Ranking the 'Mount Rushmore' of terrible car commercials portraying river and environmental harm
Disclaimer: I screamed in frustration while compiling these commercials so you don't have to.
Greetings readers - I’m glad (and a bit surprised) I’ve managed to convince a few of you to read another article from the Fish, Birds and Words blog. If you read last month’s article on my rantings about car commercials and their poor river stewardship portrayals, you’ll enjoy this week’s follow up Mount Rushmore-style ranking of the worst car commercials relating to terrible river driving practices. Truly a Happy President’s Day indeed, and I couldn’t think of a better way to honor Lincoln, Washington, and the rest of our presidential leaders by reviewing these dreadful commercials.
Without further adieu, below are some of the most egregious commercials I could find that do their best Sherman’s March to the Sea impression on the environment. For the sake of all things holy, I’m thankfully only subjecting you folks to the top four worst ones I could find. Please enjoy my ranking below, and you’ll even get some bonus material at the end if you read the entirety of the article. Good luck and stay strong.
4. Toyota Helix Toyota Helix | Born to Roam (2020)
As folks may recall from last month’s article, I made mention of this commercial since it has the notorious distinction of getting banned by the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority last year due to it’s distasteful environmental portrayal. The ASA ruled in it’s official ban statement that the commercial was “grossly prejudicial” to the environment, which strikes me as an incredibly British-English way of saying “this commercial is heinous, bro”.
This ad, like others down the list, raised some very concerning questions for me as I watched. Like, who’s idea was it to film upwards of 20+ Toyota Hilux trucks driving through a river, full wildebeest stampede-style? How many takes did it take to get just the right shot of all the cars together in the river? I just picture this director railing cocaine and going on a Rambo-like rampage while directing that shot - “More river driving! more trucks! Cut! Action! More! MORE!”.
This commercial getting banned is giving Bob Gibson, like the kids say. As in it’s giving Bob’s historical 1968 season in which his dominant pitching caused the MLB to changes their rules and lower the height of the pitcher’s mound, giving batters a better chance at getting a hit off him. Like Bob Gibson’s pitching, this commercial was so egregious that the ASA, like the MLB, literally had to enact a rule change for the betterment of society. Congrats Toyota for this dubious honor, and I really appreciate you for forcing me to use Gen Z slang against my will.
3.Range Rover Sport | Taming the Tide (2017)
Where do I begin with a commercial this fantastically terrible? First off, the premise of this ad is to see who wins in a race between two swimmers and a Range Rover around two points of the River Avon in the south of England. This is the sort of race that the hosts on the show Top Gear could have cooked up, and given that show’s immense popularity in the UK, seems like it would strike a positive chord with the car enthusiasts of the British Isles. But the longer you watch this video, the more it begins to make zero actual sense, and at least for me started to actually kill my last remaining brain cells as I watched it.
I really get lost right around the 0:54 mark when the vehicle literally decides to turn into a seal and drive adjacent to the swimmers in the breaking beach waves. The 1:05 mark shows the vehicle maybe 15ft away from the swimmers, which A) can’t really be safe for the swimmers at all, and B) driving through that high of salt water simply cannot be good for any vehicle’s undercarriage, brake system, or other vital vehicle parts.
And Just to address the environmental impact of this commercial - I know I’ve previously focused on the damages of river driving, but taking a vehicle on a beach can also be incredibly harmful to coastal ecosystems. There’s growing scientific evidence to support that humans should probably just stop driving on beaches all together to protect sensitive coastal habitats and species. From shore crabs to sanddabs to plover chicks, many beach-dwelling species haven’t evolved proper biological defenses against 2 ton metal machines driving through their habitats, so perhaps it’s time for people to end this practice and for car commercials to stop depicting it as something cool and exciting to do.
2. Kia EV9 | The Most Beautiful Demos: AWD (2024)
Now we’re really at the point where the rubber meets the river with these commercials. you’ll recall I similarly made mention of this gem in last month’s article. This particular ad places highly on this list as it’s the most blatant commercial depiction I’ve seen of actively using river driving/degradation as a direct marketing selling point. Although our shortest commercial listed, it sadly makes up for it’s short duration with lengthy stupidity. It’s a part of Kia’s new “Most Beautiful Demo” Series that they launched around their EV line of vehicles last year, and is one of several commercials to feature these very attractive yet highly smug looking “professionals” running the Kia through a series of “tests”.
As you may agree, the worst part of this commercial is the gentleman with the shit-eating grin who’s proctoring the highly robust “capability test” that involves literally just clicking a checked box on a tablet to indicate simply “yes, this car can drive through a river”. Thanks for such a highly rigorous amount of testing Kia, we really appreciate the diligence done! The species inhabiting that river really appreciate that test too, I’m sure.
And speaking of EVs, there’s an additional level of irony to this commercial given it’s literally a vehicle designed to have a lower impact on the environment from an emissions perspective. Maybe, Kia, it would have been worth just that additional extra level of thought regarding how you market a supposedly better environmental product while blatantly harming the ecosystem you’re filming in? Clearly not. Ironic, and also just really mind-numbingly stupid.
Land Rover (Defender) | No Time to Die (2020)
And just like that, we’ve reached the top spot on our Mount Rushmore list! Thanks for getting this far, and hopefully your last remaining brain cells haven’t been ousted by the intensity of how dumb these commercial depictions have been. Now buckle up for the big Kahuna of terrible car commercials for the environment, Land Rover’s No Time to Die Commercial.
This commercial, as you may have guessed after watching, was released in 2021 as a joint marketing partnership with Land Rover to promote latest James Bond film, “No Time to Die”. Unlike James Bond though, who’s actions try to save his beloved England or generally preserve world peace, this commercial protects nothing, from the environment to my aforementioned dying brain cells.
From the ripped hillsides to the cars driving through the river as it’s chased by a helicopter, this commercial has the highest degree of stupidity and direct environmental impact. I’m making an assumption here, but if that steep hillside adjacent to that river is the same filming location, the amount of erosion caused during filming would 100% have a negative impact on that river’s ecology. With all those tires ripping up the dirt, the amount of sediment created would flow directly into the river down the hill and would very much harm any sort of living species inhabiting the drainage, particularly salmonids. This video again gives me the sad realization that a commercial like this likely took multiple takes to shoot, only increasing the amount of riparian, habitat, and species harm with each take.
Congratulations on having the willpower to read the entirety of this article and watch all the above videos. Really, I mean it. Hopefully you came away with some takeaways like A) there’s a ton of irony and stupidity in car commercials when it comes to environmental portrayals, and B) car companies can and should do a hell of a lot better with their advertising.
The point of me wasting precious minutes of my life by compiling these videos was partially to provide some comedic relief, but also to highlight how ubiquitous these poor environmental portrayals are throughout global car brand marketing media. In an era where our freshwater ecosystems are seriously hurting due to climate change impacts, media can be such a powerful educational tool to millions of people on how best to do your part in treating our environment with more respect.
Car companies simply need to step up to the plate (hopefully against a pitcher not named Bob Gibson) and provide media-positive representation of how their cars should be driven by consumers. This would go a long way towards educating consumers on better environmental practices, and steer people away from being compelled to drive their vehicles with reckless abandon through sensitive habitats.
But hey, until car companies actually start stepping up on this, enjoy this action compilation video of some of the most environmentally poor car commercials I could find. Enjoy, from me, to you.
Video music credit: www.purple-planet.com