VW PASSAT COMMERCIAL

DeTomaso Appearance

There are two versions of the commercial, a long one and short one. The VW Passat commercial shows a cop running through some big city chasing a crook. The crook gets on a motorcycle and takes off. The cop looks for a car to continue his pursuit. He first looks at a blue L-model Pantera with hood vents, and then looks over at a VW Passat. He decides to jump in the Passat (hahaha) and speeds off after the crook with a chase scene. The Pantera is on-screen for only about a 1/2 second.

The Pantera gets more than just one 1-second shot. There are about six shots (less than 1 sec each), and the long-time shot where the cops select their next pursuit vehicle.

One angle is from some height, showing the full street scene, which they flash back
to several times...but they cut the scenes so fast that total Pantera-time is limited.

A friend has already seen the next cut of the commercial. Typically, a commercial
is broadcast with the "long" version, then later a shortened version is repeated.

The short version shows the full street scene only once, and the "selection scene" remains.

Images

If you have any screen shots of the Pantera in the movie, please send them to me and I'll add them here.

About the Car

The commercial was filmed in the Los Angeles area in April or May of 1999. The commercial featured a blue 73 or 74 Pantera L. The car was owned by Mike Mayberry at the time, and he was paid $500 for the use of the car shooting of the commercial.

Mike has since sold the car. This was told to me by Jim Saxton who saw the car at Mike's, and Mike told him about the commercial. Why VW chose a Pantera is still a mystery. Best guess is that the use of an out-of-production car that looked fast and was unrecognizable to most people would create less corporate controversy and rivalry since VW is not slamming a particular manufacturer/competitor.

This information comes from DeTomaso Forum posts.

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