Innovation. Progress. Resilience.
These were three of the biggest themes that drove this year’s line-up of Super Bowl commercials, especially when it came to the automotive spots. Featuring brilliant storytelling and game-changing developments—including, of course, many a cool car—these spots have us pumped up for the future of the automotive industry.
Didn’t catch all of them when Super Bowl LIV aired? Or perhaps you just want to watch them again?
Check out all the 2020 Super Bowl car commercials below:
What do The Office actor John Krasinski, Captain America star Chris Evans, and SNL alum Rachel Dratch have in common? They all hail from Greater Boston, and lovingly riff off the Boston accent in Hyundai’s first-quarter ad, “Smaht Pahk.”
Set in the South End, the scene opens with Evans and Dratch, who banter as they watch a driver unsuccessfully attempt to park in a tight spot before he gives up. That’s when Krasinski pulls up in a Hyundai Sonata, hits “the clickah,” and joins Evans and Dratch on the sidewalk as they marvel at the car, which parks itself via Hyundai’s newest feature, Remote Smart Parking Assist.
Even Boston Red Sox legend David “Big Papi” Ortiz makes an appearance, popping his head out of a second-story window to declare that it’s “wicked smaht.”
“Game changah,” indeed.
For their first Super Bowl ad since 1997, Porsche used their slot to spotlight the Taycan, their first all-electric vehicle.
The ad starts off at the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, where the Taycan is stolen. This sets a team of security guards—in an impressive bevy of Porsche models—off on an epic car chase through Germany.
When the thief is stopped on a bridge, he turns out to be a fellow security guard, as this is apparently a game they play pretty often. He then asks his teammates, “Who wants to be the bad guy next?”
Us, please.
In another story of firsts, Genesis ran its very first Super Bowl ad to introduce its first ever SUV, the GV80. John Legend and Chrissy Teigen star in the commercial as hosts of a going-away party to “old luxury.”
Teigen calls for their guests’ attention and urges them to say goodbye to “old luxury” and hello to “young luxury” before gesturing grandly towards the open doorway. However, an awkward silence ensues before Teigen calls out for Legend, who finally appears outside in the GV80.
Teigen scolds him for making the entrance that was “supposed to be a thing… not a thing.” No matter, though, as she gets in—after Legend prompts her to say the magic words, “Sexiest Man Alive”—and they ride off into the night, the epitome of young luxury at its finest.
Humanity at its finest came in the form of an ad about a very lucky (and very adorable) dog. Scout, WeatherTech CEO David MacNeil’s universally beloved golden retriever, stars in an ad that is not about any WeatherTech products. Instead, it encourages viewers to donate to the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Veterinary Medicine, which was responsible for saving Scout’s life after he was diagnosed with cancer and given a 1% chance of survival.
Considering the ad’s reported cost of $6 million, it was an extremely generous way of saying, “thank you.”
The spirit of giving in this spot really warmed our hearts.
Another Super Bowl spot that tugged at our heartstrings was Kia’s, which features Las Vegas Raiders running back Josh Jacobs in a Kia Seltos.
As he drives through the streets of his hometown, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Jacobs imagines what advice he would give to his younger self. He says that he would tell himself, “Josh, it’s going to be hard growing up homeless, but you’ve got to believe in yourself.”
In the end, present-day Jacobs hands his younger self a football helmet and says, “Push yourself to be someone, and I promise someday, you will,” before he watches young Jacobs run out onto the field with his friends.
Kia’s ad was an effort to bring awareness to youth homelessness, along with their “Yards Against Homelessness” initiative, in which Kia promised to donate $1,000 to Covenant House, StandUp for Kids, and Positive Tomorrow for every yard scored during the big game.
How I Met Your Mother and Avengers actress Cobie Smulders stars in Toyota’s Super Bowl commercial, which rolls us through various scenes of characters facing imminent danger. They dramatically call out things like, “go on without me,” to their companions and prepare to sacrifice themselves—only to find that they really don’t need to, because Cobie Smulders is there to rescue them in a 2020 Toyota Highlander.
The last person she picks up is her son, who takes one look at the motley crew sitting in the back—a man in a hazmat suit, a dusty man from a western, and a woman in a parka who’s narrowly escaped the clutches of an alien—and says, “Again?”
Smulders says to the camera, “Go wherever they need you,” thus establishing the new Highlander as the coolest family car/mid-size crossover SUV ever.
As the Super Bowl landed on Groundhog Day this year, Jeep made the very clever move of recruiting Groundhog Day star Bill Murray to reprise his role as Phil Connors—the man who wakes up to find himself living the same day over and over again—along with Stephen Tobolowsky as Ned Ryerson and Brian Doyle-Murray as Buster Green.
This time around, though, Murray spots a 2020 Jeep Gladiator, to which he says, “That’s different.” Murray then gets up to lots of different adventures and is happy to wake up every morning to relive the day, because “no day is the same in a Jeep Gladiator.”
Could anyone picture Arya Stark singing, “Let It Go,” from Disney’s Frozen? Well, that kind of just happened.
Audi’s Super Bowl spot features Maisie Williams (the actress who played the aforementioned Game of Thrones fan favorite) in an Audi e-tron Sportback, singing “Let It Go” as she drives away from angry, exhaust-pumping traffic to a cleaner, more open road with fellow drivers who sing along with wild abandon.
With their fully electric e-tron models, Audi urges us all to let go of the past and “drive to a more sustainable future.”
Speaking of fully electric models, last but certainly not least in our rundown is General Motors’ much-anticipated Super Bowl spot, which teased the all-new Hummer electric pickup truck—or, now officially, the GMC Hummer EV.
The teaser unveiled some exciting specs: 1,000 HP, 11,500 lb-ft of torque, and 0 to 60 mph in 3 seconds, all packaged in a vehicle that promises “quiet dominance” akin to LeBron James, who slam dunks with a force that shatters the backboard into pieces and makes them rain down in complete silence.
The GMC Hummer EV will be fully revealed on May 20, 2020, so be sure to mark your calendars!
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