Don Draper’s Pitch for Jaguar (:
You must get tired of hearing what a beautiful thing this car is. But I’ve met a lot of beautiful women in my life, and despite their protestations, they never tire of hearing it. But when deep beauty is encountered, it arouses deep emotions — because it creates a desire. Because it is, by nature, unattainable.
We’re taught to think that function is all that matters, but we have a natural longing for this other thing. When I was driving the E-type, I passed a ten-year-old boy in the back window of a station wagon, and I watched his eyes follow… He’d just seen something he would want for the rest of his life. He’d just seen that unattainable object speed by, just out of reach — because they do that, don’t they, beautiful things?
Then I thought about a man of some means reading Playboy or Esquire… flipping past the flesh to the shiny, painted curves of this car. There’s no effort to stop his eye. The difference is, he can *have* a Jaguar. Oh, this car. This thing, gentlemen. What price would we pay, what behavior would we forgive…? If they weren’t pretty, if they weren’t temperamental, if they weren’t beyond our reach and a little out of our control, would we love them like we do?
Jaguar. At last. Something beautiful you can truly own.
- Don Draper, his pitch for Jaguar
