I’m not sure how many of you are aware of this, but cars with denim upholstery made to look like jeans were once a big deal. Volkswagen, for example, had Jeans Beetles in 1974, then Jeans Beetle kits in mid 1974, then a 1975 Jeans Beetle, and the 1976 South African Jeans Beetle, and later the 1982, 1995 and 2000 Mexican-market Jeans Beetles. But before that came the true jeans-as-seats pioneer, the AMC Levi’s Gremlin. And there’s a commercial for this car I want to show you because I think it somehow misses the point of it all, in the best possible way.
Okay, here’s the commercial:
Everything about this commercial is incredible: the visual acuity of that first guy to be able to spot the type of seat fabric in a parked car on a sunny day from like five feet away, but what really makes this glorious is the reaction of his friends:
“PANTS!” yells his easily delighted friend, probably named Keithford or something.
“Wow, a car with pants!,” exclaims Sheila, very clearly seeing the most unexpected sight of her young, sheltered life.
The point of the Levi’s Gremlin wasn’t really “pants,” was it? The hook wasn’t that the car somehow had pants, pants in the most broad, generic sense, it was that it used jeans as upholstery. That’s an important distinction. Denim jeans were countercultural symbols, markers of effortless cool, casual, enjoyable living, and the fact that they were pants was secondary.
Everyone has pants. Pastors and presidents and pirates and parents and punks all have pants.
Who came up with this ad, thinking that what made this cool was that there were pants in the car? Also, they weren’t even pants! There’s no pants in there! And AMC didn’t call it the Pants Gremlin, because that means something very, very different.
Pants. Jeezis. The hell is wrong with you people?
In france, we had the “Peugeot 205 Junior”, the “Peugeot 106 Kid” and the “Renault supercinq Blue Jean” with denim seats
Did you have to worry about the seats shrinking if they got wet?
As I recall, the Hornet Hatchback and Sportabout also had Levi editions.
I think if we zoom out a bit, we see that the writers had a much firmer grasp of the zeitgeist than we’re giving credit. First, obviously: “Pants” is an absolutely hilarious word, fun to say, and even more fun to repeat. Perhaps less obvious, if you weren’t there: Both dudes are just beginning to feel the effects of the Orange Barrel they dropped with breakfast. They will be riffing on the word “Pants” at least through Earth Science class, after which they’ll retire to “The Hill” behind the school, and spend the next three hours staring at clouds.
The girl doesn’t do any drugs stronger than keg beer, and an occasional Tuinal swiped from her mom’s purse. She doesn’t know the boys are tripping, but she gamely plays along with “A car with pants!” She’ll continue to laugh knowingly as Keith and Jeff blurt out “PANTS!!!” and collapse in hysterics, all the way until graduation, after which she goes to a small liberal arts college, gets into the nascent punk rock scene, and occasionally wonders what the hell she was doing hanging out with those two creeps.
Not *everyone* has pants. Check out Porky Pig.
Neither Donald Duck 😉
Or my old beer-and-pizza league buddy Pat, after 9 Heinekens. “Don’t you hate pants?”
… No, buddy. No I do not.
I guess I’m too easily influenced by advertising, because this commercial, ridiculous as it is, sort of makes me want a Gremlin.
I wonder how durable the denim seats actually are. I’ve got 20-year-old jeans (that I no longer fit into of course) but I’d be surprised if denim seats didn’t split and tear after a couple decades of regular use. Unless the denim was laminated onto a more durable substrate like vinyl or thick polyester or something.
I’ve heard the seats didn’t wear that well at all.
That was my suspicion. I’d rather opt to use denim for the headliner (in grey maybe) but I suppose headliners that manage to stay up after 20 years is still beyond the scope of modern technology, so it doesn’t matter.
My mom had a Levis Jeep when I was a kid, but you didn’t get actual denim. At least not with the CJ-5. It was denim patterned vinyl because who wants to sit on wet denim?