An ad made by Audi to promote its electronic car concept e-tron, which appears to send up Toyota’s accelerator problem, has become a YouTube sensation with 500K views.

Audi admits, in a report by Brandchannel, that they did make the viral called ”Toyota lawnmower recall’  but that it was released in September, before Toyota’s recall of some eight million vehicles worldwide.

The Toyota related  title was allegedly added by an anonymous party more recently.

However, Audi does have a history of competitive advertising and recently took aim at BMW with ‘Friendly Competition‘ in which Audi capitalises on independent comparison road tests that found in their favour.

Our guess is the headline is the work of some online wag, part of a long tradition of advertisements being deliberately adapted or taking on a comic dimension in the light of new events – Tiger Woods print ads a recent example.

Here’s the lawnmower:

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