"Ride Pontiac Ride!" Dealer Radio Music (1988)

Obtained from a cassette tape in the back of a 1988 Pontiac dealer ad planning guide: finally, a broadcast-quality cut of the "Ride Pontiac Ride" anthem! Six versions of it, to boot.

These are the 60 and 30-second radio cuts for a theme song introduced as part of Pontiac's new marketing direction to launch (at the time) one of its strongest lineups in recent years. The tape has two versions... one titled "Red Hot" with a hard rock sound, and a jazzier version titled "Maroon". Some of these have vocals, the others are instrumentals meant for dealers to take to the studio and dub their sales pitch over.

The full 2:51 version of the Red Hot anthem, paired with the video titled "Night Riders" that was edited into the television campaign, was first shown at a Pontiac dealers' summit to introduce the 1988 model year. Upon its debut showing, apparently the assemblage of dealers went crazy and demanded it be replayed twice-more before allowing the convention to continue. The campaign was a huge success for Pontiac, whose resulting sales boost pushed the division into the #3 slot for the U.S. market for 1988 -- a feat not seen since the early-70s.

The full version of the TV spot can be watched courtesy of the Wentzville Assembly Facebook page, a treasure trove of retro Pontiac advertising: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=122...