Can’t quite stretch to Ford Focus, well you might be interested in this alternative, the hatchback version of the Chevrolet Cruze that was revealed at the Geneva show.
Due to go on sale this summer, the front looks identical to the saloon, while at the back Chevrolet describes the rear as ‘coupe-like’. In fact, it’s not massively different to the concept shown at the Paris motor show.
Gallery: Geneva Motor Show 2011
The new version of the Cruze will be offered with a range of diesel and petrol engines, including the 161bhp diesel I recently tried in the Orlando. The Cruze Hatchback’s 400 litres of boot space is also competitive.
Source:
Chevrolet Cruze hatchback production version – 2011 Geneva
Bullitt’ s chase through San Francisco between Lt. Frank Bullitt (Steve McQueen) in a Highland Green fastback Mustang and two assassins (actor Paul Genge and legendary stunt driver Bill Hickman) in a black Dodge Charger has been the standard against which all cinematic car chases are judged.
Warner Brothers had a promotional agreement with Ford, so the bad guys were supposed to be in a Ford, too, a Torino or Galaxie (a detail disputed by
Bullitt scholars). But even with the brilliant Max Balchowsky prepping the cars, there was no way to fortify the big Fords’ suspensions to survive filming, so two black Dodge Chargers were purchased from a Southern California dealer.
The success of Ford’s placement in Bullitt is reflected in the fact that during the 2001 and 2008 model years, the company produced special
editions of the .
24 (2001–present) Research on teen smoking suggests it is so widespread not because smoking is cool, but because
smokers are cool. The personality type that smokes is the type that teens admire as the cool kids: edgy, indifferent, daring, or bad.
For this reason, Ford’s placement in the Fox hit
24 might be misguided. Ford has scaled back its role in the show, but initially, all the series’ heroes drove products from the blue oval—or its subsidiaries—and all the bad guys ended up in GM products. If the principles guiding teen smoking affect car purchases, it doesn’t matter how bad-ass Jack Bauer is; as long as he’s still good, viewers will be more drawn to what his nemesis is driving.
No one has played the product placement game as well or for as long as Eon Productions, the producers of the James Bond movies. Through 22 films, Bond has subtly (and occasionally not so subtly) hawked everything from Omega watches and Bollinger champagne to Marlboro cigarettes and Brioni menswear. But Bond’s greatest plugs were always saved for cars.
Although it’s impossible to separate Bond from the Aston Martin DB5 he drives in 1964’s Goldfinger ,
virtually every other vehicle in that film is a Ford product, and
Goldfinger includes what is often said to be the first appearance of a Mustang in a film. Over the years, companies ranging from Toyota (the 2000GT roadster in 1967’s
You Only Live Twice ) to American Motors (a Matador that could fly in 1974’s The Man with the Golden Gun ) and BMW (a 750iL that Bond controlled with his cell phone in 1997’s Tomorrow Never Dies ) have ponied up the cash to see Britain’s favorite spy in their cars.
In the most recent Bond film,
Quantum of Solace ,
not only does 007 bash around his , but he also hitches a ride in the just introduced 2009
. None of his romantic conquests have lasted as long as his ties with Ford and Aston Martin.
Smokey and the Bandit (1977) Even Director Hal Needham isn’t sure how many black T-top Trans Ams Pontiac supplied to the production of Smokey and the Bandit.
Regardless, no automotive product placement ever led so directly to higher sales more impressively than did that car in this movie.
Essentially one long comedic chase featuring outlandish stunts,
Smokey and the Bandit was the second-highest grossing film of 1977—behind another unexpected hit,
Star Wars .
Pontiac saw the number of Trans Ams sold that year rise from 46,701 in 1976 to 68,745. Then, in 1978, it sold 93,341. Sales finally peaked in 1979, when Pontiac put a stunning 117,108 Trans Ams out on America’s roads. That’s two-and-a-half times as many as in ’76.
In 1980—after Pontiac had dumped the T/A’s beloved 403-cubic-inch V-8 for the heinous turbocharged 301 and the vastly inferior Smokey and the Bandit II had been released—Trans Am sales tanked, with just 50,896 sold. Product placement, it seems, doesn’t work so well when the car gets worse and the sequel sucks.
