‘Road to Rio’ Spots Aim to Put Truck on Map : Topanga Canyon Duo Featured in Nissan Campaign

A truck made in Tokyo is on the road to Rio. And a husband and wife team from Topanga Canyon is driving it.

The four-wheel-drive utility wagon--which departed last month from Chicago--belongs to Nissan. And behind this estimated 6,500-mile journey--interrupted by an airlift over Nicaragua--is an extravagant advertising campaign named after the film “Road to Rio.”

The 1947 movie starred Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. The 1988 ad campaign stars the Japanese car maker’s new off-road vehicle, Pathfinder, which is being marketed to higher-income, well-educated couples in their mid-30s who may seek adventure on the road.

Adventure, indeed. Since it departed nearly a month ago, the truck has trekked through Mexico, been airlifted over Central America and on Friday arrived in Belem, Brazil, a city at the mouth of the Amazon River. A crew from the Venice ad firm Chiat/Day is following the couple while filming a series of six documentary-like commercials that Nissan plans to air in the United States during October and November.

“I always wanted to go to Rio, but I didn’t know I would drive there,” said Martha (Marty) Anderson. She is a 35-year-old actress and real estate agent who--along with her husband--was selected from among dozens of actors and actresses that auditioned to make the trek. Her 33-year-old husband, Kurt, is an independent producer.

Martha Anderson was reached by phone late last week at the Hilton hotel in Belem, hours after the couple arrived in Brazil. Her husband, she said, “who I originally had to drag into this, but who has since turned into Mr. Showbiz,” was out shopping for Indian artifacts.

Anderson said Nissan is paying her and her husband union wages ($366 each per day) to drive the $18,000 truck--complete with four-speaker stereo system and burglar alarm. The couple have about 2,000 miles left to go before they are expected to arrive in Rio in two weeks.

While driving through Mexico, Anderson said, they were greeted by everyone from barefoot goat herders who simply jumped onto the truck for free rides to entrepreneurial youngsters who polished the vehicle for spare change.

One ill-humored tribesman dumped a bucket of water over the head of a Chiat/Day camera man who tried to take his picture.

Some of this action, of course, has been captured on camera and is the sort of off-beat material that will be included in the six-part campaign.

Although Nissan will not reveal the cost of the campaign, “it actually will cost less than if we were to shoot six ads with six totally different stagings,” said John Rinek, national truck advertising manager. But why lug a couple on the road to Rio for the sake of a few commercials? “We wanted to portray the vehicle as having a rugged side,” said Rinek. “But we also wanted the vehicle to end up in a place where it could look good going out for a night on the town.”

Indeed, Nissan has planned a big bash on the couple’s arrival in Rio at the ultra-plush Copacabana Palace hotel. Scenes from that party will be used in the final commercial from the trek.

Of course, this is assuming that all goes well--and that everyone arrives safely. An armed guard is escorting the couple through most of Brazil, Marty Anderson said. And the truck was airlifted in a cargo plane over Central America at the request of the U.S. State Department. What’s more, by just one day, the couple escaped the furry of Hurricane Gilbert. “The storm warning went up just as we got the car on the cargo plane,” she said. “It was kind of scary.”

But the biggest surprise so far, she said, happened before they ever left Chicago. The ad agency wanted to film them all tangled up in traffic. But after two days of driving on some of Chicago’s busiest freeways, they couldn’t find a pileup. “We had to be the only people in all of Chicago who couldn’t find a traffic jam,” Anderson said. “So finally, we had to create our own backup. And boy, did some people get sore.”