With Dale Earnhardt Jr. winning the Daytona 500 last weekend, Nascar has been high profile in the news and on social media. A video that has gone viral on several social media sites this week is the sequel to a Pepsi Max commercial from 2013 which featured “Jeff Gordon” as a redneck in search of a car who took an unsuspecting used car salesman on a drive from hell. The 2014 “test drive” follow-up puts a new twist on the original video.

The 2013 video was fake, but the 2014 is claimed to be real.

The ad was conceived by the same people that brought “Uncle Drew” spots that featured Cleveland Cavaliers point guard Kyrie Irving and special guests made up as senior citizens that took various playground streetballers to school.

Test Drive I – Fake

The first test drive video was posted 2013. It didn’t take long for the this first ad to be exposed as fake.

Travis Okulski from the website Jalopnik.com did a scathing dissection of the ad detailing the “inconsistencies” with the commercial. Among the problems, the ’09 Camaro portrayed in the ad was actually a brand new 2013 Camaro.

It was later found out that the salesman was an actor and that the actual driver of the car was a stunt man that in worked for The Richard Petty Driving Experience. The spot was filmed in an abandoned Philip Morris plant. The employees of Troutman Motors are all in non-disclosure contracts and unable to comment on the ad.

Flash forward a year.

The boys from Pepsi Max and an upset Jeff Gordon are ready for the sequel. This time, with set up help from his editor at Jalopnik, the victim is none other than writer Travis Okulski and this time the joke is on him.

Okulski, who thinks he’s off to do a story, is picked up by a taxi driven by Jeff Gordon. The four-time Nascar Cup champion is made up brilliantly as an ex-con driver complete with neck tattoos and one whopper of a story. When the taxi gets pulled over by a “State Trooper,” the fun begins.

Bottom Line

The first Pepsi Max “Test Drive” video, which has been viewed close to 50 million times in its various forms, was fake. The sequel, however, was actually done by Gordon – and they claim that this time it’s 100% real.

Do you think the new Pepsi Max “test drive” video is real or is this one fake, too?