“When we first learned about it we thought, ‘We gotta buy this car. He’ll never expect that. People will go nuts. How can you sell a car to a car company? We gotta jump on this,’” said Rob Robinson, Nissan, Social Communications.
Luke Aker of Orlando, Florida and owner of Ikonik Films, was behind the original video that listed his ’96 Maxima for sale as “Luxury Defined.” The spot, which poked fun at luxury automotive marketing, became a viral sensation after a friend of Aker posted the video to Reddit.
The tally on YouTube views for Aker’s video today nears the two million mark; thanks in part to that attention, his small business has added clients, and he recently worked with Nissan to make a second video for his old friend, the ’96 Maxima.
“I
honestly didn’t think it would do that well. I was thrilled with the
20,000 views I had within the first week. I was like, ‘That’s it. It’s
done. Let’s do another video. Let’s do it again,’” said Aker.When Nissan contacted Aker, he thought it was a friend pulling a joke.
“I thought somebody was joking. I didn’t really, but I was like, they couldn’t really possibly follow through with this. Like why would they want one of their own vehicles, so that was a little surreal,” said Aker.
Nissan
bought the ’96 Maxima from Aker in December 2013. Nissan also donated
$1,000 to Aker’s charity of choice, Wounded Warrior Project. Then, with
an old car on their hands, the company reached out to its fans on social
media for opinions on what to do next.“We asked fans out on the web what we should do with the car, and so restoring it was one of the first things that came up,” said Robinson.
The restoration process included mostly cosmetic changes like bodywork, new upholstery and carpeting. There was also some body and framework, plus a new set of brakes. The car was in the shop for about six months and, when finished, Robinson thought again, “We should have some more fun.”
“Once
we had it, we thought, ‘Now what do we do?’ We kicked around a lot of
ideas, and ultimately the idea of restoring it and then coming back to
Luke to work with us seemed like a great way to tie it all together,”
said Robinson.“When Nissan came to me to do a second video, I wanted to do something that was different from the first one, but not so far that people would not feel familiar with it. And that was the important thing, to be entertaining,” said Aker.
Akers
shot the second video, titled Luxury Re-Defined, for the 1996 Maxima at
Nissan’s North American headquarters in Nashville. Before leaving town
he mused about the brand – and walking out with a vehicle slightly
different than the car he sold to Nissan last year.“I’m looking forward to where they are going,” said Aker. “This one on my left here, is a GT-R NISMO, and that has the current record at the Nürburgring in Germany*. It has got seven minutes and eight seconds, so that would be a definite, definite one that I’d walk out with.”
* The Nissan GT-R NISMO with the NISMO N Attack Package set the fastest record of a 7 minutes 8.679 seconds lap in volume production cars at the Nordschleife (North Course) on Germany’s Nürburgring – driven by NISMO brand ambassador Michael Krumm in September 2013.
