News: Richard Gere driving from Hollywood to Tibet. Fiat ad upsets China.

This month, The Road we have Italy in the spotlight. Italy as in "the place I live in", as in "the place I love", but also as in "the place that makes me chuckle".
Here is an example why:

Italian car maker Fiat apologised to China for a television commercial starring US actor Richard Gere. Fiat acknowledged it "could disturb the sensibility of the Chinese people".

The ad shows Gere, a long-time supporter of the Tibetan Independence Movement, drive the group's new Lancia Delta model from Hollywood to Tibet, where he and a child dressed as a Buddhist monk plunge their hands into fresh snow.

The slogan that runs with the ad is "The power to be different".

The Italian car maker stressed that its advertising had "never been driven by or based on political choices or by a desire to interfere with the internal political system of any country, especially the People's Republic of China".

More posts on The Road about Italy.

Video via autoblog.com