2017 Golf Alltrack Commercials Have the Old Spice Crazy Outdoors Vibe

The first Alltrack ads were about Tanner Foust driving the car like his GRC Beetle. They followed that up with several 15-second clips where they showed the point of view of a snowboard on the roof and that kind of sporty winter stuff.

But now they've upgraded to the big leagues. November's ad "Salmon" shows a couple discovering the wild and unpredictable side of the outdoors. You've got fish swimming upstream, a bear eating some and then an eagle plucking salmon out of the river like a badass. It all seems pretty normal, but let's be honest here - there isn't a place like that in the real world, at least not somewhere you can drive to. And the bold eagle doesn't sound that cool IRL.

And there's another ad where an office worker takes his pet frog out of the terrarium to a lake in the Alltrack and back again. It's really clever, that one?

All of this fake outdoorsy stuff reminds me of some of the recent Old Spice commercials. They too have a thing for lumberjack shirts, boots, wood, bears and eagles.

I can't deny that I use Old Spice deodorant or that the Golf Alltrack is right up my alley. While she doesn't come with the TDI engine that was originally promised, the fact that they are forcing you to buy a powerful 1.8 TSI with DSG is kind of cool, like a reverse Ford Focus RS moment.

So why buy a Golf Alltrack instead of a regular SUV? Well, the marketing people will tell you it gets better mileage and has more trunk space. But two mpg here and there will not make a difference, plus nobody who gets a VW actually owns a canoe. What you really want is to be different, to be that guy who has a pet frog and who posts photos of live eagles on Instagram. And the wildest thing you're going to use the Alltrack for is taking the dog to the vet.