The Audi A5 Suicide Avert has been dubbed a fake by Audi of America
An Audi advert featuring an attempted suicide in an A5 Clean Diesel has been dubbed a fake by Audi of America
Doing the ‘Viral’ rounds over the last few days on the interweb has been a video for the Audi A5 ‘Clean Diesel’ which really didn’t seem to fit in to the non-contentious Audi mainstream ethos we are used to seeing. A carefully crafted image can easily be decimated by one careless word or deed (Gerald Ronson springs to mind) and, amusing though some of us with a sicker sense of humour found the A5 ad, we couldn’t see how Audi would sanction it – even just for online use.
The advert features a man driving an Audi A5 in to a deserted car park. He attaches a hose to the exhaust pipe and feed it in to the car through the cracked window. He then settles back to meet his maker. Cut to the fuel gauge reading zero and the man apparently dead. But he jumps awake and the tag line is that the A5 clean diesel is so clean you can’t even kill yourself.
The closing scene shows the man trying to top himself by shutting his neck in the window, which of course opens itself again when the safety kicks in. We have no idea if the Audi Clean Diesel is really that clean (as they say – Don’t try this at home) but we have to concede the ad is not exactly in ‘The Best Possible Taste’ (thank you Kenny). And nor, it seems, does Audi.
Inside Line had an email from Audi of America saying:
“You or your staff might have caught wind of a purported Audi TDI commercial that made its way around the Web this week featuring [an] attempted and failed suicide,” said Audi of America spokesman Christian Bokich. “This video was not commissioned, funded or produced by any Audi organization worldwide.”
Which clears that up. We were going to put the ad up for you to see from YouTube, but it’s been pulled. However, we have found another source but we don’t know how long that will last. Still, it’s below for now.
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