American film, television and music stars are often reluctant to appear in ads here because they think it cheapens their image.
But they still want the cash, so they’ll do lucrative television commercials in Japan, where they must think people don’t have the internet. These bankable personalities all made appearances in commercials for heavyweight car brands.
Not long after Anthony Hopkins was settling in for a nice Chianti and some poor sap’s liver, he was cutting ads for Honda in Japan.
The Honda Avancier was a five-seat station wagon-ish vehicle that was based on the Accord platform. It debuted in 1999, and came with the Accord’s 2.3-liter four-cylinder engine, or the 3.0-liter V6. It was literally “forward looking,” with an Intelligent Highway Cruise Control system that used radar to determine how far the Avancier was from the car ahead, and maintain a safe following distance.
Over here, we had Paul Hogan pitching Outback wagons. In Japan, it was Bruce Willis. In this spot, old Butch Coolidge doesn’t have much to say about the car as he enjoys his lunch with a pretty lady. It’s almost like the cameramen grabbed a candid shot of him at an outdoor cafe and the footage got mixed in with the Outback commercial by mistake.
This is the 2003 to 2009 era Subaru Outback wagon, which debuted in 2003 at the Frankfurt Auto Show. By this time, the “Legacy” name was gone from the Outback worldwide, but Bruce Willis pitched for the entire Subaru Legacy lineup, including the Outback wagon.
Unlike Anthony Hopkins and Bruce Willis, who seem like they wandered into their commercials by accident, Eddie Murphy worked his butt off in this supercut of all the ads he did for the Japanese market version of the Toyota Celica.
The Celica in question is the fifth-generation T180 Celica, introduced in 1989 for the 1990 model year. Eddie Murphy is pitching hard for the GT-Four version.
The closest we got to the GT-Four the United States was the Celica All-Trac, with full-time four-wheel drive and a 200hp turbo four. The GT-Four got an air-to-air intercooled twin turbo good for 221 horsepower.
As Eddie mentions about 900 times in this series of ads, the Japanese market also got four-wheel steering, which never made it to the US product.
It’s important to note that in 1989, Eddie Murphy was about as hot a property as you were going to find. He was fresh off of Coming to America and his seminal performance in his live concert film Raw. Toyota must’ve broken the bank to have him appear in these spots.
In 1993, Kyle MacLachlan appeared in a series of ads for the all-new Subaru Impreza, which first appeared in 1992 in the Japanese market. MacLachlan shows up in a pair of ads, one for the Sports Wagon, and one for the Hardtop Sedan.
These are weird ads. They both depict MacLachlan getting ready for some kind of a date, and in the opening scene of the Sports Wagon spot, he’s peeling a bandage off what looks like a giant zit on the bridge of his nose. He practices a few karate moves at one point. It’s like a perfect blend of his roles in Sex and the City and Twin Peaks.
Pre-Angelina, Brad Pitt starred in this frenetic Honda Integra commercial with a surf soundtrack.
Acura was an invention for North America, so the Integra was badged as a Honda most other places in the world. The Brad Pitt ad was for the second-generation Integra, a sportier, Civic-based compact car launched in 1989, with the first application of Honda’s VTEC variable valve timing technology.
In 2002, the site Japander.com posted this Leo DiCaprio ad that he did for the Honda Civic and got a nastygram from the actor’s attorney, advising “your actions constitute, among other offenses, a wrongful use and misappropriation of our client’s name in violation of his federal and state common law and statutory rights including, without limitation, rights of publicity and rights under the Lanham Act.”
Since this clip has been up on YouTube since 2008, we guess his lawyers have been too busy suing French newspapers which claimed he impregnated Rhianna.
In Japan, certain generations of Civic have been accompanied by other names. The third generation was the “Wonder” Civic. The fourth was the “Grand” Civic. The fifth generation was tagged the “Sports” Civic, and the sixth-gen — for which Leo did this ad in 1995 — was the “Miracle” Civic.
This was a young Leonardo DiCaprio. The ad for the 1995 Civic appeared just as he was portraying Jim Carroll’s character in The Basketball Diaries, and was two years before he appeared in Titanic.
The “Primo” tag at the end doesn’t refer to the car, but to the sales channel. As Honda grew in popularity, it broke out its sales functions into two distinct retail organizations: Honda Clio and Honda Primo. Honda Clio sold cars like the Accord, while Primo got the Civic, along with the kei-class cars like the Honda Today, and supermini cars like the Honda Capa. It also sold the rest of Honda’s seemingly endless product portfolio, like lawnmowers, generators, boat engines and motorcycles.
Harrison Ford and Leonardo DiCaprio never starred in a movie together, but they pitched for the same brand just a few years apart. Ford was in his Jack Ryan period in 1992, just after portraying Tom Clancy’s character for the second time in Patriot Games.
He’s shown in full Jack Ryan form in this action-film commercial for the Honda Legend, frankly one of the finest cars that Honda ever built. Ford’s speaking part is limited to a voiceover, which is comprised of a handful of barely connected words: “Driver prestige. Super. Legend.”
Pickle. Suitcase. Yogurt.
Surreal.
In 1998, Honda introduced the Honda Z (pronounced “Zed”) and that little ol’ band from Texas, ZZ Top put together a series of commercials with a minute-long song and a video. It’s tough to see whether drummer Frank Beard actually made the cut, but the singing voices are clearly Dusty Hill and Billy Gibbons.
This is a long ways from running around in a ’33 Ford Eliminator with a bevy of hot 1980s girls, but our guess is the money was pretty good.
Any ZZ Top cover band in America should lay off the “Pearl Necklace” for a while and jump right on this song immediately.
If you thought you loved Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally, just wait until you see her performance in the commercial for the hilariously named Navi Navi Dingo.
Actually, the car is a Mitsubishi Dingo, a five-seat micro-van vehicle equipped with a navigation system. The Dingo was available between 1998 and 2003.
Can you imagine the kind of cash a car company would have to pony up to get Jodie Foster to appear in a commercial?
She appeared taking pictures of the Civic in this ad from 1995, on the launch of the sixth-generation car from Honda.
Foster’s speaking role is limited to the lines “Clever. Its VTEC engine. Yes Civic. Yes Ferio.”
The Civic Ferio Si got the second generation B16A SIR-II engine that year, good for 172hp with an 8,200 RPM redline.
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