as "I Bought This Car Because My Penis Is Too Short."

Today we feature an ad for the Maruti SX4, an Indian "MAN amongst cars."

If you've spent any time on Indian roads - urban or rural - you'll find the idea of driving a "sports car" in India absurd. On rural roads, a tank with airbags would be a sensible choice. On urban streets, take a rickshaw or a cab?

But, complete irrationality aside, check out Maruti's advertising.

First, here's the name: the SX4. Say that aloud. (Don't try this if you are sitting in a coffeeshop.)

Then, there's the text from the intro on the car's website:

Masculine Body
Largest in Category
Powerful
Wider & Bigger . . .
Steering Mounted . . .
MAN amongst cars

Who is this appealing to? The human equivalent of horny hamsters? Those car writers who think of masturbating when they glimpse dashboard lights?

Watch the video. It's a parody of a car ad. (It might be a parody of e-mail spam.)

Except it's not. This ad is blatant, but it plays the same theme seen the majority of car ads: Buy this car, and you will be transformed from insecure and weak scum to irresistibly virile and hot stud.

The scary thing is that this sex-car connection - though utterly nutso - must exist. Otherwise advertisers wouldn't exploit it so relentlessly. And if the connection is strong enough to get normal people to spend tens of thousands of dollars to satisfy a need they'd be embarrassed to admit they have, how will we ever get people to stop buying cars? Or to stop driving them?

For some it would be like asking them to cut off their maruti.

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Rocky Hillside

In the dark of the moon, in the flying snow, in the dead of winter,

war spreading, families dying, the world in danger,

I walk the rocky hillside, sowing clover.

-- Wendell Berry

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