On January 16 David Lynch died at age 78 after a lengthy illness. To many, including myself, he was one of the best directors and creative minds Hollywood has ever seen. I could go on for hours about his projects like Twin Peaks, “Mulholland Drive,” “Eraserhead” and “Blue Velvet.” But this is a car blog, and that’s not really what you’re here for.
Instead we’re going to take a look at the handful of car commercials Lynch directed during his career. I know it’s weird to think that a director as distinguished as Lynch would even bother with a car commercial, but hey, a check is a check. Regardless of why he took up these projects, Lynch still made them his own, crafting thirty-second ad spots that were as wonderful and strange as his feature-length films and himself. Who he was as a creative really comes out in every single one of the 29 commercials he directed between 1988 and 2014.
In 1997, Lynch directed his first car commercial called “Mountain Man,” starring the Honda Passport. The half-a-minute spot is a deeply surreal journey into a regular working stiff in a suit becoming outdoorsy the second he lays eyes on the Passport. Watching his clothes morph from a suit to outdoor gear as his beard hair grows is quite a sight to behold. The entire ethos of the Passport is conveyed with the actor saying a single word.
A few years later, in 2002, Lynch directed two more car commercials: One was for the all-new Nissan Micra and the other was for French automaker Citroën. The former shows a blue Micra driving through a surreal city with blue lips flying above it that are speaking made-up words. I know that sounds batshit — because it is — but it’s also so goddamn cool. It shows the Micra as the chic city car Nissan wanted it to be in the early 2000s.
The latter of the two car commercials he shot in ‘02 was by far his silliest. Staring a silver Citroën Xsara Coupe in the middle of some sort of fenced-in area. We see a blond cowgirl walk up to the fence, looking at the Xsara as a cowboy tips his hat and gets inside. From there, the Xsara bucks up in down, which makes sense. The commercial is called “Bucking Bronco,” after all. Eventually, our hero is able to take the car as it whinnies and neighs, all so the cowgirl can get in it and drive off. Does it play into gender stereotypes a bit too much? Sure, but just let it go for now, OK?
It really pains me to think Lynch is no longer around. He touched and changed the entertainment industry in immeasurable ways. Sure, his car commercials didn’t have quite the same cultural impact, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t put a ton of time and effort into crafting them to be strange little looks into the world as he saw it. We could all probably benefit from a little bit of that — seeing the world as Lynch saw it.