Chevy Pokes Fun of Ford's Aluminum Trucks in Grizzly Bear Ad

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Americans take their bacon, their flag and their pickup trucks seriously.

And in Detroit, no one takes pickup trucks more seriously than rival automakers Ford and Chevrolet, whose F-Series and Silverado, are the No. 1 and No. 2 best-selling pickups in America, respectively.

Reinforcing its brand for tough-as-nails ruggedness, Chevrolet kicked the rivalry up a notch with a new internet ad making fun of Ford’s new all-aluminum F-150. In it, two men are placed in a materials testing facility and given a choice between a steel or aluminum cage as a charging grizzly bear is about to be released.

They choose the steel cage. The bear circles and and paws at the cage, steel doors open to reveal a gleaming, chrome-laden black Silverado, and, as if on cue, one of the men says, “That’s a manly truck right there, man.”

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The ad is one of a series of three targeting Ford’s aluminum truck. Another, which finishes with the tagline “some things shouldn’t be made of aluminum,” introduces Almighty Aluminum Man, a new superhero. In the third, a Chevy engineer, citing the results of Chevy-commissioned third-party testing, claims that it will cost more in time and money for body repairs to the F-150 compared with steel-body trucks.

Chevrolet’s campaign to rebrand its strength-of-steel image comes at a time when sales of the aluminum trucks are anything but flimsy.

In the first quarter of 2015, the Ford F-Series not only was America’s best selling truck line – a position the F-Series has held for some time – it was the best-selling vehicle line, period. And, worse for Chevrolet, the aluminum F-Series outsold GM’s twin Siverado and Sierra trucks combined.

The aluminum-body truck isn’t flimsy, either, according to the government safety tests.. The F-150 SuperCrew model earned the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s top five-star crash safety rating, scoring higher than Ford’s steel-body F-150 in 2014.

Both the Silverado and Sierra earned five stars as well.

Kelly Blue Book analyst Akshay Anand told The Detroit News he thinks Chevy’s steel message will resonate with truck buyers. “There’s a subset of people who probably aren’t convinced aluminum is the way to go,” he said.