Amtrak Ads Are Going Full Luxury Car

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Amtrak Ads Are Going Full Luxury Car

BY LALITA CHEMELLO UPDATED: MAY 6, 2026 10:06 AM EST

Luxury car ads are an automaker's love letter to its current and future customers. Like the one featuring Matthew McConaughey for Lincoln, or the millions of Jon Hamm-voiceover Mercedes-Benz ads I'm fed as a Mercedes owner, they focus on premium driving experiences and luxurious touchpoints all in a calming, but commanding, middle aged male voice. Amtrak wants a little of that allure for its latest and greatest high-speed train service, the NextGen Acela. 

The 30-second video "The Build," dropped on the American passenger's service YouTube channel last week is reminiscent of most luxury and tech ads you'd come across today, down to the voiceover that sounded suspiciously like the guy who does the voiceover for many Honda car ads (at least the levels as well as the cadence are very similar). In it, the visuals build the componentry of Amtrak's new NextGen Acela trains, from gearing to the stitching of the seats, putting componentry together until the main character gracefully takes a seat on the actual train. It certainly felt like a car ad, but for the public passenger experience. If I know our readers, you are likely an enthusiast of both. 

{snip}

[sinkingfeeling]

1. Wish Amtrak woud fix their rails instead. Or stop using the same ones freight trains use.

[Wonder Why]

2. and keep their cars and engines in good running condition. And modernize the cars to the 21st century instead of

moving from the 19th to the 20th.

and have a decent web site. And provide real onboard customer service and real food on the eastern long distance trains.

And have executives that actually travel beyond the N.E. Corridor on their trains.

Ad learn to run a corporation for the customers.