Hypnosis, AI and a handful of hallucinations, how to sell a car that does not exist
Once, launching a new model meant an engineer with sweaty palms explaining camshaft timing in some draughty garage, or a Japanese project manager talking in a form of English understood only by himself. In 2026, influencers are laid out on a hypnotherapist’s couch and told to imagine they are sitting inside a beast. CUPRA, Volkswagen Group’s permanently adolescent rebel with a weakness for bronze jewellery, may just have reached the summit of modern marketing. It staged a test drive in a car that exists only as a shared hallucination.
When reality feels too dull, call in a wizard
By name, the CUPRA Tindaya is a show car. In plain language, that means a machine that looks like a spaceship but probably closes with tape and contains three cordless drills where the powertrain ought to be. Rather than let influencers notice the gaps in the Tindaya’s build quality, CUPRA marketing chief Patrick Sievers chose to replace physics with psychology.
The script was simple enough. Content creators were placed under hypnosis. Italian hypnotherapist Michele Occelli, a man whose voice was presumably smoother than the seat upholstery, instructed them to see a living creature. And, sure enough, people paid to adore brands began seeing things. One felt wind in their hair, indoors, naturally. Another stroked an imaginary steering wheel as though it were the messiah of a new age.
AI, because your fantasy apparently needs subtitles
To make this psychedelic circus feel even more technological, CUPRA added artificial intelligence to the mix. Since the participants under hypnosis were probably speaking in the language of half remembered dreams, AI turned their visions into polished images. The result was ideal from the brand’s point of view. CUPRA suddenly had a pile of free promotional material showing its car charging through jungle scenery or gliding along the coast, all without needing to roll the thing off a trailer.
It is a wonderfully efficient bit of budget control. Energy consumption, zero. Tyre wear, non existent, unless you count the soles of influencers’ trainers. Safety, a flawless five stars, because in the mental realm nobody drives into a tree.
A quick return to reality
Now imagine attending the same sort of event yourself. You sit down on a sofa while the hypnotherapist murmurs, “you are one with the car, you feel the symphony of acceleration”, and there you are, picturing every lease payment settling itself and every alloy wheel shattered by potholes being replaced by some quiet miracle. Then you wake up smiling, say thank you politely and drive home. Curtain.
Even so, the CUPRA Tindaya event says rather a lot about where the car industry is heading. We no longer buy four wheels and a steering wheel. We buy a complete experience, a mental journey, an emotional synchronisation. That is especially ironic at a time when electric cars are becoming ever more similar, and ever more boring, forcing marketers to invent increasingly deranged ways of persuading us that this particular battery powered box is, in fact, a beast.
