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Fiat Used Jungle Animals and Bob Marley to Teach About a New Feature in Its Cars

In the 1990s, Fiat did really well in the Brazilian market after realizing it could sell taller vehicles as if they were real SUVs. The Italian brand called these derivatives Adventure, and they were regular cars with more ground clearance and a more robust suspension. The best part was that their price tags were not that much higher, which made them affordable options in a market with low purchasing power. The Fiat Locker was a similar solution.
Fiat taught its customers how to use a feature with jungle animals and Bob Marley 22 photos
Photo: Fiat
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Instead of having a classic mechanical locking differential, the Italian carmaker developed an alternative that relied solely on ABS sensors. When the system was active, it would detect which wheel was spinning faster and apply the brakes on it so that the other wheel would get some of the torque. It was cheap and effective, but the problem was that most people had no idea how to use it. That was when Fiat used jungle animals and Bob Marley to educate its customers in a commercial.

This film shows a driver getting stuck in the mud with a Palio Weekend Adventure, the very first model to get this derivative. Like most customers, he just decides to step out of the car to check what to do, but an alligator prevents him from doing so. Soon he sees a lion, a bear, and a monkey. To his surprise, the monkey starts to sing.

The song is “Three Little Birds” by Bob Marley. And it states: “Don’t worry about a thing because every little thing is gonna be alright.” That is what the monkey and his friends try to tell the driver with the song. The bear, the snake, and the hippo help the monkey with backing vocals while the monkey shows the driver how to use the Fiat Locker.

There was a button on the dashboard that read ELD (Electronic Locker Differential). You had to push that button, wait for a message on the dashboard warning it was active, and then start to accelerate slowly, trying to find the grip as much as possible. That’s how the Palio Weekend Adventure driver manages to escape the mud and gets going again.

On his way out, the driver looks at the lion, and it blinks an eye, proud that the driver finally learned how to use the feature. He just accelerates as fast as possible to get out of there, praying not to be crazy.

We have no idea if Fiat customers learned the same lesson, but the fact is that the company offered the feature in Adventure derivatives for many years after that. When Sergio Marchionne created FCA, Jeep made it easier for Fiat to just forget about selling cheaper SUV-wannabes: it was finally selling the real deal, even with another brand. Nowadays, the company sells unibody pickup trucks, crossovers, and only three compact cars in the Brazilian market: the Mobi, Argo, and Cronos.

The first one is an A-segment hatchback. The other two are, respectively, a hatchback and a sedan, both competing in the B-segment. Quite a change from when most of Fiat’s vehicles were affordable small cars. Hopefully, the company still makes funny commercials to sell whatever it has to offer.

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About the author: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo
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Motoring writer since 1998, Gustavo wants to write relevant stories about cars and their shift to a sustainable future.
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