In what has to be the dumbest car stunt advertisement is a very long time, Audi of America, to tout its 450 hp RS 5, has recreated the famed 1974 Evil Knievel Snake River Canyon jump. The jump, across a 4,781 wide section of the Snake River in Idaho, was a failure with Knievel landing in the river bed below.
The three-minute video begins with footage from the famed attempt and with Knievel intoning “Each time I was hurt, they all said that guy is lucky he’s not dead. And they were right. But I wanted to get up and try again.”
Cut to 2012 and Audi is setting up for its own attempt at making it across the river. Complete with overblown staging, a countdown clock (what the hell is that for. Just jump when you’re ready to jump), stupid hand gesture shots, pensive closeup shots of the anonymous stunt driver, audi-branded headphones (really?), NASA-style radio conversation, a helicopter (WTF? Oh right, gotta get the aerial shots) and more voiceover from Knievel (“something inside me makes me do it”) which, on assumes, is supposed to somehow tie Knievel’s awesomeness to Audi’s determination towards greatness.
Then? Black screen. Yes, black screen. We don’t get to see whether or not the jump is a success. Why? Because it’s all a silly stunt. Because it never happened. Because it’s a stupid commercial.
And after viewing what little of the jump we are able to see, one doesn’t need to be a math whiz to realize the car’s trajectory can only lead to the Audi plunging into the river below.
Why would Audi do this? Clearly, the brand is going for the Knievel daredevil spirit. We get that. But why would the brand create a spectacle such as this that, clearly, is going to result in the death of our Knievel stand in? If a rocket ship can’t make the almost one mile jump, then certainly a car is never going to be able to make it.
And what’s the takeaway here? “We’re Audi. We Try Harder?” Oh wait. It’s like Audi is saying “It’s Your Space. Do whatever the hell you want even if it’s killing yourself while trying to jump over a river in a shiny new Audi.” WTF?
The stunt is claimed to “demonstrate the excitement surrounding one of our latest performance models – the RS 5.” All this work demonstrates, with typical advertastic tour-de-force masturbatorial aplomb, is that you (and, by association, Audi) are an idiot for thinking the ability of a car to jump across a mile-wide river is somehow related to the ability of the car to back out of the garage and drive the kids to soccer practice.
