Carmaker hits the skids over advert

A radio advertisement featuring a woman crying after she returned a new Toyota Auris in favour of her old Volkswagen Golf has earned the German car maker a rap on the knuckles from the advertising standards watchdog.

The commercial, in which a man asks the sobbing woman what happened to her Auris, has her saying, “it just wasn’t a Golf”. The ad wraps with the line: “We all make mistakes but investing in a Volkswagen will never be one.”

The ad attracted the ire of Toyota Ireland, which made a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland on the grounds that it clearly inferred that buying a new Toyota to replace a second-hand Golf was a mistake.