Why would anyone buy a supercar?  They aren't cheap, even to someone making six figures a year.  They are in most cases impractical; even the more practical models are far inferior in that category to a minivan, for example, or a hatchback.  You can even buy a very quick, exciting, and fun hatchback for less than half the price of the cheapest supercars.  On top of the initial cost of purchasing the vehicle, the amount of gas supercars consume is outrageous, and so is the cost of having an exotic repaired and insured.  Any practical or rational human being should not want to buy a supercar, but nevertheless, plenty of people do.  Supercars tap into our emotions such as our love for beauty, elegance, performance, sound, and our appreciation of finely and meticulously crafted objects, regardless of practicality.  Audi are masters at appealing to our emotions, both with the extraordinary cars they make, and the emotive commercials they produce.  The company applies ethos and pathos to this commercial to help sell their new R8, a largely impractical supercar and a luxury.

Audi's Super Bowl 50 commercial, titled "Commander," begins with a collection of a few shots, each one of keepsakes and black and white pictures of an astronaut, over which old radio broadcasts can be heard.  A zoomed in shot reveals the astronaut's face, glimmering with joy and bearing a wide and happy smile.  The next shot, however, is of the astronaut, now retired, with a blank and lackluster expression.  He sits solemnly and quietly in his armchair thinking, presumably about the wonders of space travel.  He has not touched the tray of food beside him as he has lost all the excitement in his life.  His son shortly arrives at the house, and upon seeing his father, asks him, "Commander," to come with him.

The Commander and his son walk outside, and the camera switches to a shot of the Audi.  As soon as we see the car, the opening of David Bowie's song Starman begins to play.  The son gives his father the keys, and as the Commander walks towards the supercar the commercial switches from the father walking towards and starting the R8, to the father as an astronaut walking towards a rocket ship and initiating the launch sequence for the rocket.  As the father starts the car, so do the rocket's engines and the chorus of the song, and a sequence of flashbacks and driving scenes and the old man's joyous smile fill the remainder of the commercial.  

The comparison between the car and the rocket ship are obvious, but Audi has done more than simply say that their car is like a rocket therefore you should buy it.  The commercial employs pathos in order to make the viewer feel emotionally connected to the characters, and therefore to the car as well.  Seeing the young, smiling, excited and hopeful astronaut instantly turn into a man who has lost his zeal for life, who will not even eat, and who can do nothing but think about his past, strengthens the bond between the viewer.  By the end of the commercial, because the viewer pities the Commander, he is relieved to see that the astronaut has regained his liveliness.  And what helped him feel so exhilarated that he imagined he was back in a rocket ship on the way to outer space? The Audi R8.  The R8 serves as the vehicle to the Commander's salvation, and we thank it for helping him.

There is more than one example pathos in this commercial, too: the song.  Starman not only captures the theme of the commercial, which is space travel, but it is also written by David Bowie.  Bowie was a legendary artist, and the memory of his death is, pardon the cliche, still fresh in the minds of his fans, of which there are many.  Audi could have just as easily used Rocketman by Elton John, Afternoon Delight by the Starlight Vocal Band, or any other song about rockets, space or astronauts.  Choosing the song of a widely recognized musician who recently passed, however, attacks the viewer's heartstrings even more, and emphasizes the theme of remembering the past while also being excited by the future.

Audi does not only appeal to the viewers pathos, however. They incorporate some ethos into their intended message.  Who else is better to drive a machine so powerful and so precisely engineered as the R8 than a man who used to pilot rockets for a living.  It takes a very qualified to individual to take a rocket to space, and especially to the moon, and therefore an astronaut would be capable of driving the supercar.  And perhaps an astronaut is one of few people truly worthy of controlling such a finely tuned speed machine.  

Audi then, it seems, has made a car, which really would sell itself, more desirable.  The R8 is not only a car, or a supercar, it is a dream machine, capable of making a forlorn astronaut feel reinvigorated again and reminding him of what it was like to break the barriers of human exploration, of human innovation, of what we are capable of as humans.

