Small penis car, meet small vagina car

Campaign: Peugeot RCZ – It Chooses You
Agency: Euro RSCG Worldwide
Rating:

By Ross Mcelwain

There’s a long history of men being subjected to pursuit in ads, and that supposedly being a turn-on. It’s the basic premise of every Lynx ad: the geeky man who uses Lynx deodorant is powerless to resist the advances of women driven wild by his scent.

The recent ad for the Peugeot RCZ, however, misses out a crucial ingredient in this successful formula: a woman. I suggest you watch it before reading what I have to say after the jump.

The problem is this: the creatives don’t seem to realise that being hunted would be quite a turn-off for the kind of man who’d buy a sports car. Especially if he is being hunted BY that car. And all the more so if the car’s design evokes the curves of both male and female genitalia.

It could have been an entirely different story if, at the end, the door of the car had opened to reveal a foxy lady. As it is, the effect is akin to being aggressively cruised by KITT from Knightrider.

That said, maybe this car is intended for a really niche market – one profiled not so much by gender, or age, as by exotic sexual preference. There is a clue in the name of the band that wrote the music, BETC/BUM, which sounds like code you might use at a sex party.

And then there is the problematic design of the car itself.

Here we have to remind ourselves of the basic function of a car as sporty as the RCZ: as a penis replacement/extension. And yet those dimples on the roof recall, to me at least, the labia majora as much as the head of a penis.

Are we looking at the world’s first vagina proxy for men who like sports cars?

• Ross Mcelwain is a director. His short films can currently be seen at festivals across Europe