The Top 10 Best Chevy Truck Commercials Of All Time

Even though Chevrolet is one of the most recognizable brands on the planet, and has been providing vehicles to the public for well over a century, it still needs to advertise its products regularly to remain competitive. In advertising its trucks, Chevrolet has used several different techniques with the television commercials it has created, ever since the very first one in 1948. Each decade, a new crop of ads popped up extolling the virtues of the fine Chevrolet truck, with a range of tactics to elicit emotion that could hopefully be converted into a sale.

Over the years, Chevrolet trucks have been associated with multiple jingles and slogans. Some of the most memorable include "See the USA in Your Chevrolet," "Baseball, Hotdogs, Apple Pie, and Chevrolet," "Heartbeat of America," "Built to Stay Tough," "Nothing works like a Chevy," and "Like a Rock." The last one accompanied the Bob Seger song from which the slogan was pulled, and hearing it today can cause PTSD for '90s kids forced to suffer through one too many Chevy ads during primetime. Some of these marketing campaigns were more successful than others, and many of them were downright annoying. However, auto advertising has improved over the last couple of decades as marketers have figured out how to make car ads at least marginally entertaining and less insufferable. Some are even enjoyable and funny. Nonetheless, of the decades' worth of examples we have available today — scores of old car ads are posted to YouTube — these are some of the very best.

Cross-promotion and product tie-ins have long been a part of Hollywood. The earliest of product placements first happened in the 1920s, and the tradition continued through today. One of the best-known and blatant tie-ins happened when Steven Spielberg got Reese's to include its Pieces candy in "E.T." and cross-promote the movie in its advertising at the time. Fast forward to 2019 and the sequel to the Lego movie, Lego Movie 2: The Second Part was set to release, and Chevrolet found an opportunity to use it to hawk some trucks.

Product cross-promotions can often feel forced and disingenuous. However, this ad is really kinda good. It stars minifigs from the movie and blends clever Lego action with more mundane sales talking points. In between selling points, the female minifig manages a few self-referential quips in realization that she is actually in a commercial despite insisting, "I don't do commercials." It is no cinematic masterpiece but, then again, neither is the Lego movie sequel. Still, it is fun and beats the plethora of boring car commercials featuring happy people fishing together and bonding over their pickup.

In 2015, Ford announced that its F-150 pickup truck would start being built with an aluminum body. While it was claimed to be military-grade aluminum and helped the truck shed 700 pounds in weight, Chevrolet jumped at the chance to use this move against the company in a commercial.

This one features what are claimed to be non-actors placed in a room with an aluminum cage and a steel cage, then forced to choose between the two with the introduction of a live bear into the room. Fearing imminent danger, all of the non-actors chose the steel cage and explained later they felt safer with the protection of high-strength steel over aluminum. It is a clever way to gain an edge against your competitor by obscuring the facts about its product with a simple, but incongruous demonstration that capitalizes on people's general lack of knowledge of metallurgy. The truth is that Ford is not going to make a truck significantly inferior to Chevrolet, but there's nothing necessarily wrong with suggesting that. It is a good ad. However, what truly makes it great and worthy of discussion is the inclusion of a real bear. Stick a bear into any ad and it is worth watching.

Car commercials of the 1950s were really a completely different breed from what we have today (or even 20 or 30 years ago). The focus was squarely placed on the vehicles themselves and touting what makes the Chevrolet, for example, the car you want to buy. The practicality and desirable features were the highlights long before the idea of selling a truck as a rugged lifestyle product ever came around. This is kind of what makes this ad for the 1959 El Camino utility truck so good.

In this ad, we start off staring at a Southwestern-style adobe building to the sound of a Spanish guitar and castanets. A slow pan brings us to a Chevrolet station wagon with an announcer exclaiming that it represents the "new shape for 1959." Already the level of drama has been raised above most TV shows of the period, and then the camera pans over to the Task Force Line Chevy truck, only to be obscured by a rising waterfall that recedes to present...the El Camino.

