![\"Ineos](\"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/cheeky-billboards-the-art-of-car-ads-that-make-us-laugh.jpg\" "\\"Ineos")
<\/a><\/p>\nManufacturers have been poking fun at each other with billboards for decades \u2013 some with more success than others<\/p>\n
The process of choosing a car, ploughing your money into it\u00a0and then having to explain so\u00a0many times why you\u2019ve done it inevitably makes automotive culture a bit tribal \u2013 and, critically, adversarial.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s puerile to laugh or sneer at someone who simply made a different choice and yet, just occasionally, we do it. We can\u2019t help it, because it taps into something ancient in our subconscious that no effort at enlightenment can permanently suppress\u00a0(that\u2019s what scientists say, I promise).<\/p>\n
And so does really good car advertising. Billboard advertising does it best. The art of the billboard has become weighed down in recent years by the potential of digital technology and unconventional creativity, and a certain sense of one-upmanship between the agencies that make them.<\/p>\n
There are digital billboards now fed by ANPR cameras that display personalised messages when you drive by. There have\u00a0been billboard adverts for the Ford Mustang<\/a>\u00a0that actually produce imitation tyre smoke.\u00a0<\/p>\n The internet tells me there was one in Vienna\u00a0for high-end kitchen knife brand Tyrolit,\u00a0the surface of which actually itself slowly oxidised to reveal the outline of the knife\u00a0over the weeks and months that it stood there\u00a0(which, I must admit, was a clever idea).<\/p>\n But I like those simple, slightly cheeky billboard ads much more \u2013 especially when they\u2019re poking fun or digging out a rival.\u00a0When done well, they\u2019re the product of an attractively sharp wit with some confidence\u00a0and self-assurance, and they\u2019re very often\u00a0a bit knowing and self-deprecating.<\/p>\n They\u00a0feel like the product of the mind of someone whose team you would like to be on. So\u00a0does it matter how true they are? Just as with most advertising, there\u2019s a greater tradition of these in the US than in the UK \u2013 probably because we have stricter regulation.<\/p>\n But not strong enough, evidently, to prevent Ineos poking fun at rival JLR the other week.\u00a0It fixed a pair of billboards to a trailer and\u00a0towed them around between Land Rover\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0West Midlands manufacturing and distribution sites.<\/p>\n The billboards themselves depicted\u00a0a suspiciously clean Defender<\/a> nose-to-nose\u00a0with a filthy Grenadier<\/a>, the tow car was the\u00a0self-same Grenadier and the message read\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2018Let\u2019s take this outside\u2019. It made me chuckle. I\u2019m not a Grenadier owner and not a particular fan of the car. Furthermore, I know the underlying implication of the campaign to be, shall we say, questionably founded.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve witnessed first hand what a Defender can do around forest tracks and in a muddy quarry to firmly put a Grenadier in the shade with its rough-stuff capability. It\u2019s not\u00a0the stuff you\u2019d make Ineos ads from.<\/p>\n But it doesn\u2019t matter. Because we all know\u00a0that one of these cars is bought by people who will genuinely take it off road and one generally isn\u2019t. JLR should take pride in that, because it means the Defender is reaching beyond its grasp and is much the bigger commercial triumph.\u00a0<\/p>\n But that does open it up to the odd sledge.\u00a0It\u2019s the price of success.\u00a0Renault <\/a>has done something similar recently, with a billboard ad for the Renault 5<\/a> outside its Brentford dealership inviting people to \u2018make their neighbours jealous\u2019.<\/p>\n