This commercial was first aired in 1964 at the height of Chevrolet’s “See the USA in your Chevrolet” ad campaign. There was no mistaking that GM’s corporate marketers wanted to show a spectacular setting in America’s last frontier, the wild west.

Taking a new Chevrolet, and a beautiful Dinah Shore as the model, and helicoptering them up 2,000 feet to the peak of Castle Rock, a mountain peak located near Roosevelt, Utah. The Moab area of Utah was not unfamiliar with film, having been featured in John Ford’s movie Wagon Master. We found some irony in director Ford’s name and GM’s Chevrolet division mentioned in the same paragraph.

Since John Ford first shot his film in the area, several other films have made the location a prominent feature in the films. Rio Grande (1950), The Comancheros (1961), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1963), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1988) and Thelma and Louise (1990) are some of the better known of those feature movies.

Filming a commercial in the area seemed to be out of the question, however. The expense of getting everything in place along with finding lodging for the actors and crew made it a pricey proposition. After GM, only Marlboro cigarettes with their iconic Marlboro man, Yella Wood and Union Pacific Railroad have shot commercials in this area.

The beauty of Moab’s red cliffs makes you realize how spectacular this commercial was, especially for the time. Do duplicate this effort today would be too expensive and probably wrapped up in so much bureaucratic red tape, permits, encroachment permits and EPA impact studies that the footage would never be shot.

For this moment however, we can enjoy the scenery and a car that could have only been filmed in the early Sixties.