The eight best car advert stunts

Grace Jones and the Citroën CX 2 – 1985

What better way to boost dwindling saloon car sales than to enlist a giant Grace Jones to robotically spew a Citroën CX 2 on to a salt plain before miraculously appearing behind the wheel and screaming tunefully out the window? Yeah, we don’t get it either…

Well apparently, the idea of Bond girl and all-round hot property Jones driving a CX in the mid-‘80s was so preposterous that Citroën’s only option was to go all out and hope that no-one questioned it.

The car then disappears back into Jones giant mouth, eliciting a slight hiccup, and a voice announces: ‘Citroën CX 2, la beauté sauvage’, leaving us wondering what the hell we’ve just watched.

Continental Tyres rooftop – 1992

If you’re not fond of heights, look away now… Back in the early nineties, Continental created what can only be known as car parkour, setting (what we hope was) a professional driver loose on the roof of a South African hotel, where he performed a jaw-dropping display of driving (and stopping) skill.

In the 30-second-long video, the car skids from one side of the roof to another, coming to screeching stops teetering over the street five floors below. It’s certainly impressive, and terrifying in equal measure, and to date remains astounding.

Honda Cog – 2003

Honda is the undisputed boss of television ads and ‘the Cog’ was nothing short of spectacular. Follow a chain reaction of car components – dominoes style – as they topple and turn and trigger the next piece, until the chase arrives at a complete Accord.

It’s easily the most creative and perhaps the most time consuming of ads on our list. 

Renault Megane Shake it – 2003

This idea would never pass go nowadays, and in fact even comes with a warning should you wish to watch it today. But it was a hit back in the naughty noughties, and once you watch it you’ll soon see why. Poking fun at the second-generation Megane’s gros cul (slightly crass), it featured close ups of countless backsides, all shaking in tune to Groove Armada’s, ‘I See You Baby’. From sightseers to cyclists, it seemed no one was impervious to Renault’s pervy predilection.

But, it was so popular that the carmaker recreated it three years later with the Renault Megane Still Shaking It advertisement. Only the French!

Skoda Fabia cake – 2007

There’s nothing dangerous or dubious about this ad – rather, it’s just plain delicious.

While Skoda’s Fabia wouldn’t be the first car that you’d associate with cake, someone in the Czech manufacturer’s marketing department made the connection and the result was magnificent.

To the tune of ‘My Favourite Things’ by Julie Andrews, a handful of Skoda technicians/master bakers spent a week baking a life-size Fabia hatchback, a process that reportedly required 10kg of white chocolate chunks, 12.5kg of raspberry jam, 100kg of wheat flour and caster sugar, 180 eggs, 42kg of chocolate fudge, and 270kg of icing sugar.
Complete with a to scale cake engine, with liquorice ‘belts’ and golden syrup ‘oil’, plus jelly lights and a flake grille, the finished product looked delectable (and remarkably lifelike).

BMW Motorrad tablecloth trick – 2011

It’s fair to say that BMW’s S1000RR swept us all away when it debuted in 2010, and the German manufacturer perfectly encapsulated that with its own rendition of the age-old tablecloth trick. Lined up with a piece of rope tied from the bike’s rear to the table cloth, the rider rolls on the throttle and sweeps the tablecloth from under the tableware, riding off with the sheet billowing behind him like a cape.

So famous was this stunt, that Triumph and Aprilia have since attempted it, with varying degrees of success…

Yes, it wasn’t from a car manufacturer, but it’s from BMW, so we’re including it and swiftly moving on…

Audi RS3 ‘birth’ – 2015

And what can we even say about this, other that it’s just plain weird… But the YouTube video is worth it for the comments alone.

BMW X5 Sahara Monza – 2018

This passed spectacularly under our radar when it first launched – a shame really, for I was nearby soon afterwards and would have relished at the chance to set a Monza lap record on my old KTM 250.

But alas, the Saharan Monza was to remain elusive. Perhaps the most extravagant stunt to make the list, building the track took 50 people two weeks to complete, enlisting four bulldozers, four trucks, two graders and two compactors to move more than 3,500 cubic meters of earth and create the off-road track.

Built perfectly to scale, Monza in the remote Morocco desert hosted the new BMW X5, allowing it to show off its motorsport heritage and off-road capability. It’s nothing short of genius.