I would like to share a Honda commercial sent to me by my friend Mark Daniels, a technical advisor for GGG-Gold Glass Group, AEGIS Tools International Inc. and other companies in the automotive glass industry. This video, which ran in Europe several years ago, is called ‘The Cog’ and it intrigued me because it contains several references to automotive glass. The video is the type of ‘Rube Goldberg’ invention which takes a simple task and creates a series of complicated steps to accomplish the action.

To view the video, click here.

Of course, as a technical trainer, when I see these types of inventions, I have the need to figure out “why” and “how” the process works. It is kind of like trying to figure out a magic trick for me. I am not an expert in physics or mechanical engineering, but here is what I don’t understand about the progression.

• How do wheels travel uphill with a little boost from another tire? At the 25 second mark in the video a tire makes contact with a series of three more wheels going up a ramp. I just cannot see how that is possible. It could just be me.
• How does a non-rain sensor windshield run a wiper mechanism to start a door glass mobile? At the 1:19 mark a piston head is tapped into the door glass that opens and allows the piston head to fall down onto a battery that stimulates the wiper washer to wet a “non-rain sensor” windshield that triggers the wiper mechanism. Is this a discrepancy?
• Are the parts used in the commercial supposed to be from one vehicle? If that is the case, at the 1:25 mark in the video they are using four front door glasses in the door glass mobile instead of two front door glasses and two back door glasses. Which would go against the “parts of one vehicle” theory.
• Lastly, this process doesn’t contain all natural movement. At the 1:56 mark the vehicle is stopped with the application of the brakes. You can see it. It does not coast to a stop nor does it come in contact with a wheel stop.

So, how does this pertain to glass installation? This commercial is a metaphor for the complexity of the modern day vehicle and the importance of how all the different parts work together to create a dependable working product. We, as automotive glass technicians, do the same thing. We disassemble and reassemble all of the parts we are responsible for in such a way as to make sure that they all work together properly and safely. There are tens of thousands of parts in an automobile and all must work together to provide a safe vehicle for the occupants. We concern ourselves with a relative few of these parts, but the parts we are responsible for play an integral role in the safety system built into the vehicle.

The agency that created this commercial worked on it for more than six years to get it right. Shouldn’t we work on our art as hard as they did?

I thought it would be fun for my readers to see if they can find more discrepancies or explain the ones I pointed out.