Last year's Super Bowl ad from Korean automaker Kia featured the Kia Optima sedan being stolen by aliens, mobsters and time-traveling Azteks. This year, Kia decided to take things up a notch for the Optima with Adriana Lima in a swimsuit and Motley Crue surrounded by flames. It's one explosion shy of Michael Bay fan fiction.
What's strange about this bro-gasm is the utter mismatch with the car it's selling. The Kia Optima is a perfectly fine mid-size sedan, with all the comforting conveniences and pleasant fuel economy customers of those vehicles expect. Nothing about it comports with a face-kick from Chuck Liddell strong enough to ignite your skull in flames of awesome.
Kia's spots with Blake Griffin have gone for whimsy more than macho, and stand out well, but it's hard to make a case for restraint when every second of your air time costs $116,000. Kia does have one way to stretch its dollar -- by splicing together all of Lima's checkered-flag waving into one slow-mo clip, then loading it into a five-hour online video. We include this only for entertainment purposes:
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