This advertisement from 1969 is more famous for the people who were in it than for the product it was selling. Ad copy for Pontiac in 1969 said “Break Away,” and this group of prisoners is about to do just that to a trainload of new Pontiacs.
Talking about ad’s, lets look at the actors that were involved. The chain gang is supervised by Highway Patrolman Broderick Crawford.
Other veteran actors as well, such as; Mike Mazurki, Elisha Cook Jr., Lon Chaney Jr., Robert Strauss, and Leo Gorcey, as inmates.
If you watched movies and TV at that time as a child, these are all faces you know. They were in a lot of movies, from “The Bowery Boys” to “Star Trek” and “Kung Fu.” People who watched them on TV must have had a great time seeing them all together.
In the meantime, here’s what was going on at Pontiac in 1969. A strong hold on third place in U.S. car sales went to the General Motors division, behind only Chevrolet and Ford. The top people at GM had noticed, and on February 15, that year, general manager John Z. DeLorean was given one of the most important jobs in the company: president of Chevrolet.
Pontiac released the GTO Judge and the Firebird Trans Am as new models in 1969. These were two cars that would go down in muscle car history. But by a huge measure, the division’s best-selling car was the newly shrunk Grand Prix, which sold an amazing 112,000 units—three times as many as the giant GP that came before it. These kinds of results helped DeLorean move up in GM, even though he was becoming known as a rebellious boss. Have a look at the video below.
