Shortly thereafter, Virgil Solozzo was run over by an RS4 Avant.

that car is beautiful

Wow, is it really going t be a minute long?I hear paying to get a 30 sec. spot in the superbowl could be very expensive.
Other than that its very....awesome

Bitchin'.

Two days ago I had the chance to give the R8 a try..wow!

I'm glad they didn't make that too complicated. It is sort of a weird message that seems like it would be hard to convey.

At least now we know the real purpose of those side blades.

This is absolutely brilliant. Finally, a luxury car company that is willing to make an edgy ad.

Is that the same car that we've seen in the Iron Man promos?

I guess no more rock'n Rolls. Xoom.

Um, Moe Green was shot, no? :)

so the r8 is a luxury car, not a sports car? (no, it can't be both.) wouldn't this make more sense for the a8?

Sexy...was that Oil or Tranny fluid? Cars don't bleed (blood) silly.

Cornice II sleeps with the fishes.

Oh yeah, doesn't Tom Brady drive one of these rigs?

Take the mid-engined sex machine, leave the cannoli.

I'd have to say that was rather well done. I eagerly await Al's feedback.

Nice parody. I'm not sure if most of the fans will get it though.

So does that mean the R8 is a mediocre actor who didn't get the role in the movie because he was banging the old guy's girlfriend? Presumably Tom Hagin is the A8 then.

That's not a Rolls front-clip in the bed. Maybe a Rover P5?

@KatzManDu: Ok, not a Rover P5, but I'm thinking something British.

Very cool.
@sos10: Again with the single sentences! Details, dude--what was it like? Most impressive feature?

@KatzManDu: Rover has a large center spoke in the grill, and single headlights on either side. the headlight surround on this thing is identical to the 1972 Rolls Corniche, but the radiator surround is rounded, not square. And the hood ornament is something circular, but i can't see what's in it. Doesn't look like a Merc to me. Edges of the cut look like fractured fiberglass, so prolly a Buick aftermarket fake Rolls clip. Can anybody make out that ornament?

it's too bad they didn't cut the front off this... [jalopnik.com]
would've been doing a public service.

@Novaload: Well, they didn't let me race it...obviously... but from the 10 minutes I did drive it, it felt like a more civilised Gallardo.

Well, whatever the front fascia in the bed, it has a round hood ornament, which kinda makes it a Benz, in my book. Still, this ad is vague to the point of obscure and forgettable, so why waste the money...?

Best commercial of the Super Bowl. Although that's not saying much so far.

its at times like this that you wish you were a dragon.. mmmmmmm LEDs..

I've had the opportunity to spank, well maybe not spank, but drive semi aggressively, an R8. Yes it is a sports car, yes it is a luxury car. In my opinion, it's significantly more luxurious than any other super car out there (I'll accept the beating from Ferrari fans now), and has the speed and performance that make it a sports car.

With the asking price what it is there is hardly anything else in it's price range that gives you the best of both worlds quite as well.

Another great looking car that will most likely be in Audi's garage more than the guy who buys it...

The front end is basically a Rolls with a rounded grille, which is a Bentley, which is another VW brand, so that part is pretty funny. This may cause some discomfort within in the VAG.

The R8 is new luxury only to those who did too much coke in the '80s to remember the M1, Espirit and numerous Italian cars. Come to think of it, that's probably not a horrible target demographic for the car.

@DoctorNine: i couldn't see it- looked almost like there was nothing inside the ring (although it could've been a very thin tristar). it's very possible this is just a generalized front that's not actually from something beyond the ad company's imagination.

captured from the high-def video on the Audi site
it's definitely Rolls/Bentley inspired...

What a trainwreck of a commercial...just show the R8...it sells itself.

brilliant ad work.. the Genesis ads were good too... SHOCK

Bentley T1, circa 1965-1980. Hell, James May had one.

In the hard-to-reach "Cynical Car-Hating 18-22" Demographic, the ad did pretty well after the token "WTFs" and "OMG, we don't know anything about cars and naturally I hate anything I don't know about" comments halfway through, until the tagline resulted in some amusement. Too bad said chortling prevented me from hearing the glorious exhaust note that redeemed this otherwise random, potentially cringe-worthy commercial.

that the front mask of the next chinese luxury car???

die cheap luxury...die!!!

Even though I just realized that the Dude was the voice of Hyundai, the Genesis commercials still sucked ASS. This commercial, on the other hand, was punching, and even had me wondering in the first few moments if Audi was actually going to use blood in a car commercial. To use grease - and the goofy front end of an old luxury car...was a masterstroke.

haha, that was an AWESOME ad. i will dedicate the rest of my days to obtaining this car.

@peakay: @bzr: @oneswellfoop:

Worst. Car. Commercial. Launched. At. The. 2008. Superbowl. Ever.

If I was more than a guest poster at the Jalop, I would have toiled long into the night picking this spot apart frame by frame and posted my Monday Morning Creative Director commentary early this AM.

However, I was too busy enjoying the low scoring game and sleeping to do so. Let's just say I thought the Audi R8 spot was terrible. Awful. Far worse than the Hyundai spots.

