Friday, September 30, 2016

I'll give Apex this- they are still around, and still offering these classes. I bet their commercials are better now, though



"Every two seconds somebody bangs up a car.  Keeping them looking new again keeps 185,000 specialists on the job..."

Well, I'd think so.  After all, that's 30 cars being banged up every minute, or 1800 every hour, or 43,200 every day- or almost sixteen MILLION cars banged up every year....if they all needed servicing, that comes out to eighty-five cars per "specialist."  Except, wait- isn't it reasonable to assume that the vast majority of those "bang-ups" are going to be fender-benders, scratches, and dings written off by the owners because, well, deductables?  And even if every single one of those cars were brought in to a "specialist," that comes out to one job every four days...how long does it take to fix a dent or fill a stratch?*

My favorite part of this classic ad comes at 35 seconds in when the host, after giving a quick rundown of the skills his training program teaches, breaks into a chuckle and practically blurts out "now seriously, don't you agree that a monkey could be trained to do any of this work in a long weekend?  How freaking helpless are you?"

Maybe in the 1970s applying bondo and smoothing out dents and spraying paint- all those things MAACO charges through the nose for- made for a good career?  Considering that my father in law was able to teach me how to do all that stuff for my own car and I managed to actually do it without blinding myself or losing an appendage, I kind of doubt it.  VCR Repair sounds more promising, even if it doesn't come with that awesome Probably Free When You Apply For a Sears Card tool kit...

*oh, who am I kidding?  "Labor: $200 Minimum" pretty much no matter what, right?

1 comment:

  1. http://www.willitsnews.com/article/NR/20150417/NEWS/150419942

    I remember that these Apex ads were on constantly in the 1970s and 1980s, chiefly on the New York city area stations WPIX and WWOR.

    In trying to identify the spokesman, I actually found his obituary. Neil Morgan Elliott was a California resident who worked as an advertising executive. He used to commute to New York to shoot the commercials.

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