January 13, 2011

Department 180: The Coolest Job at Chevrolet?

It could well be. Chevy's Dept. 180 has put together this crazy cool video demonstrating the safety features of the new Chevy Cruze - which sounds typical enough, until you watch it. The soundtrack is cool, the information is presented in a very cool way, and perhaps most importantly, this thing has knee air bags, folks. Knee air bags! That's absolutely brilliant. According to the video, it's the first vehicle in its segment to feature them, and I figure it must be a fairly new technology because it was the first I'd heard of them. Check it out after the jump.

Besides the glory of knee air bags, the video's full of high-speed camera footage of many, many crash tests, which is my rationale for calling Dept. 180 out as the job to have at Chevy. I know that serious research is done, and that these crash tests are taken very seriously in regards to their impact (pun intended) on a vehicle's safety rating - but I'm sure that on certain days, there's a lot of rewinding and giggling when a test is particularly spectactular. Scientists know how to have a good time. On a related note, I'm left wondering: just how many cars get built simply to be smashed for the glee of these guys in white coats? (and research, of course - but also glee.) I tried to look up the statistic but I'm coming up blank - can any of our readers help me out here?

Here's the video, in all its super-slow-mo goodness; I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.