Carmakers spend millions developing perfect ad campaigns for their cars, yet the ads you actually end up seeing are made for ten bucks by your local dealer. As Jalopnik readers know, the local spots are usually better.

Much as carmakers spend huge budgets to make professional spots, nothing comes close to the brilliance of local car ads.

Car ad campaigns should be simple, evocative, and forward looking. "Ask the man who owns one," "ultimate driving machine," that sort of thing. They should not actively remind your buyers of the time your company helped kill one of the great names in automobilia.

The 2012 Honda Civic was highly regarded for being not very good at anything.

Gymkhana: it's all about driving hard, doing stunts, and being EPIC HARDCORE AWESOME. What if you shrink the whole thing down to model size and do it in stop-motion?

Sometime in the mid-90s, the fold-down rear seat became a standard option on sedans. But there's been a problem with ever since. Car manufacturers have insisted on making the pass-through hole tiny — not even the full width of the trunk.

Christmas is just around the corner, Jalops! Hopefully you've finished all your shopping by now, including signing a surprise lease on that Lexus SUV for your spouse and buying a huge red bow to put it on it.

Christmas is coming, and while festive baking is traditionally something normally associated with the hausfraus in Germany, they probably won't mind if the boys give it a go as well. Problem is, nobody likes to work in a crowded kitchen, and a singe oven is simply not enough for everyone. Thankfully, Mercedes-AMG…

The Honda Accord doesn't engender many feelings in most people. It's a car that looks and acts much like a car should.

Oh, Lincoln. Lincoln, Lincoln, Lincoln. Of the eight car companies named for presidents, you're still one of the two remaining (and related to, since the other is Ford), but I'm really afraid for your future. To many of us watching, it's looks like you've just sat down to watch Our American Cousin in Ford's Theater, if …

Jazz legend Dave Brubeck died today at the age of 91. He'll be remembered for "Take Five" as much as anything, even though his songbook is deep, and that's because it's still undeniably catchy, clever, and the record it was on was the first Jazz album to sell more than a million copies.

There's no better way to make a small car sexy than by using a gorgeous Romanian model as its human embodiment. The proof is in Fiat's series of ads with Catrinel Menghia, everyone's favorite Romanian.

If you leave cable news on in the background while you work, like I do, there's a chance you'll see an ad for the 2013 LS. I'm not gunning to be Jalopnik's car commercial critic, but let's consider what we're seeing in this ad versus what used to be able to sell a Lexus LS.

We called Toyota's Brazil-like advertisement about the escape from an overprotective society that discouraged self expression and driving joy one of the best car ads in years. Without a hint of self-awareness or irony the British government has banned the ad because "the ad portrayed speed and the way the car could…

It's always a little embarrassing when a car's ad overshadows the car it's selling. I saw this the other day and almost immediately forgot the car it was trying to sell. The people in the ad, though, were memorable.

In their new ad campaign for the redesigned 2013 Sentra, Nissan focuses on all the ways the car's features will improve your game with the ladies. We're going to have to call out one of the ads today because it just doesn't pass the truth test.

Not that you have to try very hard to sell a video game where a motorist can realize a fuck-the-cops reckless driving fantasy. But the PS3 folks really outdid themselves with this Need for Speed: Most Wanted ad.

Toyota's new ad campaign "The Camry Effect," features Romeo Sandoval and his purple '92 Camry donk. Will its gullwinged donktasticness give Toyota the youth edge it needs?

Hyundai's new ad campaign for their Santa Fe uses a tried-and-true sales tool—sex — but in a creepily delusional way. Seeing their latest ad, classily named Upskirt, is like decoding the MRI of a masturbating junior high boy and converting it into video.

What if we treated public transit with the same enthusiasm we normally reserved for luxury sports coupes and a new season of Arrested Development? You'd get this exciting ad for the Danish bus service.