Old AE86 magazine ads

[banpei]

(04-11-2019 01:17 AM)Power_uP Wrote:  Looks like a simpler time indeed!

When I worked in a car dealership my colleagues and I joked that the marketing materials always make it look as though the only people buying cars are good-looking 21 year old wealthy people (especially with some of the luxury brands).
The other common feature of car ads is that they make it seem as though buying a new car is the most amazing, fun and exciting experience ever.
Marketing is strange.

I agree with you that in general the target audience seems to be the ever 21 year old that is loaded with cash. But in the above ads the target audience in Japan was actually under 30.

In the early 80s the young people in Japan actually were loaded in cash: they didn't have enough money to buy property but had, thanks to the labors of their parents, a high(er) education and good paying jobs. This caused them to be the focus group for "fun" cars like the AE86, Honda City Turbo, Honda CRX, Daihatsu Mira TR-XX, Daihatsu Charade DeTomasso and many more. Also second hand cars were dirt cheap and this created platforms for all sorts of car styling, like the zokushas, to emerge.

(04-10-2019 09:48 PM)Bean Wrote:   The flower guy is hilarious just like the Lasre typo

Lasre was an acronym used by Toyota to denote their new generation of engines in the early 80s. The name stood for Lightweight, Advanced, Super Response Engine. Everyone loved lasers in the 80s, so I guess it must have been a retro fitted acronym.