What One Wouldn't Expect From Chevrolet

Or expect from GM at all.

But here it is.

A friend sent me a link to this ad and told me I would cry.

Here is the link: This could be the best ad of the season — or, maybe, the decade - Deacon Greg Kandra (thedeaconsbench.com)

I decided to take that as a challenge, and rather than deleting his email I clicked on the link.

Here is my subsequent email back to him.

"First, it's a great ad.

"Second, it's a spectacular - I think it can be called - tableau.

"Third, it got me even though I was prepared to resist.

"Fourth, I always loved John Denver's songs and voice; and one of my favorite movies - Oh God - made me even more of a Denver fan.

"But fifth, I would have gone completely overboard emotionally if they had not had John, but had had instead, Waylon Jennings and his wife, Jessie Colter singing Storms Never Last.

"I would have been in a puddle on the floor.

"And sixth, I had an ad for GM that I tried to contact them about as an idea. At that distant past time they were bringing retirees out of retirement to make ads telling Americans why they should buy Chevrolets. As luck would have it, by that time Chevrolet was building world class cars, like the four door Impala.  The problem was that almost two generations of Americans had been buying the vastly superior, less expensive Japanese sort of car, and, the rich ones, the vastly superior German sort of car - and American ears weren't deaf to GM's plea, they were non existent. I wanted to suggest that they do a looks, performance, reliability (to get at the Japanese)  and a price (to get at the Germans) ad whose tag line was "If We Had Made Cars Like This Twenty Years Ago, There Wouldn't Be A Foreign Auto Industry". It was not possible at that time to contact GM with ideas. Not too many years later GM went bankrupt and Barack fired their CEO.

"And, finally, here is a link to a short excerpt from my most recent novel; it has some relation to the ad and Jessie and Waylon: Noel McKeehan: Adventures and Opinions: From The Cream Soup Spoon: Peter, Jolene, Cinq, Alfie And Eternity (noellivefromparis.blogspot.com)"