“‘If you were a car, what kind of car would you be?’ As a candy-red Porsche speeds along a rain-slick forest road, the ad’s voice-over describes all the specifications you’d want to have if you were a sports car. ‘If you were a car,’ the commercial concludes, ‘you’d be a Porsche.’”

—Jack Solomon, from The Signs of Our Times: The Secret Meanings of Everyday Life, 1990.