Making a statement to the world is never an issue when you own one of the baddest Mopars the world has ever seen.
The Dodge brand is all about performance and emotion, and their commercials portray those key aspects like no other modern marketing campaign. In addition to their adrenaline-filled television commercials, the brand that brought us the Hellcat cars creates and publishes many commercial-length videos that never run on television, but they draw worlds of attention via social media.
The newest in the long list of excellent Dodge commercials was published to the brand’s official YouTube channel earlier this week and it is titled “Statement.”
Statement
In this new Dodge commercial, a young boy is shown in Latin America back in 1988 with his bright yellow bicycle. He carefully pins a playing card in the spokes of the rear tire, allowing his flashy bicycle to make a whole lot of noise.
As the young boy rolls out on his modified bicycle with the playing card clicking away in the spokes, the footage flashes to someone pushing the start button in a new Dodge Challenger, followed by a look at the tachometer revving to life.
The boy speeds through the narrow streets of his Latin American village on his loud bicycle and that is mimicked by a bright yellow Challenger Scat Pack Shaker tearing down the track. After getting plenty of adults riled up, he slides to a stop in front of a pair of boys who clearly approve of his badass bicycle.
The footage than flashes ahead to what appears to be that same boy, all grown up some 31 years later. This time, he isn’t riding a loud, flashy bicycle, but instead, he is driving the bright yellow Scat Pack Shaker Challenger on a race track and he is enjoying every second of it.
A Familiar Transition
During the commercial, the narrator speaks in Spanish in the background and while we don’t recall enough of our high school Spanish to know what is being said, several people who speak the language have told us that it is a message along the lines of “Dreaming big is in our blood.”
For many people, this commercial will hit close to home because most car guys grew up tearing around town on a bicycle, eventually moving onto a high performance car just like the young boy in the video.
"Before I was old enough to walk, my dad was taking me to various types of racing events, from local drag racing to the Daytona 500," says Patrick Rall, a lifetime automotive expert, diehard Dodge fan, and respected auto journalist for over 10 years. "He owned a repair shop and had a variety of performance cars when I was young, but by the time I was 16, he was ready to build me my first drag car – a 1983 Dodge Mirada that ran low 12s. I spent 10 years traveling around the country, racing with my dad by my side. While we live in different areas of the country, my dad still drag races at 80 years old in the car that he built when I was 16 while I race other vehicles, including my 2017 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat and my 1972 Dodge Demon 340.
"Although I went to college for accounting, my time in my dad’s shop growing up allowed me the knowledge to spend time working as a mechanic before getting my accounting degree, at which point I worked in the office of a dealership group. While I was working in the accounting world, I continued racing and taking pictures of cars at the track. Over time, I began showing off those pictures online and that led to my writing.
"Ten years ago, I left the accounting world to become a full-time automotive writer and I am living proof that if you love what you do, you will never “work” a day in your life," adds Rall, who has clocked in time as an auto mechanic, longtime drag racer and now automotive journalist who contributes to nearly a dozen popular auto websites dedicated to fellow enthusiasts.
"I love covering the automotive industry and everything involved with the job. I was fortunate to turn my love of the automotive world into a hobby that led to an exciting career, with my past of working as a mechanic and as an accountant in the automotive world provides me with a unique perspective of the industry.
"My experience drag racing for more than 20 years coupled with a newfound interest in road racing over the past decade allows me to push performance cars to their limit, while my role as a horse stable manager gives me vast experience towing and hauling with all of the newest trucks on the market today.
