
" I haven’t paid attention to an ad in months and here I am." a Redditor commented. Lanman posted the video's YouTube link to Reddit, triggering a bidding war. The commercial concludes with the tagline: "Luxury is a state of mind." The narrator concludes in his ever-so-serious tone that Greenie is "a car for people that have life figured out and just need a way to get somewhere."
#CAR AD WARS DRIVER#
"Introducing a used 1996 Honda Accord," the narrator says in the slick advertisement.Īs the sun sets in the background, the driver is shown sitting on her car, which is parked on the shoulder of the road. The woman reaches over and pours coffee into a mug as she drives Greenie down a winding road overlooking the ocean. You have everything you ever wanted," the narrator continues. The woman settles into the driver's seat and a fluffy grey cat, perched next to her on the center console, meows before crawling onto her lap.
#CAR AD WARS PROFESSIONAL#
The minute-long commercial, with all the bells and whistles of a professional production, begins with an actress pinning up her hair. So he got to work and spent the next year working on the ad that has taken the Internet by storm.

Hollenbeck "had just the car for the job," but, Lanman quipped, he "had to wait until she was finally ready for an upgrade!"Īlthough attached to the car she has driven since high school, Hollenbeck, drawn to the idea of owning a bluetooth-enabled car and reducing her carbon footprint, decided in 2016 to sell Greenie, according to Lanman. “While we were traversing gorgeous switchbacks, it felt like (we) were driving in a car commercial and that's when it hit me that it would be really funny to make a high-end car commercial for a crappy car.” "I was driving to Big Sur with my (then) girlfriend Carrie to go camping on Highway 1,” he recalled. So Lanman, a Los Angeles-based writer and director, latched on to a years-old idea and decided to use his film-making skills to help Hollenbeck. It is no small feat to sell a used car, much less one that has 141,095 miles under its belt. The adventure in question began several years ago. Overall, we're just so grateful for all that has happened with the commercial and the story. “This was definitely an unexpected turn,” Lanman acknowledged, “but we have faith that everything will work itself out.

High Housing Costs, Remote Work Leading People to Move Out of the Bay Areaįar from disappointed, though, the couple continues to marvel at how “surprising and overwhelmingly positive” their experience has been. The pair was told that eBay could not restore their original auction item ”so they asked us to re-list the auction, which we did,” he added. “Apparently, someone in (eBay’s) fraud department, who was unaware of the ad and story behind it, could not believe that a 1996 Honda Accord was bidding for $150,000, and canceled the auction,” Lanman said.


Lanman and Hollenbeck received a phone call Sunday night with that same information. In a statement to NBC, Ebay said it canceled the listing due to "unusual bidding activity" and that the company had "put additional measures in place to ensure a successful auction." PT was $1,025. By Wednesday morning, that number was up to $4,300. Carrie Hollenbeck’s fiancé listed her 21-year-old car on Ebay at a starting price of $499.įive days later, bidding on the green 1996 Honda Accord coupe had reached $150,000 thanks to a viral satirical commercial – made by Hollenbeck’s fiancé, Max Lanman – that helped drive up the price.īut by Monday morning, Ebay had "canceled the original auction in error" and the car, nicknamed Greenie, was relisted.
