Oh, Lotus! So many incredible cars, cars built for the sheer joy of driving. There’s so much they had figured out, and then also so much that seems to have eluded them, like how to make brochures in the ’60s. I mean, they had the basic ideas right, but somehow things just ended up a little, I don’t know, weird. Like they were almost trying too hard, and sort of in the wrong ways? Let’s look at some of these.
There was a sort of formula to these brochures for ’60s era sports cars: at its most simple you’d get the car in some kind of interesting or exotic location, and you’d get an attractive woman in the picture, somehow. Sometimes there’d be a dude, too, a stand-in for the usually male target market of these cars.
Ideally, the context would all make at least some sort of sense, or suggest some kind of basic scenario: a day at the beach, an attempt to hanglide, a swing party at a llama farm, whatever. Lotus didn’t really seem to get the narrative part, and came up with stuff like this:
Okay, we have a very pretty 1974 Lotus Elan big in the foreground, parked on some damp-looking sandy ground, in front of a dark, craggy cave that looks like it’s hacked out of obsidian. Lurking in the background, pretty far in the background if we’re honest, is a woman in a poppy-orange dress lurking just in front of the inky blackness that is the dark recesses of that cave.
Sure, Lotus has they key elements: exotic location, the car, the woman, but they’re missing one key element: the viewer has to want to be there. And does anyone really want to be there? It looks cold and a little clammy, and I can’t say that woman is looking like she’s enjoying herself. Can we use the car to get the hell out of that cave? It’s probably filled with guano and there’s smelly things dripping everywhere.
This isn’t a good time. And, there’s nowhere to really drive that Elan! If they’re selling a lifestyle, I think they’ve just cornered the troll market.
Then again, based on Lotus’ other brochures, maybe they just weren’t always comfortable with people at all. Look at this Esprit brochure picture:
Car, foggy morning, grass. Good enough, everyone knock off early! Also, are the reverse lights on?
The way this brochure showed the interior is even weirder:
Absolutely amazing interiors on these, the colors, the shapes of the seats, that plaid– but did they just drop a photo on the asphalt and take a picture of a picture? Or was this done at the paste-up stage? And if so, why?
Here’s another scene from the ’74 Elan brochure. Again we have the fun location, the car, and a woman, but once again it’s a place where that car really doesn’t belong – nobody drives Elans through low tide at the beach. Even though the body is fiberglass, I feel like they still figured out a way to make it rust, and you can almost hear it doing so in this picture.
The woman is dressed like she’s about to meet an older gentleman for vodka and caviar and ennui at a fancy Moscow restaurant, but instead she’s uncomfortably reclining on the hood, with a fairly bored/nonplussed expression. Is this enticing? This scene feels like a prelude to the ride back where she spends the whole time asking you why the hell you thought this would be a good idea.
Also, in the inset pictures, even that dog looks eager to get away.
Eventually, Lotus figured out a workable angle, as you can see in this Elite brochure: rich people, doing rich people shit. Fancy garden party? Just park the car in the middle. Then make sure a woman in a big feather boa and a guy with a bow tie just one size down from clown-equipment grade are standing nearby and boom, you’re selling cars!
It’s that easy!
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