18.01.2011

Five cars on a crane

A new Lexus advert began to appear on televisions in the USA this week, in which an All Terrain crane lifts five new Lexus cars in a chain, in order to demonstrate the strength of the car’s chassis.

The lift is real and owes nothing to computer trickery, the crane begins by lifting the first car with two cables attached to the front of its chassis, the rigging is replicated from its rear end and attached to a second and so on..

The total weight of the five cars was just under 10 tonnes and was lifted on full boom, the crane? We are not quite sure, however looks like a five axle Grove GMK - but in fact its a Tadano Faun ATF220G-5, our mistake - . The lighting is poor and the photographer is clearly focusing on the cars and not the crane. The cars are all different and include an LS, RX, GS, ES and an IS
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Five Lexus cars are suspended in a chain

Dave Nordstrom, vice president of marketing for Lexus said: “It isn’t enough to just say that we pursue perfection, we want to demonstrate the great lengths we go to in our pursuit. The new broadcast spot allows us to focus on the foundation of our vehicles, the chassis, and show its almost unbelievable strength. In fact, we feared that it would be so unbelievable, we invited a physicist and structural engineer to witness the shoot, to prove that it did, in fact, occur without the use of special effects or computer generated-imagery.”
Finally, a $375,000 Lexus LFA drives into the picture and parks directly under the suspended cars.
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The cars are then held over a 5,000 Lexus LFA while the driver poses for a picture

Before risking the cars to the air, the crew carried out a pull test on the top car, the LS, with two wreckers trying to pull it apart the test equipment read a test pull of over 13 tonnes.

The lift was repeated numerous times over the three days shoot without experiencing any problems. Without wishing to appear churlish, posing under such a load is not exactly the safest thing to do, even if it does demonstrate extreme confidence in the cars and the crane – not to mention the rigging. We don’t think much of the outrigger mats either but that might be down to the camera angle.

Nice to see a crane on TV though. Watch it yourself below