Here's a quickie why:

I'm pretty sure this ran in the first commercial break after kickoff. Premium placement. So you better pull out your best stuff. And what does Audi and its agency Venables Bell & Partners give us? Borrowed interest.

For those not familiar with the term, "borrowed interest" is when an advertiser uses some theme/device to promote a product which has very little to nothing to do with your product. Think Met Life and Snoopy. Okay, when you throw a lot of money over a period of time at a concept like this, it can work. Like Met Life and Snoopy.

But in the case of the Audi spot, for their 60 seconds in the sun, they chose to borrow a leitmotif from The Godfather. The famous horse head in bed scene. But instead of a horse's head, they use a caricature of a "luxury car" (I see Rolls/Checker Cab) front clip. And the wronged-by-Johnny Fontaine producer stand-in screams. Cut to R8 outside, getting ready to zoom away. Then zooming away. There are some supers/slates about "putting luxury cars on notice" or some other self-aggrandizing line mixed in there too.

The client and agency's tragic flaw in the process was thinking that a car as amazing as the R8 needs to resort to borrowed interest. At least Ford knew better when it did that GT "Pace car for an entire company" commercial a few years back. Audi could have just shown the R8 driving in anger complete with engine sounds and it would have been better. A lot better. Sniff.

(FWIW, I am a huge fan of Audi cars and drive a TT daily.)

@Al Navarro:

i don't know....i thought the 'new luxury' tag was alright, but i currently think of Audis as cars for sorority girls once they grow up and get a decent job. VWs are what they drive while in school..

@smokyburnout: What's in the reflection in the curve of the fender? (Is it love?)

@Al Navarro: nice breakdown Al. Though the borrowed interest is obviously the chunk of the spot, I was taken by surprise that it WAS an R8 spot, and that's what has me excited. I'm pretty sure there are a lot of people who watched the Super Bowl who aren't Jalops (I know, I know, sorry for the bad news *pat pat*) so my takeaway is yes, though we'd have loved to just hear the exhaust note on blast for 60 seconds (ala the Porsche Cayenne commercial a few years back) they had to have cultivated some good web traffic of people who were intrigued by the use of the familiar setup. That have money but no passion for vehicles.

The boldness was appealing, the shot of the LEDs was amazing on my projector and the f'in exhaust sounded A-OK in 6.1!!! wee hoo

All in all, I get the borrowed interest (shit Renault and Simpson's are at it as of today) but still think it was a great introduction of their award winning car to the masses. At least they didn't tout that in the spot!

@peabody3684:
Reading the reviews of the Superbowl Ads online today, I think I'm definitely in the minority with my drubbing.

I guess I fall into the category of "when you have a car this good to promote, just show me the car, and let me hear the f-ing sweet sounds of it driving"...they could have looped that for the full 60 and it would have worked better for me.

My favorite ads of the night were the Coke ones.

Just saw that the Audi spot ranked pretty poorly on the USA Today "Admeter"...

Scored at 5.49. Beats Hyundai, but not Sun Silk or the Toyota "Badgers & Cannons" ad.

@Al Navarro: the coke ones? really?
and I thought the Hyundai ones were alright- it's just hard for everyone to wrap their heads around Hyundai building a real luxury car (I'm not sure it's real either).

@cardesignmike:
I'm seriously interested in one of those Hoon-dais, if it does in fact exist.

And yeah, I liked the Coke spots...the Carville/Frist and even the hot air balloons. Maybe that last one is because I lived down the street from where they blow them up on the Upper West Side.

@Al Navarro: My current situation has me renting cars quite often and one of the best I've had was a Sonata, it was solid, had the XM, good power in the V6 (especially compared to a Grand Prix) and it rode astonishingly. The Genesis really has my attention, cause I'm excited to see where the Koreans go with the steam they've been steadily gaining the past few years, and my inner-dragon really would be happy knowing the coupe is coming!

now about ads: Coke I suppose were my better.. though the careerbuilder ones were different and most likely my favorites.(though from what I remember after last year's super bowl, I was in the minority that liked the careerbuilder spots with the guys in the forest wearing binders as head protection etc)

sunsilk wasted the $10Million they paid Madonna for those 5 seconds and I HATED the Toyota spot.

@peabody3684: oh and I enjoyed the etrade baby spots... and the bridgestone one was different with the screaming animals

The film evokes such a visceral reaction, the horse head / bed scene in particular;
your prized, loved possession willfully and in spectacular fashion, offered up to you in a display of total disregard and contempt. This is all about power shift pure and simple. Old men growing feeble and wetting themselves, unable to defend their once glorious power status, toothless, irrelevant, impotent lions.
Cinematic borrowed interest is the technique, the message however is not lost on testosterone amped stupor bowl knuckle dragging alpha males...there were evidently enough of us watching to make Audi deem it worthwhile. Second biggest audience after the farewell Mash show.

Message sent and received.

Weak. The grille in the bed is some nondescript anglo Rolls-uar thing. Except for Bentley - which VW owns - and Rolls, the Brits are no longer players in this market. Would have been better if it were a Benz or a Lexus grille. Call them out, dammit.