The Opel Manta and the Black Panther
04/09/2013
In 1974, the Creative Director of McCann, who was in charge of Opel, had the idea of having the new Opel Manta Black Magic photographed together with a black panther.
For this purpose, I had to paint my photo studio in Frankfurt completely black. However, the use of the model proved to be even more difficult. A live black panther was available, but when I was informed that any approach of two meters or less could be life-threatening for the model, we decided against the live version, which would probably have jumped to the ceiling anyway due to the flash energy of 10,000 watts/second, and got a stuffed panther from a museum. This one turned out to be much more peaceful and so we were able to go through with the photo series, which then made it onto many magazine pages and was even distributed as a poster by Opel.
