Matthew Barlow

Acura is a luxury car maker, owned by Honda Motor Company.  It has a new ad on TV I’ve seen a few times, and every time I see it, I’m completely gobsmacked.  The ad, which I’ve posted below, shows a generic luxury car, but it’s the music that shocks.  That’s Sid Vicious, former “bassist” for the Sex Pistols, mangling “My Way,” Paul Anka’s song made famous by Frank Sinatra.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM7PcYMH67c

Vicious, real name John Simon Ritchie, wasn’t a musician.  His bass was usually unplugged when the Pistols played live.  He was a junkie and a general degenerate, what would today be called a ‘gutter punk.’  On 12 October 1978, Vicious killed his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, in a drug-stupor in the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan.  He stabbed her once in the abdomen, and she bled to death.  Vicious was arrested.  He eventually died of a drug overdose on 2 February 1979.  No major loss, really.

Aside from the fact that Acura has clearly missed the point of 1970s punk, a movement against corporate rock and other creeping commercialisation, Acura has completely lost the plot in casting a girlfriend-killing junkie’s music as a means of selling a car.  This is a complete and utter disgrace and a #fail.

Tagged: acura, advertising, fail, luxury cars, nancy spungeon, punk, sid vicious