The Essence Of 90’s Chevy Truck Commercials

If you ever watched television for more than an hour at any time during the 90’s, you probably remember Chevy’s “Like a Rock” commercials. They aired on just about every channel, so they were pretty hard to miss—and pretty hard to forget as well. Even two decades later the sound of Bob Seger belting out those now-famous words is still shockingly memorable.

Feeling nostalgic, I started watching a few of the old Chevy truck commercials that managed to find their way to the internet, and after about two or three I began to notice some patterns. For one, Chevy seemed to believe that showing extremely heavy and extremely random items being forcefully dropped into their truck beds was really going to influence buyers—even though it’s likely that those trucks never moved again after the impact.

Chevy also seemed to believe that it was absolutely necessary to inject a triple dose of nationalism into all of the ads. Every “Like a Rock” commercial juxtaposed clips of mud-covered Chevys with veterans, farmers, firefighters and other hard-working Americans. Chevy also threw in a shot of the flag from time to time, just to ensure that they would get their message across—a message which seemed to suggest that if you didn’t own a Chevy truck you were just a lazy piece of shit who hated America.

After giving the commercials some thought, I came to the conclusion that Bob Seger’s “Like a Rock” was definitely a solid choice for the theme of the commercials, but it’s second to one song in particular—a song that would have really helped to hammer the overall message of the ads. In an effort to prove my point, I took that song and put together a Chevy commercial of my own. I like to believe that it’s everything Chevy wanted to say, but couldn’t.

Without further ado, I give you the essence of 90’s Chevy truck commercials: