Ever since I have been car-shopping, I have been much more aware of car ads on tv. Until now, I've mostly just tuned them out, but now that I've noticed them and understand the car buying process a little better, I see even more clearly just how ridiculous they are.

Car ads fall into a few major groups:

Local Car Ads
These are the low-budget ones that the local dealers come out with. They often feature dogs with clever names like "Barkley" wearing clothing (especially hats), fireworks or computer graphic fireworks, and dealers holding wads of hundred dollar bills in each fist. Local dealerships, judging from these commercials, are in a constant state of having to liquidate their inventories, and are so desperate for cheap acting talent that they often put random family members in their ads.

Toyota Ads
It's fun to buy a Toyota! People play sand volleyball, Lou Bega is mamboing in the background, and there are large quantities of balloons everywhere. I can say with certainty after this week that it is definitely not fun to plunk down half of your life savings with the promise of paying the other half plus interest over the next 3 years for an asset that depreciates in value, and I doubt that the presence of one-hit-wonder musicians would have made it that much better.

Truck Ads
Truck companies are convinced that people want powerful vehicles, so they try to outdo each other in who has the most rugged truck. The latest effort shows a pickup truck towing a boat. Not just a little speedboat but an Icebreaker, a boat that is probably 20 or 30 times as long as the truck and weighs god knows how much more. At the bottom of the screen is the word "Dramatization". This is clearly false advertising, as it should say "If our truck can actually do this, we would be shocked. If you actually try this with our truck, you're a freaking moron". SUVs have similar ads, and almost all feature, at some point, the vehicle driving through a shallow river or streambed or uprooting tree stumps, as if these are common uses for 4-wheel-drive vehicles.

Financing Ads
These can be ads for any car, but they all feature the great financing package you'll get rather than what car you're buying. The latest Nissan commercials, for instance, feature "0% Financing! No Money Down! No payments until 2003! It's a free car dammit!" Well, not that last one, but it makes you wonder what kind of car you're getting when they're advertising the financing plan. I mean, you don't even know how deep of a stream it can drive through.

Infiniti Ads
They don't run these much anymore, but remember that creepy guy? "This is the clock in the J. If the engineers spent this much time on the clock and on finding the spookiest actor they could, then just imagine how great the rest of the car is." This car is targeted towards the segment of the market that purchases Lexuses (Lexuxes? Lexii?), namely the "we don't know what to do with our money, so we spend $40,000 on a car that's probably worth half that" segment.