Knight Rider (1982–86 and 2008–present) Sure it was about a talking car that fights crimes, but this was back when crime-fighting talking cars seemed like a good idea. And after all, what car company wouldn’t sign up for a show that basically turned an hour of prime time every week into a commercial for its product? So even before anyone had heard of David Hasselhoff, Pontiac began shipping black ’82 Trans Ams to Universal by the carrier load. Anecdotal evidence suggests plenty of Pontiac dealers sold cars to buyers looking to own KITT.
Although Knight Rider was canceled in 1986, it keeps coming back. In 1997, for instance,
Team Knight Rider featured a fleet of five talking and crime-fighting vehicles—three of which were product-placed Fords (an F-150 pickup, an Expedition, and a Mustang GT convertible). Despite all the witty intervehicular banter,
Team Knight Rider died after just one forgettable season.
The latest Knight Rider incarnation appeared on NBC in 2008 and features a talking as a primary protagonist. It’s not likely to be renewed for another season. You would have thought Ford had learned its lesson with
Team Knight Rider.
The Fast and the Furious Series (2001–09) It’s hard to fathom: The third sequel to 2001’s The Fast and the Furious hits theaters April 3. Is it complex characters, subtle acting, and emotionally wrought stories that keep audiences coming back? Or is it that people want to see tuner, muscle, and exotic cars wrecked in creative ways? Everyone knows the answer. But what is most interesting about the upcoming
Fast & Furious is the placements it didn’t use or get.
Whereas Subaru supplied s to the production, director Justin Lin turned down the new
in favor of an old Camaro as one character’s ultimate ride. And when Audi was asked to supply an R8, the company said no and adamantly demanded that an R8 not appear in the film at all—even if the production bought one!
Minority Report (2002) When Tom Cruise’s character, John Anderton, is accused of a murder and goes on the lam, a futuristic Lexus plays a role in his getaway. The year is 2054, and although elements of the car’s design have yet to appear in showrooms, some of its then-fantastic gadgetry is coming to life 45 years ahead of schedule. The car boasts night vision that can recognize living beings alongside the road—much like BMW’s latest night-time breakthrough—and a sonar-based self-parking system.
With the dire economic climate and their well-publicized troubles, domestic automakers might want to consider this sort of assertion to the public that they, too, will in fact exist 50 years from now, let alone five.
:: If you are new to article marketing you need to understand what its purpose is. Basically there are three potential benefits to distributing your articles around the web.
The first benefit is that it builds backlinks to your web pages, and backlinks help your web pages to move higher up the search engines. The major search engines regard backlinks from other web sites as recommendations as to the value of your content. So the more ‘recommendations’ your sites receive the better their search engine rankings will be. Therefore when you distribute your articles around the web, as long as you include a link in your content that links back to your web page, your rankings will increase.
The more sites your content gets posted to the better.
The second benefit of article marketing is the actual number of visitors it can drive to your site directly. When you include a link with your article, if your article is of genuine interest to your reader, there is a strong chance that they will click on your link and come to your site in search of more valuable information. Therefore to benefit from direct traffic you must write quality articles that address specific issues that people are searching for in need of an answer or solution. If you use rehashed Plr content, the chances are that your articles are going to be of little interest and value to your reader, and will therefore not drive any visitors your way.
Before we move to the third benefit of article marketing, I want to stay on the subject of quality. When you write really good articles in terms of valuable content, your articles will get posted to more sites which means you get both more traffic and more backlinks in return for your effort. If you write good content and use the better article distribution services, there is a strong chance that they may end up on a really high profile site that gets lots of visitors and this can give you a real boost in visitors, it has happened to me in the past.
The third benefit of article marketing is that your articles can help you to presell and build your profile as an expert on your subject. If someone finds your article and gets value from it, they are already on the way to being sold by the time they get to your site because they see you as knowledgeable and therefore someone who can be trusted.
To get the most from your articles you need to get them on a lot of sites, to do this you can use services like Article Marketer or my preferred choice Submit Your Article.
