Car adverts on TV are nowhere as good as they used to be.

You're not kidding. There is nothing unique to advertise. All they can do is depict a contented driver, usually a young male with designer stubble and the perfect family driving through mountain scenery on empty roads.

One of the best I saw from the eighties was a BMW advert where they played a soundtrack using a sample of one of their straight six engines at high revs.

There is little to separate one car from another - similar price, performance, economy, gadgets etc. The more you pay to go up any range, the more gizmos and higher quality kit you get. Money makes most of the difference, not the manufacturer!

Differentiating between (say) a Peugeot, Ford, Vauxhall. Toyota, Honda etc etc 5 door, 5 seat hatch is challenging. Look at the specs for a similarly priced versions to work out which has the better set of acronyms is death by alphabet to most.

So it is no surprise that selling the sizzle (lifestyle, aspiration, etc) wins over mundane and unimportant facts. In marketing it is pervasive across all products and sectors - consumer durables, breakfast cereals, clothes and fashion etc etc.

That minorities are over represented in adverts by comparison to the general population is well known, However perceptions can be misleading - live in a large city and the UK will seem very multicultural, small provincial towns and country is heavily white Anglo Saxon.

That minorities are over represented in adverts by comparison to the general population is well known, However perceptions can be misleading - live in a large city and the UK will seem very multicultural, small provincial towns and country is heavily white Anglo Saxon.

Do you have a source for this assertion?

I doubt if there is one. But I agree with Terry - I can't help feeling that most advertisers feel obliged to show what looks to me to be an atypical proportion of non-white people. But then I think that to a Londoner or West Midlander it may look quite normal ? So it may depend on what part of the UK you live in.