[1]Chevrolet’s 1975 commercial ads that promoted “Baseball, Hot dogs, Apple Pie and Chevrolet” left the country humming a tune. True, the line was repeated over and over and over again, but it was kinda catchy. Catchy enough to make you forget the ugly mid-seventies cars.
Penned by Ed Labunski, known as the Polish Cowboy in the jingle world, the commercial spawned several more with the signature line and became one of the most well known car commercials of all time.
It’s success led to a new version in 2006 with a modern spin. Using vintage footage from the original starring the Polish Cowboy, Deutsch Los Angeles blended in modern characteristics of today’s game of baseball. Baseball, Hot dogs, Apple Pie and Chevrolet” had been converted to “stolen bases, goat cheese pizza, bottled water and Chevrolet.”
The original commercials had a quality that captured the spirit of America, so Holden of Australia wanted to impact their car buying public with the same infectious jingle, but with an Australian twist. As we watched this particular TV ad, one thing struck us as overtly sexist marketing to the male sex. When the jingle is playing, pay attention to the screen when the “meat pie” part of the jingle is sung.
Check out “Football, Meat Pies, Kangaroos and Holden Cars”:
Since Chevrolet cars in South Africa were based on the Holden cars from Australia, it makes sense that the jingle to sell these cars would be based on Holden’s “Football, Meat Pies, Kangaroos and Holden Cars” slogan. Because South Africa has an extremely limited supply of kangaroos, there was some quick shuffling of the words in the jingle which ended up as “Braaivleis, rugby, sunny skies and Chevrolet.”
Rugby, sunny skies and Chevrolet all make sense, but what the heck is a braaivleis? After a quick check of our Websters, we can tell you that in Afrikaans, braaivleis is short for grilled meat.
To simplify things, we copied the words for the South African Chevrolet jingle here:
South Africa, what’s your favorite meal?
Braaivleis!
Sport?
Rugby!
Weather?
Sunshine!
And what’s your greatest car, South Africa?
Chevrolet!
Let’s see, that’s braaivleis, rugby, sunny skies and Chevrolet, huh?
Right!
Well, you sure sound like South Africa to me!
We are!
We love braaivleis, rugby, sunny skies and Chevrolet, braaivleis, rugby, sunny skies and Chevrolet….
Watch the Braaivleis, rugby, sunny skies and Chevrolet radio advertisement with photo video here:
We found this particular Chevrolet slogan to be timeless and almost universal across the globe with some subtle changes. Rest assured, we will continue to search from continent to continent to dig out any more versions of the classic Chevrolet jingle. We think that we’ve already found one from Japan that sounds a lot like, “Besuball, egg roll, fried rice and Chevrolet.”
Listen closely and you can hear what we believe is:
Japan, What’s your favorite sport?
Besuball!
Finger food?
Egg Roll!
Favorite meal?
Fried rice!
Greatest Car?
Chevrolet!
Watch the GM video from Japan here: