B/O LAUNCHES SPEED CHANNEL'S 'UNIQUE WHIPS' SHOW
February 21, 2005
By Mark Dolliver
People who devote their discretionary time and money to a given hobby have long been referred to as "enthusiasts." The catch is, enthusiasm itself has fallen into disesteem in our irony-drenched era. Among young guys especially, displays of enthusiasm are a lapse from the demeanor of insouciant cool they feel obliged to cultivate. That's a factor the Speed Channel (a cable network devoted to motor racing and automotive arcana) must finesse as it lures young men to its show for car-customization enthusiasts. (The ad runs in such laddish venues as Maxim, FHM and Playboy.) The show features Will Castro, the fellow shown in the ad's photo. As "the genius behind Unique Autosports," he's the expert hired by celebs like Jennifer Lopez and Eminem to take their very expensive cars (a.k.a. "whips") and make them different from anyone else's very expensive car of the same make. Viewers can tune into the Unique Whips show and see how he "takes the cars of the stars and turns them into one-of-a-kind works of art." In this context, terms like "genius" and "one-of-kind works of art" will catch the attention of readers whose most vivid fantasies involve chrome. But will readers find the rhetoric embarrassingly reverent?
Actually, the ad inoculates itself against seeming dorky in its enthusiast enthusiasm by superimposing a deadpan headline over the whole thing: "You'd think that a $300,000 car would come with everything. Apparently not." The humor here will elicit a knowing laugh about celebs who pay a pile of money for a car and then pay Mr. Castro another pile of money to treat it as a teardown. And, having had their laugh, readers can build their Wednesday evenings around the show's 9:00 airtime without feeling they've fallen into the get-a-life demoqraphic.
