One thing Germany has no shortage of is small towns. Head off the Autobahn and into the boonies, your drive will be slowed down to a crawl every four or five kilometres as you pass through another Unterpickelfering, Tafelförderung and Stübenhockerburg. You can’t pack 80 million people into a country the size of your average Texas ranch and expect a wide-open road.

Nevertheless, the marketing dudes at BMW have decided they had to invent yet another German town in order to promote a line of new cars.

The town is called Oberpfaffelbachen and is supposed to be somewhere in Bavaria. They say they even have a documentary filmmaker making a film about it all to create on-line chatter about the new car launch, and by launch I mean that literally.

The centrepiece of the film is a 454-metre high ramp said to have been built in the middle of a farmer’s field, upon which a car will be sent shooting down like a rocket, and, presumably, into the waiting arms of eager American car-buyers.

With the dive-bombing US dollar making German cars that much more expensive for Americans, I don’t know how well that’s going to fly, but they’re so deep into the project, there’s no turning back. The film is supposed to be in the final production stages, but you can catch the trailer if you can’t wait for its release, and if you’re really into it, sign up for the Facebook page!

Yes, it’s viral marketing. Get a buzz going, you never know how far it will go.

All in good fun, I suppose. Yet somehow, I find this video clip of a farmer heaping great steaming piles of bullshit into a wheelbarrow to be a pretty accurate portrayal of the whole thing:

© 2008 lettershometoyou