Honda’s “Cog”: The Ad Built Entirely Out of Its Own Car Parts

A small gear starts to turn, and it nudges another part, which nudges another, in a chain reaction that rolls, drops, spins and bounces its way across a warehouse floor for two minutes straight. Every piece in the shot is a real component of a Honda Accord: gearbox parts, hoses, seats, wheels, even the fuel cap, all rigged to trigger the next one like an enormous Rube Goldberg machine.

The film, known as “Cog,” was made in 2003 by the agency Wieden+Kennedy and directed by Antoine Bardou-Jacquet for the production company Partizan Midi Minuit. The team spent months on conceptual drawings and testing before filming, and the finished sequence used almost no CGI, only a small amount to fix a reflection in the car’s window at the very end.

Getting the chain reaction to run all the way through without a single part failing took an enormous number of attempts, and accounts of exactly how many takes it required still disagree today. The full two-minute version was expensive to air because of its length, so it was reportedly broadcast on British television only about ten times over ten days in April 2003, plus screenings in a few other countries and in cinemas.

Rarity did not stop it from becoming one of the most awarded commercials ever made, picking up a Grand Clio, Gold Lions at Cannes and prizes from the Creative Circle, among many others. It closes on a simple line: “Isn’t it nice when things just… work?” Two years later, Wieden+Kennedy and Honda followed it with another acclaimed spot, “Grrr,” which won the Cannes Grand Prix.