By ADRIAN SAINZ
Associated Press Writer

MIAMI -- Volkswagen said Friday it will remove billboards in New York, Los Angeles and Miami after receiving complaints that a word used in an advertisement was offensive to Hispanics.

The ad for the new GTI 2006 had a photo of the sports car accompanied by the words "Turbo-Cojones." Cojones, which means ********* in Spanish, has become a casually used term for boldness or guts in English but has never lost its more vulgar connotations in its native language.

A billboard in the Miami neighborhood of Little Havana generated complaints, and the company decided to remove it Wednesday, said Steve Keyes, a Volkswagen spokesman. Volkswagen AG has received no complaints for its billboards in New York and Los Angeles but decided to pull them anyway.

Ana Roca, a professor of Spanish and linguistics at Florida International University, said the English usage of the word "doesn't have the same power it has in Spanish."

"People who are reading it in a Spanish neighborhood, it will have a different effect for them ... because they realize the real connotation," Roca said.

Keyes said the original billboard was not intended to offend anyone. Instead, it was an attempt to convey that the GTI is a "high-performance sports car," he said.

The billboards will be replaced with two ads, with one saying "Here today, gone tamale" and the other "Kick a little gracias."

source : heraldtribune.com

 

This is not the first time that VW has received complaints about words used in marketing. There were complaints from African-American organizations about the "Touraeg" name for its SUV......Touraeg is the name of a North African desert group of people ( surprising, since the Touraegs are actually more Caucasian / Arab / Bedouin than Sub-Saharan African ). But, unlike the billboard ads, VW decided to stick with the Touraeg name.

 

I bet the person that thought it was offensive wasn't hispanic...

What is this society coming to?

 

Maybe the person who complained about it was castrated?

 

hmmm....i was actually thinking the same thing.

I saw this billboard in NYC. I didnt think anyone would really be offended by it.

 

I along with being "African American" am Latino and I'm not offended by the ads. I see the humor in it don't feel that it is insensitive or degrading towards Latinos/Hispanics. However If there are others who are offended by it then I understand because we all have different levels of sensitivity and may receive things diferently. Even the GTI ads (non speed gremlins) with the lame german guy throwing up VW signs mimicking Hip Hop/Black/Urban culture are hilarious. I don't find those offensive either
and this is coming from one who doesn't let anything slide. I view those ads as spoofing the subculture or dare I say outsiders of Hip Hop, who think they are hip by micking Hip Hop itself. Its basically art imititating art imitating art. Confused, don't be.

 

How can you be both? One parent Af-Am and the other Hispanic?

 

everyone today is a little too sensitive.

 

What about the Aztec? It was the ugliest vehicle ever and I don't see any Native Americans or Mexicans getting pissed off about it.

 

My father is from Panama my mother is African American. It's the same as if I said I'm Irish and Italian-American. Just curious what part of Virginia are you from??

 

Vienna in the D.C. suburbs.......with all the dealerships nearby at Tyson's Corner and Fairfax
( We have the second-worst traffic, BTW, and the second-largest new-car market in the country....both behind Southern California )

 

I think calling the GTI a sports car is offensive..

 

A few months ago Mercedes had a contest on their web site, which kept talking about "the final solution". Not very sensitive from a company that produced vehicles for the *****.

 

Sometimes, you will find that different words in Spanish have different meanings in different Spanish-speaking countries, or that the word just does not exist. A little similar to American and British English. I showed this story to my Mexican cousins and they could not see any offense, but also felt it would not convey impact of the vehicle down here if shown on a Mexico City billboard. In Mexico, I hardly ever hear the word cojones used anymore.

I do agree that calling the GTI a sports car is offensive. Even my cousin with his Golf VR6 sees it as a high-powered VW. The racers at my track with turbocharged VW Beetles that will click a Ferrari or Porsche by 2 seconds in the 1/4 mile never refer to their cars as sports car, just fast cars.

Aztec was just a bad car period.

 

Now that's bugged!!