I remember this was linked a few months ago, but I just got it over e-mail at work (took the engineers a few months to discover it, but they're all pretty erect about it) and I don't remember that it came with the story.. I thought the story was pretty cool.
-Jessica

Check this out. Click the link before reading the rest of the email. Is
this an engineers dream or what? This is a commercial for the new European
Honda Accord, which will be sold here as an Acura (TSX):
http://home.attbi.com/~bernhard36/honda-ad.html

It's a two-minute ad done without any computer graphics, but will surely
go down as one of the most amazing commercials of all time. If you are
interested, watch the movie first before reading the narrative below. "Six
hundred and six takes it took, and if they had been forced to do a 607th
it is probable, if not downright certain, that one of the film crew would
have snapped and gone mad. On the first 605 occasions something small,
usually infuriatingly minute, went just slightly awry and the whole
delicate arrangement was wrecked. A drop too much oil there, or here maybe
one ball-bearing too many giving a fraction too much impetus to the
movement. Whirr, creak, crash, the entire, card-house of consequences was
a write-off and they had to start again.

Honda's latest television advertisement, a two-minute film called "Cog",
is like a fine-lubricated line of dominoes. It begins with a transmission
bearing which rolls into a synchro hub which in turn rolls into a gear
wheel cog and plummets off a table on to a camshaft and pulley wheel. All
the parts are from the new Honda Accord - #16,495 to you, guv'nor, or #6
million if you want to pay for the advertising campaign. And what an
amazing ad campaign it is, too.

Back on Cog, things are still moving, in a what-happened-next manner
redolent of "there was an old woman who swallowed a fly". With a ting and
a ding of metal on metal, a thud of contact and the occasional thwock,
plop and extended scraping sound, the viewer watches as individual,
stripped-down parts of car roll into one another and set off more
reactions. Three valve stems roll down a sloped bonnet. An exhaust box is
pushed with just enough energy into a rear suspension link which nudges a
transmission selector arm which releases the brake pedal loaded with a
small rubber brake grommit. Catapult! Boing! On goes the beautiful dance,
everything intricately balanced and poised. Nothing must be even a
sixteenth of an inch off course or the momentum will be lost. At one point
three tyres, amazingly, roll uphill. They do so because inside they have
been weighted with bolts and screws which have been positioned with
fingertip care so that the slightest kiss of kinetic energy pushes them
over, onward and, yes, upward. During the pre-shoot... [ Read More (0.9k in body) ]