5 Of The Weirdest Car Ads From The '80s You Can't Help But Laugh At Today

When we look back on the decades of the past, they seem to each have a flavor all their own. There's the retro-future vibes of the 1950s and the hippie aesthetic of the '60s. The '70s had disco, the '80s had neon and new wave, and so on. Often, you can clock the age of a piece of media based on the look or the sound, within just a few seconds, and the world of car commercials is no different.

These days, automotive advertisements have celebrities driving down traffic-free roads or up a dirt mountain path. They largely focus on the capabilities of a vehicle while making them look as luxurious as possible. But a few decades ago, things were a little different. Car commercials weren't invented in the '80s, but that might have been the decade when they reached peak weirdness. Back then, all you needed to sell a car was a fever dream and the courage to put it on film. There were plenty of truly bizarre car commercials in the '80s, here are five of the weirdest.

The Batmobile has Batman, the Quinjet has the Avengers, and the Chevrolet Citation X-11 has Single Person, a superhero bearing red tights, shiny shorts, and a winged headpiece. The ad begins with our spandex-clad superhero extolling the virtues of the X-11 and telling us why it's popular among "performance-minded Americans."

Single Person points to the car's handling, its 40 cubic feet of storage capacity, and enough room in the passenger compartment for five adults, including the driver. Of course, all of Single Person's passengers are attractive women, apparently superhero groupies, and that's how Single Person likes it.

When the announcer suggests the X-11 will fit right in when Single Person gets married and has kids, he balks, "I'm going to pretend you never said that." Many modern car ads lean into the family aspects of the vehicles they're selling, but the Citation went in the opposite direction. From the costumes to the messaging, it's the sort of commercial that feels perfectly dated today.

This ad opens on a Tarzan-like character living with his family in a treehouse. Apparently, even in the jungle, you still have a nine-to-five and errands to run. With a wave and well wishes from his wife, our hero grabs a vine and sings down to his Toyota Tercel.

With an ape companion wearing a "Jungle Patrol" t-shirt in the passenger seat, our hero sets out on a road cutting through jungle terrain. Along the way, he encounters all manner of obstacles including muddy roads, a roaring lion, and a desperate man rapidly sinking in quicksand. It wouldn't be the '80s without a little quicksand.

Fortunately, the Toyota Tercel is up to anything the jungle throws at it. Our hero (and his ape friend) save the explorer from quicksand thanks to the Tercel's front-wheel drive traction. With a satisfied grin, our hero proclaims, "it's a jungle out there" but, if the commercial is to be believed, the Tercel was up to the job.

This is more than your average commercial, it's practically a fully produced music video. While many music videos have prominently featured cool cars, and many a ballad was written about a car, this might be the first music video designed entirely to sell a car.

The Plymouth Duster is backed by a collection of dancers and set pieces, conjuring images of "Footloose" and "Dirty Dancing." It's not entirely clear where the video takes place. It could be inside a factory, or along the streets of a dystopian cityscape. People are crying, presumably at the prospect of not having a Duster of their own. All we really know for sure is that it's quintessentially '80s, from the outfits and the dance moves to a cameo from a Polaroid camera.

At the end, the Duster drives through a giant glass wall, but it plays out in reverse. What begins as massive shards of scattered glass, transforms into a solid pane bearing the Plymouth logo as the Duster and its passengers drive through. You might not know exactly what this commercial is trying to tell you about the Duster, but you're not likely to soon forget it.

A narrator with a low, quaking voice is backed by singers repeating the phrase "black gold," over a desert landscape draped in rolling smoke and lit by the reflected light of the Datsun 280ZX.

The advertisement is for a special edition tenth anniversary Datsun 280ZX, painted and upholstered in black and gold. Only a small number were produced, three thousand in total according to the commercial, and each one of them were individually numbered. In addition to a unique aesthetic, the Black Gold offered the sort of exclusivity and rarity which is usually limited to trading cards and collectibles.

According to the commercial, the Black Gold came with so many bells and whistles standard that there were hardly any customization options available. The backing music should be enough to convince you of the commercial's '80s pedigree. But if you need more convincing, just look at the Datsun's passengers, a woman with feathered black hair and a man with a mustache so thick it looks like he's auditioning to play the next Magnum P.I.

This advertising campaign takes all of the best aesthetic flavors from the '80s and mashes them together. It feels like the love child of "Mad Max," "Tron," and "The Dark Crystal." The design features stark lines of light and a dusty apocalyptic landscape punctuated by brightly colored crystal structures. The driver navigates these environs in the Camara, dodging bizarre spheres of light and a giant rubber monster.

Another "Taking Charge" ad was produced for the 1984 Chevy Corvette and showcases the car in a similar setting. The ad runs for a full minute and a half, highlighting what it claims is the most advanced production care on the planet (in 1984) with features like "the world's first computer activated manual transmission," headlights that don't just pop up but flip over, liquid crystal displays of 14 instrument readouts updated 16 times a second, and more. The Corvette "Taking Charge" ad might have a longer runtime, but it lacks any giant monsters. Which one is better is up to you.