This Guy Made a Genius Commercial to Sell a 1996 Honda Accord

Old Honda and Toyota beaters are the unsung heroes of the streets: They run forever, are cheap to maintain, and can hold their own in an accident. There's a reason they've been a go-to starter car for decades of teens, at least back when teens were still driving.

Today, unfortunately, people aren't exactly racing to buy 20-year-old sedans, road workhorses though they are. So when filmmaker Max Lanman found out his fiancée was trying to sell her 1996 Honda Accord, he decided she needed a little help capturing the car's particular charms—in the form of a high-end car commercial.

"A few years ago, I was driving to Big Sur with my [former] girlfriend Carrie to go camping on Highway 1," Lanman told NBC. "While we were traversing gorgeous switchbacks, it felt like [we] were driving in a car commercial and that's when it hit me that it would be really funny to make a high-end car commercial for a crappy car."

Lanman's minute-long Accord commercial has all the fixings of a classic car ad (which makes sense, since he's worked on them before), except that it's focused on a dinky-ass coupe from the 1990s. Rather than highlight the pristine features of a sleek new car, the ad captures the car's personal touches—from the rubber ducks in the back, the driver's cat riding shotgun, to the full coffee maker she keeps in the passenger seat.

"Introducing a used 1996 Honda Accord," the ad's self-serious narrator says over aerial shots of the two-door coupe careening along the highway, "a car for people that have life figured out and just need a way to get somewhere. Luxury is a state of mind."

Lanman's fiancée put the car up on eBay with a starting bid of $499. But once the car's commercial went viral, a bidding war shot the 1996 Accord's price up to six figures. eBay canceled the auction, apparently assuming that it was fake since no one in their right mind would want to pay $150,000 for an old-ass car. Once the site realized its mistake, the auction was reinstated and the Accord's price climbed back to $1,475 and counting.

Give the commercial a watch above and see what inspired some poor soul to bid six figures on a car that's as old as the movie Twister.