Photo: Ed Morales
The promotional tie-up between the Fiat brand in America and entertainer Jennifer Lopez was supposed to be the foundation for the launch of the Fiat 500 on this side of the Atlantic. Instead its become a gaffe filled comedy of errors. The first step in the automaker’s use of the singer/dancer as a celebrity endorser, said to be the brainchild of Chrysler head Olivier François, was to star the 500 in the music video for Lopez’ recent release Papi. That might not have been a bad idea had François not also decided on using a 30 second trailer from the video as the first national US commercial for the car. The result made no sense and was panned by Pete DeLorenzo as the worst car commercial of the past decade, forcing François to insist that it really wasn’t a commercial, just a music video trailer. This was followed up by an actual commercial featuring J-Lo, known for her self-professed “Jenny on the block” persona, apparently driving in her old NYC neighborhood. I say apparently because first it was revealed that much of the principal photography with Ms. Lopez was not shot on location in New York. Then it came to light that those scenes that were actually shot in New York used a body double for Lopez. It turns out that really wasn’t Jenny driving a Fiat 500 on the block. Now it turns out that the Fiat 500 used in shooting the New York scenes broke down in the middle of the scene, needing repairs to complete the shoot.
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When he’s not busy doing custom machine embroidery at Autothreads Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth and contributes to The Truth About Cars and Left Lane News
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