More performance art than car commercial, Honda of the U.K. Manufacturing Ltd.'s new two-minute "Cog" spot via Wieden & Kennedy of London is dazzling the ad world's creative community as awards season approaches.

Five months of painstaking planning and experimentation went into creating the film, for which the new Honda Accord was literally taken to pieces. The car's individual parts then were used to construct an ambitiously complex Rube Goldberg contraption.

A small cog rolls and nudges into a larger one, setting in motion a chain reaction that ultimately involves walking windshield wipers, rotating panes of glass and a tumbling muffler. The domino effect occurs in a spare room and ends with an Accord rolling off a ramp to a gentle stop as the voice-over asks, "Isn't it nice when things just work?" The tagline: "The power of dreams."

"They have broken the mold of relying on fashion and the latest techniques for car advertising," says Rooney Carruthers, creative director of London's Vallance Carruthers Coleman Priest and former executive creative director of FCB San Francisco. "It is eminently watchable and has subtly built a distinctive vocabulary for the Honda brand."

Saturn also contends

Ironically, if "Cog" becomes a Cannes contender, it will compete against an auto spot that features almost no car parts: Saturn's "Sheet Metal" from Goodby Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco, which features people on foot doing things they'd do in a car. It is expected to be a favorite among creative juries.

The Honda ad was created without special effects. It was split into two continuous takes only because no studio was big enough to accommodate the entire sequence. The only post-production trickery is the lighting on the car doors at the end.

Honda's image problem

Wieden & Kennedy won the Honda of the U.K. business in 2001. The brand has an image problem in the United Kingdom, where it has a reputation for being dull and lacking in style. Honda is a fairly small car manufacturer in the United Kingdom, with a 3 percent share of the market.

Since the ad broke on April 6, visits to Honda's Web site have quadrupled, and calls to the contact center have tripled. The film has been entered in the International Advertising Festival, held in Cannes, France, in June.

Its shot at the Grand Prix could be hurt by the fact that Wieden & Kennedy's Portland, Ore., office won the top prize last year, for Nike's "Tag" spot. To make it more politically delicate, Wieden Chairman Dan Wieden chairs the jury this year.

"Cog" won't air in the United States. Eric Conn, assistant vice president of national advertising for American Honda Motor Co.'s Honda and Acura brands, says the spot wouldn't work in America. "I don't have the luxury to use a spot with no feature benefits."

Emma Hall writes for Advertising Age, a sister publication of Automotive News.