This was made in what was truly a different time. The commercial lacks the panache and production of modern advertising. Yet the cinematic quality is something one can appreciate, given the subject matter. Furthermore, given the droning mendacity of other 1950s commercials such as these, the El Camino ad one should get an award.

The 1980s were a time of optimistic patriotism when, in order to sell products, all you had to do was appeal to the "real hard-working American." With enough shots of workers, family, and cowboys set to a country music soundtrack, you could sell anything in Reagan's America. That's exactly the approach taken for Chevrolet trucks with this very 1980s commercial.

"Bring home the bacon in a Chevy truck" is a line that could only be sung in a cheesy ad from the '80s. Here we have oil rig workers, people fishing, cattle rustlers, cowgirls eating ice cream, and trucks hitting the mud. This is an obvious appeal to middle America and the folks who were and still are Chevrolet truck customers. There is something so very dull and unimaginative about this commercial that its level of appeal is elevated by the sheer cheesiness and over-the-top "America!" about it. It would have been right at home in commercial breaks during episodes of Roseanne or Cheers, broadcast on local stations in Des Moines or Tulsa — Portland or Boston might have shown a different version. For better or worse, this kind of advertising is gone forever.

As auto advertising has moved into the modern day, marketing agencies have come up with some novel methods of including tongue-in-cheek innuendo to suggest certain ideas that may be a bit untoward. Auto advertising needs to have a broad reach and connect with a broad cross-section of society, so it must be careful not to offend anyone. Still, it is well established that sex and romance sell, so advertisers try to throw in some mildly racy material once in a while.

For the 2014 Super Bowl, Chevy chose to play into the romance angle to sell its trucks with an unusual twist. As is so common in Chevy truck commercials, it features a rugged cowboy type at what appears to be a livestock auction. Pulling his new bull home in its trailer towed by a Chevy truck, the tune "You Sexy Thing" by Hot Chocolate begins playing while the camera switches from shots in the cab to others focused on the bull in the trailer. Right away it gives you some creepy vibes, wondering exactly why this song is playing for this cowboy and his bull. Perhaps something very untoward is afoot. Yet, in the end, he introduces his new bull to some heifers back at the ranch who are ready to make some new calves. It's cheeky. It's clever. It's almost too much. But it makes a great truck ad.

Technically, a Chevy Astro is a van. However, it rides on a full frame like a truck and gets powered by a big V6 engine shared with Chevy trucks so, for our purposes, it's a truck. Besides, the ad for the Astro that ran when it first came out is golden. The Dodge Caravan came out in 1984, starting a revolution in family transportation. The Astro came out a year later, differentiating itself by being rear-wheel-drive with a body-on-frame design and powered by six instead of four cylinders. Although it went on to be a successful product for many years, it would be nice to think its initial success came down to its debut advertising on TV.

This Astro ad ran at a time when the exploration of space was already in full swing and new discoveries of the cosmos were coming in all the time. Space-themed shows and products were also very popular, which made the Astro moniker perfect for an interstellar TV commercial. Furthermore, advances in video editing, animation, and computer graphics combined with music created on synthesizers combined for an Astro ad that was out of this world. This short video is peak 1980s, full of cheesy graphics and hokey music. Furthermore, the production quality is pretty good for the era and even looks better than many contemporary TV shows. It certainly looks like it had a bigger budget than many. This short 30-second film reel is an interesting look into the past and a study of what marketing agencies thought could move American consumers at the time.

Auto advertising in the 1970s continued to show cars and trucks in situations that showed off the individual qualities of a model, listing the various features and options offered to entice buyers. The era of selling a lifestyle had not yet come to be, so advertisers possessing increasingly sophisticated production tools began to increase the overall quality of TV commercials.

