Kia Canada VS: the Mars Rover

We're "traveling, through another dimension."

According to American screenwriter, novelist and television producer Rod Serling, “We're developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won't be able to think."

As an example, take this recent video commercial identified by U-Tube as originating from Kia Canada which promotes the Kia Forte family of automobiles "with the Tech Plus package" but only "for a limited time."



The commercial then goes on to compare the Kia package to the "Mars rover," which is described as a "multimillion dollar intergalactic space vehicle" but seems to be far less photogenic than the Kia and simply "picks up rocks," at least according to the commercial.

The rover in the commercial does seem to bear more than a passing resemblance to the Mars Science Rover (commonly called "Curiosity") which is currently in transit and scheduled to land on Mars, at the Gale Crater this summer. Of course, the Curiosity rover is far larger than the "Mars rover" in the commercial.

The Mars Science Rover is actually much taller than a Kia.

No doubt there are other objective differences between the typical Kia and the typical Mars rover that weren't included in the commercial because of the possibility that any extra information would confuse and distract potential car purchasers.

However, since the ad is identified is originating from Kia Canada (and the commercials are running on Canadian televisions stations), there is also the possibility that the rovers referred to are the much smaller space rovers being constructed under contract to the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) by Kanata, Ontario based Neptec Design Group and BC based MacDonald Dettwiler (MDA), utilizing a variety of subcontractors and partners such as Quebec based MPB Communications.

The Canadian designed "Juno"rover.

But while the Canadian rovers are much closer in size to the rover in the commercial, there aren't a lot of visual similarities otherwise. Besides, as outlined in my December 11th, 2011 post "Canadian Space Rovers on the Chopping Block" the Canadian space rover program is presently scheduled to wind down at the end of this month, when CSA funding runs out.

Which seems kind of sad and is certainly an oversight on the part of Kia Canada, especially since it doesn't seem like the sort of thing which would help them sell more cars. Perhaps someone should mention this to the ad agency which originated this campaign.

After all, there are still a few people left in Canada, who are able to think.