Car Ads

   

The auto industry spends billions of dollars each year on TV ads, but few are worth remembering. In fact, there are many we'd rather forget.

The Motherhood is a hilarious rap rundown of the realities of being a mum. Runny noses, nits, post-baby body, vomit, expressing milk – and every other everyday challenge a mother faces.“I express, like the best, from these holes in my chest. Wear a nursing bra, like a bulletproof vest… Work versus home is a mental combination, with my elbows deep in infant defecation.” And it goes on, in a no-holds-barred account of maternal life that will likely have every mum bopping her head in delighted recognition.The uncompromising track is part of Fiat’s marketing for their new compact family car, the 500L. And the Italian carmaker says the song is a salute to motherhood.“Word to all the mothers out there. This one goes out to you...'The Motherhood' feat. Fiat 500L is dedicated to all those women who have to be all things to all people and live it large on a daily basis,” a Fiat statement says.But is it too bold for a car ad? 

   

   

   

   

They have a long and strange history stretching back for about a century. It seems there’s been no idea too mad to build – and drive. One of our favourites is the Dynasphere, an electric-powered monowheel vehicle design patented in 1930 by British inventor John Archibald Purves.The electric-powered vehicle mounted the driver’s seat and motor as a single unit on interior rails, with the ‘cage’ body spinning around them. The driver – in our photo, Purves’s son -- had to lean out and use his body weight to steer the Dynasphere.It’s said to have reached a top speed of 48km/h, and reportedly had a bad habit of ‘gerbiling’ – sending the driver spinning around the inside – when it took off or braked hard.Purves later built an eight-seater version as a novelty, but spoke of the Dynasphere as the "the high-speed vehicle of the future", and in 1935 Meccano Magazine featured the invention on its cover, predicting that roads of the future would see as many of these giant wheels as there were cars.But the Dynasphere is probably not the oddest vehicle we found. There’s a Peugeot boat-car, an amphibian Riley, a Vespa with water floats, the human-powered Curry-Landskiff – and much, much more.Check out our gallery for what we believe to be the world’s weirdest vintage vehicles. And if you know of one that should be in there, let us know.