Yet, the 1972 Chevy truck ad eschewed sophisticated and glossy production values for a good old feat of strength. Along with a voiceover extolling the virtues of a tough Chevy truck, this one showed a standard Chevrolet C10 pickup towing a Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet, which had entered service only a couple of years prior. This ad is basic and lacking in high-end production, but it includes a jumbo jet, and showing it being pulled by a pickup is pretty cool. If you want to sell a truck based on towing capability, this ought to do the trick.

Modern advertising has come a long, long way from the 1950s, when ads showed smiling families piled into giant station wagons while a narrator rattled off a long list of features to entice buyers. These days, we have digital graphics and professional actors playing out all manner of fantasy scenarios to elicit emotions from buyers, for better or worse.

For its 2012 Super Bowl ad, Chevrolet chose to play up the notion that the end of the world could be on the horizon, as the ancient Mayan calendar ended on December 21, 2012. Beginning with an apocalyptic scene filled with gray skies and piles of rubble, a Silverado pickup emerges from the wreckage of a building to drive past shipwrecked flying saucers and the general mayhem associated with scenes of Armageddon to meet up in a destroyed city square of sorts with some mates. His mates all accompanied various model-year Chevy trucks as they discussed why John had not arrived. It turns out that John drives a Ford, which is why he did not show up, indicating that only a Silverado could help you survive the final days of Earth. It closes with raining frogs as the camera pans out.

This is one of Chevrolet's better ads and is well-produced and uniquely clever. Perhaps the best part of the ad is the juxtaposition of death and destruction to the soundtrack of Barry Manilow's crooning in "Looks Like We Made It." Any ad with Manilow providing the soundtrack will always be among the best.

Another of Chevrolet's Super Bowl commercials features a recurring character, Walter the Cat. This friendly little feline makes an appearance in a series of ads for Chevrolet, always garnering comedic responses from the random folks he encounters throughout his exploits.

For the 2022 Super Bowl, Chevrolet opens its commercial in some snowy woodlands at a majestic cabin featuring a Silverado pickup parked out front. Moving inside the cabin, we find Walter alerting his human with a purr-meow and a leash in his mouth that it is time for a snowy walk. Several "typical human-cat activities" ensue, including ice hockey, camping, fire hydrant urination, mailman chasing, and snowmobile riding, before he eventually helps dig a stuck skier out of the snow. As happens in other iterations of these commercials, the skier remarks, "That's incredible." When Walter's human takes the remark to be about his Silverado, the skier clarifies that his remark is about the cat. Walter's human is so befuddled once again that people think his cat is anything but an ordinary cat.

This commercial could fit squarely into the cute category. It is clever and amusing, but it doesn't blow any minds. It is still a monumental improvement over the dozens of annoying "Like a Rock" ads that ran throughout the '90s.

For anyone who is a fan of the HBO hit show "The Sopranos," this recent Super Bowl ad is probably the best one Chevrolet has produced yet. Recreating the iconic opening of the show in which Tony Soprano drives his Chevrolet Suburban to his home in the suburbs of New Jersey, passing iconic landmarks of the neighborhood and the area at large, this ad capably elicits strong emotions in fans of the show.

Even though it has been more than two decades since The Sopranos first aired, the show's popularity remains high. However, the lead actor who played Tony Soprano, James Gandolfini, has since passed. Taking his place is Jamie-Lynn Sigler, the actress who played Tony's daughter, Meadow. The 1999 Suburban is swapped for the all-new electric Silverado but runs through what appears to be the exact same route as in the show. Familiar features of the drive show up, including Satriale's meat market, however, the Twin Towers are missing from the New York skyline and have been replaced by the Freedom Tower. This time, the drive ends not at a sprawling suburban home, but near the shore, where Meadow meets up with her brother, A.J., in a role reprised by the original actor, Robert Iler.

People who were never fans of "The Sopranos" likely won't get much from this commercial. But with the broad fanbase and appeal of the infamous New Jersey gangster drama, this one hit home for millions. Well done, Chevrolet.