The Super Bowl has long been a showcase for automakers looking to show off their latest vehicles or give a new direction for their brand. Car companies will usually pull out all the stops with high-budget, high-concept advertisements with star-studded casts. It’s not exactly an uncommon practice, but one commercial stands above the rest, and it’s for the goddamn Chrysler 200.
Back in 2011, Chrysler decided to drop “Born of Fire,” a two-minute-long ad that’s better known as “Imported from Detroit” during Super Bowl XLV. The commercial is an ode to Detroit, using the city as a background to show where Chrysler (and Detroit) has been and where it plans to go. In essence, Chrysler was trying to convince us that the 200 – a rebadged Sebring sedan – was a luxury car, and dammit, it actually sort of worked. I mean, the 200 was a piece of shit, but at the time that marketing really worked on me.
In the ad, we see some fairly rough images of Detroit as an all-black 200 (being driven by Detroit native Eminem) drives though. Narrator Kevin Yon, a Rockford, Michigan native, talks about his city, hard work and what luxury means in America. It ends with Eminem entering the Fox Theatre in Detroit and walking up to the Selected of God choir singing the tune of his song “Lose Yourself” on stage. He turns to the camera and says “This is the Motor City, and this is what we do.” The video ends with a 200 driving around the smokey streets of Detroit as the words “The Chrysler 200 Has Arrived” and “Imported From Detroit” appear on the screen. To this day, all these years later, it still gives me chills, and I’ve never even been to Detroit.
You’ve got to remember, this was just a few years after the Great Recession first started with both Chrysler and General Motors getting baled out by the government and a few years before Detroit would go bankrupt. In a lot of ways, it was a real low point for the city and the American automotive industry. This ad did a lot to turn the page on those thoughts, letting folks know that the city and the cars it builds are back.
Obviously, with hindsight being 20/20, we know that the 200 wasn’t really much of a luxury car and to this day Detroit still struggles with making true luxury vehicles, but for a fleeting moment in 2011, it was the center of the automotive universe once again. I’ve watched a lot of car ads in my day, and none have ever come too close to the impact of “Born of Fire,” and it was all for a crappy midsize sedan. Imagine if Chrysler’s products were as good as this commercial. That would truly be something.