How do you create a new brand with almost instant credibility? Easy, use an existing successful brand to endorse yours and I’m not talking about copyright infringement or passing off another brand as your own. I call it brand association and when used correctly, brand association benefits both brands. It works well if the endorsement brand is highly visual in its product offering, for example supercars, and the success of the endorsement brand could outweigh the success of your brand, a win-win situation.

Magnum, PI and the legend of the Ferrari 308 GT

Magnum, PI starring Tom Selleck as Thomas Magnum, a private investigator living in Hawaii, it was one of the highest-rated television shows in the United States. According to Nielsen Ratings, the series that aired between 1980 and 1988 consistently ranked in the top 20 US television shows for the first five years it aired. Selleck and his co-star John Hillerman (Higgins) also won Emmy Awards for their respective roles.

In this series, Thomas Magnum lives a dream lifestyle: he comes and goes as he pleases, works only when he wants, has almost unlimited use of a Ferrari 308 GT and the guest house on an elegant waterfront estate, courtesy from your host. Robin Masters. He has a mini fridge with an endless supply of beer, is surrounded by countless beautiful women, and enjoys adventures with his two friends, both former United States Marines who served with him in the Vietnam War.

It was in this context and in this idyllic setting that Magnum, PI helped create the legend of the Ferrari 308 GT. His lifestyle was the role model for all red-blooded men, single, single and married alike, in the 1980s, dreaming of one day owning a Ferrari. The fact that the Ferrari 308 GT was very small and really meant for a mid-size Italian was something the prospective owner only found out when he wanted to test it, around the same time that the fellow fan discovers the glove compartment. it’s really a disguise for the fuse box. This explains why Tom Selleck with his frame of something six feet was only seen in the Ferrari without the hardtop and when it was not raining.

This did not stop the Ferrari 308 GT from becoming a legend, with a resulting inflated price tag and the foundation for what would become one of the most sought-after supercars and the most popular merchandising brands in the world. The legend was further perpetuated by Miami Vice, the American television series produced by Michael Mann for NBC. The show is recognized as one of the most influential television series of all time. He was inspired by the New Wave culture and music of the 1980s, and became known for his strong integration of music and visual effects to tell a story. The series ran for five seasons and starred Don Johnson as Crockett and Phillip Michael Thomas as Tubbs, two Metro-Dade police detectives who work undercover in Miami.

How vice in Miami made Italy’s rearing horse famous.

People magazine stated that Miami Vice “It was the first show to look really new and different since color television was invented.” In an iconic scene from Miami Vice, Crockett and Tubbs drive through Miami at night to the beat of Phil Collins’ hit song “In the Air Tonight” in a white Ferrari Testarossa, one of two cars that became notable during Miami Vice; the other is a Ferrari Daytona. In fact, the series Testarossa was not a Ferrari, but a replica of the kit based on a 1980 Chevrolet Corvette C3 chassis fitted with Ferrari-shaped body panels from specialized automaker McBurnie. Enzo Ferrari filed a lawsuit demanding that McBurnie stop producing and selling Ferrari replicas. As a result, after the third season, the replica was shattered and the fake Ferraris were removed from the show. As a result, Enzo Ferrari donated two new 1986 Testarossas as replacements.

The rearing horse really took off when Michael Schumacher stepped into the saddle in 1996 with the consequent sales of an internally managed merchandising line that licenses many products bearing the Ferrari brand, including glasses, pens, pencils, electronics, perfumes, clothing. , high technology. bikes, watches, cell phones and even laptops, outpacing Ferrari’s total motor vehicle sales revenue. Shell has a long-standing technical partnership with Ferrari and Ducati to test and supply fuel and oils to Formula One, MotoGP and World Superbike racing teams. Shell V-Power premium gasoline fuel has been developed as a result of many years of technical experience shared between Shell and Ferrari.

Start of the confinement

Another notable supercar that appeared in Miami ViceIn stark contrast to Crockett’s white Ferrari (the white knight?), it was a black Lamborghini Countach driven by a drug dealer. This also helped create another supercar icon. The 1981 slapstick comedy film, Cannonball race, starring Burt Reynolds, Roger Moore, Dom DeLuise and Farrah Fawcett, was based on the Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash, a real cross-country outlaw race from the Red Ball Garage in town. from New York (later Darien, CT) to the Redondo Beach, California pier, south of Los Angeles, hosted by automotive journalists and the film’s screenwriter, Brock Yates.

Some of the more interesting aspects of the film that were based on real life include the all-female entry of Jill Rivers (Tara Buckman) and Marcie Thatcher (Adrienne Barbeau), two knockout women who start the race in a black Lamborghini Countach, who finally end up winning.

The Lamborghini Countach is a mid-engined supercar produced between 1974 and 1989 in an era before wind tunnels and ABS brakes, power steering, and fuel injection. The design of the Countach pioneered and popularized the sharp-angled, wedge-shaped look copied by many high-performance sports cars. The forward cabin design concept, which pushes the passenger compartment forward to accommodate a larger engine, was also popularized by the Countach.

In 2004, Sports Car International named this car number three on their list of the best sports cars of the 1970s, and it was listed as number 10 on their list of the best sports cars of the 1980s. The Countach’s style and visual impression made it an icon of great design and today it is considered a masterpiece of automotive sculpture. During the 1970s and 1980s, this car was every schoolboy’s dream and it was not uncommon to find a Countach poster next to (or even sometimes instead of) a photo of Farrah Fawcett on his bedroom walls.

The superior performance characteristics of later Lamborghini models (such as the Diablo or the Murcielago) appealed to high-performance car drivers and engineers, but they never had the originality or quirkiness that gave the Countach its distinction. The different impressions left by the different Lamborghini models have generated a lot of debate and disagreement about what constitutes a classic or cool automotive design.

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