SCMF Musings: A Talking Steering Wheel??

It took us a while to track this one down. Snapped a shot from the screen during the baseball game where we first saw the talking steering wheel.

Hit rewind and tried it again. What the…?

Jotted down some letters we heard when we replayed with audio engaged — NTB (??). Since the feed was from the Pittsburgh regional sports broadcast, we figured add that to the search.

Had to Google a bit to find that NTB stood for “National Tire & Battery.”

Poking around on their website, we came to a page of videos. Bingo!!

Found one called Turner Pterodactyl

+0:30
Turner Pterodactyl Commercial
Plays: 14998

Watched the whole thing (30-sec) with sound and picked up more than what we originally saw.

Turner?? What’s up with that? So we tracked down Turner’s story.

On his web page he says:

I’m an expert when it comes to cars

Apparently, he is an auto enthusiast, friend, spokeswheel (definitely our favorite name of the bunch). Also, he’s “your go-to-guy for anything in, on and under your car.”

And if you were wondering, Turner’s been around the block a few times:

…He’s got a lifetime of experience in the driver’s seat, so when it comes to auto advice, he’ll give it to you straight. With tips and resources to keep your car running right, he’s got your back whenever you’re on the road…

Okay, he’s unique for the NTB brand which, as we mentioned, seems to be local to the Pittsburgh region.

So we checked. Wait for it…

NTB is our Big O Tires. Interesting. Wonder if Turner will “turn up” on the West Coast?

He’s got a Facebook page, so we might monitor it for any indication of a westward move.

Chevron & the Talking Cars…

Doc brought up a good point — Chevron of San Ramon, CALIF., has pretty much cornered the Talking Cars market in the Bay Area.
on.

So has Pixar…

Animation studio Pixar of Emeryville, CALIF., the maker of the “Cars” movies, is also based in the Bay Area.

In fact, the Chevron and Pixar cars look related… maybe cousins or something.

What Turner has going is the whole “spokeswheel” (Turner Inside) thing. This role fills a good niche (and need) especially if he is successful in raising awareness for things that trigger a maintenance trip for your vehicle.

That’s a wrap

#SCMF

—The Gang

And there’s much, much more!

We did our Billy thing again. In this case, the Chevron cars were an Aardman thing. And Aardman connects us to awesome films (like Wallace & Grommet) and music video (think Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer). All available below.

These commercials have aired since 1995. Animated by Aardman Productions. You can read the original press release here.

Now let’s roll through some more Aardman… One of our favorite films is The Pirates!In an Adventure with Scientists! It is a 2012 British/American 3D stop-motion animated swashbuckler comedy film produced by Aardman Animations in partnership with Sony Pictures Animation. It was directed by Peter Lord.