Audi Says A5 TDI Suicide Ad Is a Fake

HERNDON, Virginia — A purported Audi ad of a man unsuccessfully trying to kill himself in an Audi A5 TDI is a fake, confirmed Audi of America on Friday in an e-mailed message to Inside Line.

"You or your staff might have caught wind of a purported Audi TDI commercial that made its way around the Web this week featuring [an] attempted and failed suicide," said Audi of America spokesman Christian Bokich. "This video was not commissioned, funded or produced by any Audi organization worldwide."

The video shows a man in a parking structure who attempts to kill himself by carbon monoxide poisoning. He threads a hose from the exhaust into the window of the Audi. When the fuel gauge reads empty, the man appears to be dead. But he wakes up. "Good for the environment. Good for you," says the tagline to the ad. The man is then shown trying to choke himself by rolling up the window of the car on his neck.

Suicide ads are generally shunned by automakers. General Motors took a lot of flak a few years back when it produced a commercial showing an unhappy assembly-line robot trying to commit suicide.

Inside Line says: Nobody really believed that Audi was that stupid anyway. — Anita Lienert, Correspondent