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For Super Bowl, Audi says astronauts will love its car

Retired spacemen can get depressed. Until, that is, they get behind the wheel of Audi's R8 V10 Plus. At least that's what Audi wants you to believe.

Chris Matyszczyk
2 min read

Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.


With any luck, he won't make the jump to hyperspace when you're in the crosswalk.

Audi; YouTube screenshot by CNET

Once you've been into space, returning to Earth must feel like returning to a comfortable open prison.

Nothing excites you in quite the same way anymore. Earthlings seem so mundane.

But that's merely because most of them design cars that have all the excitement of a live C-SPAN debate on the subject of the color beige.

No, those aren't my opinions. They're merely my extrapolations after watching Audi's Super Bowl ad.

This concoction places us in the mind of a retired astronaut who sits at home, surrounded by his past.


His son arrives. His son calls him "Commander." This is not an ordinary family.

Immediately, son knows how to cure dad's depression. He gets him into a Audi R8 V10 Plus.

One has to assume that the son has just bought this car. Otherwise, he's a little slow on the uptake. It's surely obvious that the R8 is almost identical to some Apollo rocket.

Of course, David Bowie's "Starman" is the backdrop for this intimate yet dynamic tale.

Will this be the ad that rises above the star-filled morass of other Super Bowl ads vying for your attention? Or is this the only way that Audi feels it can rise above the depression of its own brand?

This has been caused by its involvement in an emissions scandal that sees it, together with parent Volkswagen, perhaps in the position of even buying back many of its cars from customers.

For Audi, this ad is "a universal reminder that amazing things happen when we choose exploration, technology and the moon."

Yes, but what about Mars? Oh, wait. Mars is Tesla's thing.