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2026 Chevrolet Suburban ReviewSuper Bowl LVIII Car Ads Offer Thrills, Laughs, Heart
Even without Ford, Stellantis, or GM doing ads, this year’s Super Bowl car commercials delivered humor, heart, and lots of EVs.
Super-ish Car Commercials
Super Bowl 58 is in the books. For the many of us not obsessed with Taylor Swift or the few who remain ambivalent about football, watching the big game was mostly an occasion for scarfing down nachos and catching all the new Super Bowl ads. This year’s crop of car ads was a bit slim given Detroit’s Big Three were sitting things out this year. Few though they were, the car ads that did appear this year covered all the bases (as I gleefully mismatch our sports metaphors). There were laughs, nostalgia, thrills, and a whole ship’s rigging worth of heart strings getting pulled.
BMW – “Talkin’ Like Walken”
One problem with being a Hollywood icon? A lot of random people doing impressions of you to your face. Or at least that seems to be Christopher Walken’s problem in BMW’s Super Bowl ad for the new I5 electric sedan. Walken, going about a normal day that includes driving his new all-electric i5, can’t seem to find a single person able to restrain themselves from trying out their Walken impression on him. *Annoying as that might be, Walken appears to find solace in his new BMW.
The i5 is, of course, the all-electric version of the BMW 5-Series. Like the i7 and i4, the i5 retains much of the looks of its gas analogue save those blanked out kidney grille intakes. The BMW i5 eDrive40 starts at $66,800 while the performance version i5 M60 tops out at $84,100.
Volkswagen – “An American Love Story”
Volkswagen took their Super Bowl opportunity to give us a retrospective on the brand’s many decades of success over here in the States, starting with the importation of the first Beetle arriving off the boat in New York City like some turmoil buffeted refugee to the tune of Niel Diamond’s “I Am…I Said.” From there we get one hit of nostalgia after another: boho couple picking out a Beetle from the showroom, Dad, kids, and Beetle, college kids piling into Beetle, hippy hitch hiker picked up by Microbus, Herbie, Woodstock, surfers, a Golf rally car, a wedding, a Simpson’s clip, a reference to Star Wars-themed VW Super Bowl ad, all culminating with the new electric Microbus, the ID.Buzz, nestled in a cargo container, presumably on its way to the US like the Beetle long before it.
Indeed, the long-awaited, much teased ID.Buzz is scheduled to finally arrive in the US this year.
Kia – “Perfect 10”
Your basic maudlin tear-jerker is a stock-and-trade part of Super Bowl advertising, eliciting pathos to connect to a brand’s image. Kia’s spot highlights the new EV9 with a sentimental plot revolving around a little girl’s figure skating performance. The three-row SUVs from Hyundai/Kia have been at or near the top of the segment since the debut of the Palisade/Telluride twins and their new electric analogue, the EV9 looks to continue that momentum.
The ad starts out with a little girl winning her figure skating competition only to gaze wistfully at the empty seat next to her father. Who’s missing, we wonder. We follow as the girl is whisked off in a Kia EV9 through the woods and snow, arriving at her grandfather’s house, he appearing home-bound in a wheelchair. There, on a frozen pond conveniently located in her granddad’s front yard, she performs her winning routine (lights and speakers powered by the EV9).
The 2024 Kia EV9 Light (single motor with rear-wheel drive) starts at $56,395. The forthcoming top end EV9 GT-Line featured in our Super Bowl ad will start at $75,395.
Toyota – “Dareful Handle”
In case you missed it, all three of the above ads feature electric vehicles, and if you thought that Toyota’s “Dareful Handle” side stepped electrification, you’d be wrong. The all-new 2024 Tacoma runs a pair of 2.4L turbocharged gas engines (base at 228 horsepower, otherwise tuned to 278 horsepower) alongside an upcoming hybrid 2.4L powertrain making 326 horsepower. It’s this electrified iteration the ad refers to as “the most powerful Tacoma ever.” Super Bowl ads do their best when leaning toward the irreverent and the “Dareful Handle” does that by focusing on the passenger grab handle. Unlike most passenger vehicles where the grab handle functions mostly as somewhere to hang your clothes hangers, in the Tacoma it becomes the “Shut the front door” handle, the “Seriously, Rob?!” handle, or the “No Me Gusta” handle.
The gas-only 2024 Tacoma starts at $32,995 while the base hybrid is estimated to start around $43,000. The top end TRD-Pro hybrid will likely come in around $65,000. The hybrid Tacoma is slated to appear on showroom floors sometime in 2024.
* If you thought Usher was the exception, you’ve forgotten about the Fatboy Slim “Weapon of Choice” music video.
