Volkswagen has received a good response to the ad it ran during the Superbowl last weekend. Titled “An American Love Story,” the 60-second ad and an extended version attempt to cultivate nostalgia for the brand’s most iconic cars, such as the original Beetle and the Microbus.
The ad generated the greatest online engagement among those presented by automakers, according to EDO, an ad-rating service. Other participating automakers included BMW, Hyundai and Toyota (Gauthier, 2024).
Peter DeLorenzo (2024) described the ad as a “heartfelt tribute to the role that VW and specifically the Beetle have played in American culture.” He was impressed with the quality of the ad’s execution, calling it “just about perfect.”
DeLorenzo’s (2024) only complaint was that toward the last quarter of the ad, footage of current and future products “starts to feel a bit forced, and it certainly lacks the emotion of the Beetle nostalgia tour that preceded it.”
VW loses touch with what made it different
I would point to two interlocking problems with the ad. It does little to articulate why people were drawn to VWs during the brand’s glory days, when it was the best-selling import in the United States. My guess is that the reason why the ad hides behind vague and mushy nostalgia is that VW no longer makes the kind of cars that put the automaker on the map here.
Also see ‘Is brand management really an automaker’s No. 1 priority?’
VW executives would presumably disagree with that assertion by pointing to the nostalgia-tinged ID.Buzz, an electric vehicle whose styling evokes the Microbus. Alas, like so many retro designs, this one shares few of the substantive qualities of the original. Preliminary reports state that the vehicle will be fairly large and expensive (Vaughn, 2023; Stafford, 2024). That’s the opposite of the Microbus.
A similar problem bedeviled VW’s so-called New Beetle, which sort-of looked like the original but functioned as a style-conscious personal coupe rather than a simple economy car (go here for further discussion).
Volkswagen is now such a different company than it was in the 1950s and 1960s that I don’t get the impression that it could build a car anything like the original Beetle or Microbus even if its life depended upon it. So in a very real sense, the Superbowl ad functioned as a eulogy for an automaker that once knew how to march to a different drummer than Detroit.
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RE:SOURCES
- DeLorenzo, Peter; 2024. “The Super Bowl, Continued.” Auto Extremist. Posted Feb. 12.
- Gauthier, Michael; 2024. “VW’s Super Bowl Commercial Was The Big Winner Last Night.” Carscoops. Posted Feb. 12.
- Groove Guild: VW Super Bowl LVIII “An American Love Story” commercial (2024)
- Stafford, 2024. “2025 Volkswagen ID.Buzz Microbus.” Car and Driver. Accessed Feb. 16.
- Vaughn, Mark; 2023. “VW Reveals Full US Spec ID. Buzz And Suddenly The Minivan Is Cool Again.” Autoweek. Posted June 2.
Do people even want a modern VW beetle or microbus? The subcompact is still around but not in the numbers it used to be. When VW made its big spland in late 50s early 60s they were unique. The import market afterthought captive imports or sold out of some hole in the wall. VW showed up full service dealerships in new buildings and frankly created the modern dealership The microbus was simply unique. It was imitated and brought back a couple times but its day seems over. I would say the nearest market equivalent combinine inexpensive, innovative, and multi use would be tne Ford Maverick.
Welp, I’ve argued that there is a need for a modern simple car (go here).
As far as the Microbus goes, obviously some modernization would be needed, such as ditching the unsafe cab-forward design and rear engine. If indeed the Ford Maverick is the “nearest market equivalent,” I’d say that underlines how far we’ve gone astray. That’s a pretty large and heavy vehicle in comparison, e.g., 200 inches long, 72 inches wide and upwards of almost 3,600 pounds.
The early VWs were also exceptionally different from Detroit fare because they emphasized function over form and militantly rejected planned obsolescence. Pretty much every vehicle VW sold could be marketed with a rare degree of honesty. As we’ve discussed here, VW’s legendary ad campaign was partly possible because the cars were so unusual.
I was pretty shocked by the Maverick’s size once I looked into it. However it’s the same do anything, reconfigure to your heart’s content type of vehicle. Were I younger I would be very interested.
The VW ad is certainly about evoking a nostalgic emotion for the brand. Yet, the Beetle was already well past its by the time it stopped selling in the US. The Golf/Rabbit and Polo were the VW future of thoroughly modern on the international stage.
VW evolved to be a viable corporation to the point where they are now the largest auto maker in the world.
A while back Indie Auto posted a story that asked: If you were head of Volkswagen of America in 1959, what would you have done to prepare for the onslaught of Big Three compacts (go here)? I suspect that a designer steeped in Detroit’s ways would have emphasized updating the Beetle’s styling. Instead, VW kept the Beetle’s basic look but incrementally improved its practical aspects while focusing on offering exceptional manufacturing quality and relatively inexpensive replacement parts. That strategy worked quite well for a decade — which is a long time in the fast-changing auto industry.
The great irony of VW is that although it was one of the most unorthodox automakers in the 1960s, in recent decades it has slavishly copied GM’s approach. This can be most obviously seen in its enormous number of brands, which all but forces the automaker to place more emphasis on brand management than innovative engineering.
That change in corporate strategy required a different kind of designer. You can see that with the comments of former design head Walter de Silva, who clearly was so steeped in brand management that I suspect he would not have understood what made the Beetle successful (go here).
1959. VW’s rear engine configuration was still a viable solution being used by a lot of companies, including the Corvair. Relative to the other imports in the US, VW mandated that the service side of a dealership had just as much importance as the sales side and that a good supply of parts was maintained. The reliability of cars in general at that time allowed an opportunity for VW to make that a strength of theirs. Society was changing with more women in the workforce making the need for second cars and the baby boomers getting their cars.
But, I would further argue that although VW loved the US market they had lots of expansion opportunities around the world as Europe was still recovering from the devastation of WWII. Other parts of the world were in development where there was a need for simple, cheap and durable first cars. It is possible that these places carried more weight back in Wolfsburg than what a head of VW of America might want. The US did get incremental changes with larger engines and various improvements.
It should also be considered that when a potential buyer walked into a VW dealership they were welcomed buy one of these cars. That might not be true at the Chevrolet store where the salesforce might not understand why the person did not really want the Impala.
They make the Up but surely if that were sold here I’d be among the dozens of people who would buy one.
The Atlas Cross has the bearing of a Panzer tank. The hippies became yuppies who begat the rolling fallout shelter generation.
Well said. The Atlas makes me shiver whenever I see one, and not in a good way.