Nothing like a good Car Industry Strikes Back article to kickstart your day. Our reader, Krzysztof in Gdansk, Poland, spotted this advert for Ford Poland in the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper. You’re going to love this desperate attempt by Ford to sell some vans.
The main text at the top left reads, “Ford Transit - a machine for saving money”
Then, below, Ford tries to alter reality by writing; “Delivery bicycles do not exist. You don’t need to switch to riding a bike to save money.”
Yes. They just wrote that. Delivery Bicycles Don’t Exist. In all seriousness. And then they paid to have it published in a newspaper. If Poland has an advertising standards commission, someone should let them about this advert. Lying, as far as I’m aware, isn’t allowed in advertising.
The text continues with optimistic texts about how you can “Save on buying”, “save on petrol”, “save on service”, etc. “The usual blah blah blah you’d expect from a commercial”, as Krzysztof put it in his email to us.
He continues, “Now I know commercials go a far way to bend facts and I know delivery bikes are not popular in Poland (in fact I’ve seen just 1 or 2 in
Gdańsk so far) but come on… I felt like someone was lying while looking me straight in the eyes. This ad is something I just couldn’t pass by.”
When you live in Copenhagen, with 40,000 cargo bikes and you are involved with the Cyclelogistics project to promote cargo bike use in European cities, this advert is so stupid it’s amusing. As ever with this Car Industry Strikes Back series, we can see that they’re worried. That they see the bicycle as serious competition. And well they should. It’s last century versus this century and we’re winning it.
Cargo bike delivery in Paris.
Vintage Russian cargo bike delivering flowers.
Left to right: Supermarket delivery bike in Montreal. Citizen Cyclist in Copenhagen carrying stuff. Royal Danish post.
Rio de Janeiro and Rio, again. Two of 11,000 cargo bike deliveries in that city.
Left to right: Copenhagener moving stuff to a flea market. The Fruit Bike, Copenhagen. Ice Cream Bikes at Copenhagen Zoo. The Coffee Bike by Espressomanden, Copenhagen. Cargo bike in Amsterdam.
Left to right: Newspaper bike, Copenhagen. Cargo in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Crêpes bike, Copenhagen. Sushi bike, Copenhagen. Bike repair bike, Copenhagen. And so on, and so on.
The Cargo Bike Culture photo set kind of thumbs its nose in the general direction of Ford.
