 featuring recent college grads in the Big Apple. The author declared a desire to be the fourth roommate in their Williamsburg three-bedroom apartment, or at least the Jamie Lee Curtis to […] "'Pin It")
I Want to Be the Chevy Spark in This Women Commercial
Recently an article published on this site,“I Want to Be the Women in This Chevy Spark Commercial,” looked at a two-minute Chevy commercial (above) featuring recent college grads in the Big Apple. The author declared a desire to be the fourth roommate in their Williamsburg three-bedroom apartment, or at least the Jamie Lee Curtis to their collective Lindsay Lohan.
Like a base-level Cruze or Malibu built for car rental fleets, News Wheel editor Patrick Grieve’s aspiration was limited.
Though Chevy’s sleight of hand makes it seem like this is a car commercial, it is actually an advertisement for three special young ladies in the process of becoming best friends.
The poorly titled “Urban Movement: New Roads in NYC” (urban movement being bipedal, the roads of the Big Apple being well-traveled and worn) features the stories of Lili, Lindsay, and Kelly; chic and driven Mizzou grads in love with their city. They’re pretty normal girls, just like you, probably—their hobbies include toasting before eating hamburgers, walking down hallways, and this:
What they love most of all, though they never come out and say it, is their Chevy Spark. And why wouldn’t they? Without the Spark it would be impossible to get around New York City! This rural hamlet is so sparsely populated that they’re able to comfortably park the Spark facing the wrong direction on a one-way street.
The girls have it good, but man, the Spark? The Spark has it better.
Imagine you’re a subcompact car in Lime tintcoat. Your dad, Chevy, brags that you have “street-savvy style and spirited performance.” You’re so cheap and cute, girls just love you—and when they take you for a ride, you’re packing seven long inches of Chevrolet MyLink screen technology that’s extremely responsive to the human touch.
You’re not just the kind of car she can bring home to her parents—you’re the kind of car her parents pick out for her. You sold them on your reputation for safety, but they’ll never know where those 15-inch aluminum wheels have been or just what goes on in the 27.2 cubic feet of cargo space.
There’s so much room for activities
You get to shuttle across bridges with booming cultural views. You rarely need to flex your much-lauded 41 mpg highway fuel economy rating—you’re a real city slicker, not a weekend road warrior. And you’re nearly always busy, serving as the main source of travel (and the primary Wi-Fi hotspot) for three women who work as many as four jobs and love to witness NYC’s ethnic diversity from their hatchback’s windows. Sure, maybe the girls lost your invite to wine night in the mail, and nobody asks to sleep on cracked, cigarette-ridden asphalt, but even fantasies should include a little character-building adversity.
This Women commercial, which doesn’t explicitly mention a vehicle at any point (Millennials love tasteful advertising), reinforces the notion that in today’s urban jungle, the nuclear family is no more.
“We kind of formed our own little home, our own little family,” says Lindsay, an intern for the famous person Martha Stewart.
The new nuclear family is three 22-year-old, white, Mizzou-graduate women in Williamsburg and their Chevy Spark.
To Grieve, I offer this: dream bigger, and if you set your mind to it, you too could be parking improperly on one-way streets. There’s a Spark in you—let it shine.
Ed. note: This has been “I Want to Be the Chevy Spark in This Women Commercial,” a rebuttal to Patrick Grieve’s original piece, “I Want to Be the Women in This Chevy Spark Commercial.” To read that article, click here.
Matt Lardner is a journalist, editor and writer living in Dayton, Ohio, home of the active record of minor league baseball capacity crowds and the ice cube tray. He’s edited a Pulitzer-nominated story, a book on Barry Switzer, and his father’s Christmas cards to UPS customers. Interests include mall Santas, polygraph tests, longform journalism in print magazines, port wine stains, and cheap buffets.