Honda commercial: The part with the tires

If you haven’t already seen this Honda commercial, it’s a great way to spend two minutes. Click on the cog, then click on the star icon.
then select the desired resolution.

This commercial depicts a Rube Goldberg device made of Honda car parts. It is supposedly 100% Real World, no computer animation. In about the middle, a tire rolls into three other tires that are queued on a ramp. The three tires bump one another up the ramp, until the one at the top rolls off. The initial tire does not seem to have nearly enough speed to be able to transfer the momentum up the ramp. Further, if you watch carefully, you will notice that the second tire hits the top one and rolls backwards slightly, then reverses again continues to roll uphill as the top tire falls. This is clearly not consistent with classical physics.

  1. Can you confirm my observation?
  2. Can you explain it?
  1. Yes.
  2. Yes. There’s probably weights inside the tires, which a) help them balance on the incline without rolling down it and 2) help them roll with greater energy than the initial collision would seem to impart.

It’s hard to find any official confirmation from a cite I can link to, but the general consensus seems to be that the tyres were weighted inside.

This is the best reference I could find (there are other links from there you might want to follow).

I couldn’t find the claim that it was not a computer simulation. I find it hard to believe that this was all done with real objects, especially the tires.

It was in the Daily Telegraph article linked from within the reference I gave you:

The tires are weighted. It IS real. It took over 600 “takes” to capture everything working right. The film crew had nightmares, cuz it took HOURS to set everything up for a take, and then some one would walk just a little too hard, and it would set off a chain-reaction, and they’d have to set it up all over again!

Here’s a link to an article about how they did it.
http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/04/13/nhonda13.xml

The tires are weighted. It IS real. It took over 600 “takes” to capture everything working right. The film crew had nightmares, cuz it took HOURS to set everything up for a take, and then some one would walk just a little too hard, and it would set off a chain-reaction, and they’d have to set it up all over again!

Here’s a link to an article about how they did it.
http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/04/13/nhonda13.xml

The tires are weighted. It IS real. It took over 600 “takes” to capture everything working right, once. The film crew had nightmares, cuz it took HOURS to set everything up for a take, and then some one would walk just a little too hard, and it would set off a chain-reaction, and they’d have to set it up all over again!

Here’s a link to an article about how they did it.
http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/04/13/nhonda13.xml

They probably heard you the first time, Rob. In fact, if they were paying attention they heard it from me ;).