VW Takes Road Trip to Fake Fairbanks
It’s 1:43am, and a supermodelish woman in full makeup stretches, and slinks out of bed in her body-skimming, white camisole. She of the perfectly tweezed eyebrows and coral glossed lips goes to the window and parts the diaphanous curtains. Her beau, with no facial hair awaits her on the street in his convertible VW Beetle. He beckons to her. She playfully shushes him. It’s time for a drive…
They ride, top down in the sunlight, through pristine streets, passing a snoozing cop in a display window, an empty café, and stop to laugh with childlike joy at a reindeer standing in the intersection. The city is asleep, and completely deserted except for our two sweethearts on their vehicular adventure.
Did Fairbanks spring to mind? It only did if you’ve never been to Fairbanks.
The tip-offs might have been: full makeup, diaphanous curtains, lack of facial hair, deserted streets, cop snoozing in storefront window, a reindeer instead of a moose, the fact that it looked nothing like Fairbanks, and oh yes,… a convertible VW Beetle.
Don’t get me wrong. I love the Fairbanks. But this latest commercial for the VW Bug, which flashes to a roadside sign that says “Welcome to Fairbanks, Land of the Midnight Sun,” in the foreground of some clearly non-Alaskan landscape just missed the boat. Unless you put a block heater in that thing with the plug hanging out the front, and unless that car has 4-wheel drive, studded tires, and a roof not made of cloth… it’s not going to get many joyrides.
But that’s OK. For those who don’t know any better, it’s the greatest thing since “Alaskan Springtime” scented Febreeze.
It’s the miracle of German engineering, folks.
Welcome to Fauxbanks!
[h/t Newsminer.com]
After reading the first paragraph I just assumed it was another domestic recap from Mudflats Central.
Outed! Fake Fairbanks is . . . . Vallejo, California.
http://www.timesheraldonline.com/news/ci_22805655/alaska-south-car-ad-set-film-downtown-vallejo
Almost fooled me.
Cool stuffed deer head in smaller picture. He is looking straight up,must have been admiring Mt Mckinley when wasted by a hunter. How did he end up in Georgia?
…And I don’t remember that hill in downtown FBKS the caribou is standing on!
No one in Fairbanks uses studded. just the folks in Anchorage (because drivers there don’t know how to drive in winter) and in Kodiak (because there is no snow in winter; only ice. And they don’t know how to drive in parking lots).
You can tell everyone in Anchorage goes studded immediately when you cross any busy intersection that hasn’t been repaved for a few years. I sometimes question whether going across bare railroad ties would be worse.
Maybe it’s the same city they filmed Northern Exposure in. Wowza, nice brick roads, so maybe Oz?
Which is a lovely town in the state of Washington if I recall correctly.