A couple of days ago, I saw a TV advert aired for Northwest Honda Dealers regarding a sales event, in which they want people to shift into savings. In that advert, they show a clip of someone shifting into gears. One thing that really stuck out from that clip, like an Audi R8 dressed in pink and with Hello Kitty, was that it didn’t look like it came from any Honda. Something looked mightily familiar about the way the shifter and HVAC controls looked. Unfortunately, I was not watching it on Tivo and couldn’t pause it.
Well, that advert was aired again and, this time, I had Tivo ready for some pause, rewind and slow motion action. Below are a couple pictures that I grabbed with my cell phone camera, including two showing what the advert was for. Sorry about the poor image quality.
The first thing that stands out is how the shift knob looks like, the ring around one of the control knobs and the LCD display. The shape of the shift knob instantly reminded me of an Audi shift knob and I’ve seen that control knob design before. With my knowledge of Audi interior designs, I immediately narrowed it down to either a TT or an A3.
So, off to Google Image Search I went. I searched for “Audi TT shift knob”, “Audi A3 shift knob”, “Audi TT interior”, “Audi A3 interior”. I got some pictures that were extremely close to the type of shift knob, but the A3 image searches ran into a dead end due to the lack of the metal or metal-like embellishment for the knee/thigh guard piece. Narrowing the search down even further on the TT side of things, I found the following in a post on The TT Forum:
At that point, I knew it was a Mk1 TT. So, I decided to try my luck and took a crop of the second picture that I took and searched images that looked like it… and, bingo!
I found a stock image/video site that the video clip used in the Honda advert came from.
Long story short, the company that produced the advert for the Northwest Honda dealers used a stock video clip of a Mk1 Audi TT being shifted. To car advert makers, please use video clips (be it stock or self-produced) from at least a car made by the car maker the advert is for. You’re welcome!