1989 Oldmobile commercials

This week Murilee Martin wrote about a junkyard 1989 Oldsmobile Toronado he found.  While reading it I watched the Ad for the car and found a rather odd theme for their ad campaign that year.

Before I get into the theme I will start with how they launched the 89 model year with ads.  While most people think it was a bad ad campaign you can't really say it wasn't affective since people remember it even though the car company hasn't existed in several years.


Now that was a start but how do you advertise the cars.  Well the people at Oldsmobile decided you should put famous people's children in the car.  In some ways it makes sense cause it is not their fathers oldsmobile, but not all famous people were equal.

We'll start with the Cutlass Ciera with one of the least impressive of the stars.


The Toronado got a nice step up from Frankie Avalon Jr to Deborah Moore.


While the Toronado was suppose to be a sporty coupe, the 88 Royale was suppose to be more of a family car what says family more than Abigal Rockwell's grandfather.

I was only able to find commercials for one more model the Cutlass Supreme, however there are 3 different Celebrities children for this car so it might have stolen the starts from other cars.

We'll start with the guy who has a deal for you and Monty Halls son Richard. They left off his last name so possibly Monty's illegitimate son.

In addition for the coupe they need someone to show how advanced the cutlass supreme was with amazing futuristic features like a computer. Nothing says future like the daughter of a guy who was in a scifi show in the 60s.

For the four door they went a different direction. The Dad in this commercial actually was featured more than their kid. Not only did he take up most of the screen time, but he said one catch phrase and sang the other.

I know some of you are saying with ads like these its no wonder Oldsmobile is no longer with us, but they lasted a long time after this, and its still more entertaining than most of the car commercials know which give you a bunch of facts to make their car seem better than the competition, well as long as you don't look at the other facts that prove its worse.