Cool enough for a (1980) Camaro

Life in America was not great in the late 1970s. All the cool things of the mid-60s to the mid-70s were gone. We didn't have the kind of vibrant, carefree, "drugs are good things" culture of those years, we weren't going to the moon anymore, Jimmy Carter wasn't yet the Jimmy Carter who people would later think of positively, and the freedom of the open road was crushed by the oil crisis and the government's insistence that smog was bad and dying in a beautiful rolling metal coffin might ought to be avoided sometimes.

So enter the hero of our ad for the 1980 Chevy Camaro (he says "chevy" to try to make all this seem cool). He's super pumped to have landed himself a Camaro. Says it looks great (and he ain't wrong there) and gets the kind of gas mileage you otherwise would have to buy an "import" for (I don't know that they were positioning against the Renault Le Car here, but I like to think so).

He's rolled up at some sort of "club" rocking the most late-70s sad-tone ensemble imaginable. Also, I don't think he's that sergeant guy or whatever from C.H.I.P.S., but he seems familiar. Nameless 1980s white-guy actor? Maybe.

And from the passenger seat he grabs his ... tennis racket in a soft briefcase? OK, that tennis racket briefcase is awesome. Maybe it could be racquetball, which we all know is the best sport/singles pick up activity ever invented, but his racket looks too big for racquetball and 70s tennis rackets were made from aluminum and stuff and looked weird like that. And I don't really see him as a racquetball guy. Dude who wants to act like he plays tennis so he can roll up in his sweet new Camaro and hope some lady notices? Sure. I'm pretty sure it's not a pickleball paddle, because as lame as the late-70s was, it wasn't lame enough to have conceived of something as lame as pickleball.

In any event, our hero seems blissfully ignorant of how cool Camaros had been before 1975, and I think that sort of blind ignorance (no, a 26% mortgage is a great idea!) when living through a dark period like the late-70s is really a beautiful thing.

Credit: Nostalgic X'er
Original Video: 1980s commercials volume 60