This year, automakers blitzed the commercial breaks of perhaps the most watched football game of all time like never before. Some automakers like Chevy had five different commercials, and Kia had three. How did they do? We rate the top 10 below along with the YouTube videos of each. Don’t worry; we’ve also posted all the ads we didn’t think rated well, so you can fully weigh in with your own ratings.
Although most of us know by now that Nicolas Cage and the Mayans got it wrong and the world probably won't end in 2012, Chevrolet wants you to know that the apocalypse is no match for its Silverado pickup.
In case you haven’t heard, Hyundai is on a roll, and it's using game-time commercials to make sure everyone knows it. Though we can safely say Hyundai spent much of 2011 at the top of its game, the automaker is channeling the ultimate underdog with one of its Super Bowl XLVI ads.
It's sort of surprising that Lexus hasn't shown a Super Bowl ad during its more than two decades of existence. Now, after losing its 11-year sales crown as the largest luxury automaker to BMW, Lexus has decided the time is now to remind people what the brand is all about. It's showing off the newly redesigned 2013 Lexus GS series in its Super Bowl spot.
The ad borrows several motifs from the "Jurassic Park" film, including the rippling water and the dull thud of something big approaching. Overall, the ad builds excitement. And what's up with the four other cages in the background shown at the end? Lexus says it has another eight new or updated models to launch this year, including the refreshed Lexus LX 570 shown earlier at the Detroit auto show.
Automakers are rolling out the big names for their Super Bowl XLVI ads. Comedian Jerry Seinfeld is the latest star to endorse a car during a game-time commercial.
Unsurprisingly, the spot is funny, and true to form, it's an uncomfortable funny. Jerry wants the new Acura NSX, but finds out he’s customer No. 2 on the waiting list. In response, he launches a campaign to be the first in line to get Acura's new sports car.
Here's an interesting tidbit about the 2012 Chevrolet Sonic: Until this point, it hasn't received any traditional TV ads as a part of its launch campaign, according to GM. That's about to change in a big way with the minute-long spot that'll air during Super Bowl XLVI on Sunday. The ad highlights some of the cool things Chevy has been doing with the Sonic to get the attention of young car buyers.
Some stunts include shoving a Sonic out of a cargo plane, kick-flipping a Sonic and making a music video for OK Go that features the Sonic. Check out the amalgamation above.
Cadillac decided to advertise its new challenger to the BMW 3 Series at the Super Bowl this year, even though the ATS won't go on sale until this summer.
The 30-second spot touts the compact luxury sedan's track performance and how it was tuned to master the most challenging of racetracks, the Nürburgring test ring in Germany. Unlike most of the other ads we've seen so far, there’s no humor in the ATS ad; it's just a straightforward pitch on the sport machine’s track credentials. Yawn.
He may be looking a little gray around the temples, but Ferris Bueller is back and resurrecting a little of his old high school mischievousness in Honda’s Super Bowl ad. But this time around, there's no candy-apple-red Ferrari. Instead, Matthew Broderick cops a phony cold to his boss and goes joyriding in a redesigned-for-2012 burgundy Honda CR-V.
As a child of the '80s, I dig the nostalgia factor of the spot, right down to the "chicka-chickas," but can the valet guy really have that much fun in a CR-V?
Toyota will air two 30-second ads during the Super Bowl for its 2012 Toyota Camry, the first time the automaker has advertised during the game in three years.
The ad, shown above in its full 60-second version, plays on the idea of reinvention to help convey the significant re-engineering of the Toyota Camry for the new model year.
Some funny "reinventions" include rain that makes you skinny, tasty pizza curtains and couches made out of attractive, living, human beings. Richard Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (from Stanley Kubrick’s "2001: A Space Odyssey") underscores the clip. The ad is definitely over the top, especially for a vehicle that looks only iteratively different compared to the Camry it replaces.
Super Bowl XLVI will once again have millions of people tuning in … for the commercials. Between the Manning/Brady showdown you'll see Cars.com's commercial, "Confident You." While the commercial is playing, use the popular mobile application Shazam to tag it and Cars.com will donate $1 to one of seven deserving charities.
You can vote on which charity should receive the maximum donation of $100,000 by visiting Cars.com's Facebook page, where you can now watch Cars.com's Super Bowl commercial. However, the Shazam tag won’t go into effect until Super Bowl Sunday on Feb. 5.
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