It’s interesting how the original ads of some of our favorite ’60’s era muscle cars reflect on the sign of the time. This one featuring a ’68 Pontiac Firebird takes a kind of “bully drawing a line in the sand” theme that we’re not totally sure that we follow.

The begin, the host makes the challenge that “wide tracking” in the new Firebird is now becoming the most popular sport in the universe over (wait for it) boating.

Wait, did we say, “boating?” Yes, indeed. Not football, not baseball, and not even NASCAR, but boating. If you can figure out that parallel then you’re smarter than we are.

On an interesting note, the “wide track” component of the ad is fairly legitimate. Pontiac stylists in 1959 accidentally stumbled on to the fact that by making the track of the car wider that it handled better at high speeds, especially at tracks like Daytona.

They were originally simply trying to make the car look neat and asked the engineering staff to accommodate it, thus giving birth to the “wide track” catch phrase from Pontiac.

Now, was the Firebird any more of a “wide track” car than the Camaro? We doubt it, as those kissing cousins shared quite a bit of components underneath, but we’re just simple car guys. We’ll leave the slogans up to the marketing group.