Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Goodyear uses the old "surprise gymkhana road test with stunt driver" routine

It's a familiar tactic: if you want a customer to know what a car can do, you've got to get them in it and take them for a ride. To truly impress a customer, though, you've got to take them, *ahem,* for a ride. It works so well that NASCAR driver Carl Edwards recently did it with Ford engineers in a Taurus SHO – the very sedan those engineers worked on.

So when Goodyear wanted to show off the finer attributes of its Eagle F1 Asymmetric All-Season tire, it grabbed Ben Conrad, director of Ken Block's last two Gymkhana videos, to choreograph some shenanigans. A Goodyear tire store in California was used as bait – an actor posed as a salesman who got his fellow store helper, professional stunt driver Danny Downey, to take customers for a little demo in a BMW.

We don't know what the conversion rate was, but there were probably a few tires sold that day. Have a look below to watch the videos.