The most impressive aspect of this Lexus ES 350 commercial is how real the situation feels:

The different perspectives of the same accident, the unavoidable crash, the skittering truck, the click-whirr of the advanced safety system, all make for a very immersive experience. Before impact, I actually recoiled in my chair.

Enough people have been searching the site for this ad that I consider it my duty to post it up — Lexus has three commercials currently in rotation with musicians speaking on their favorite songs, this one features John Legend jazzing out to Nina Simone:

Apparently, this Nina Simone song has led to some very confused fans, who don’t recognized the specific version of “Backlash Blues”. Turns out this is a version from a rare Paris concert, and is unavailable at any of the common outlets. However, feat not, someone has posted it to a Myspace page.

I stumbled upon this never used Lexus ad for the ES350:

How totally bizarre.

As for background info, it was created by Walter Robot, an animation studio in Orange County, California, and was to be a series of commercials featuring the full Lexus lineup.

The idea, according to Christopher Louie, one of the principals, “was based around the concept of these faux retro educational videos—the kind you watched in like middle school science class on a projector.”

He was unable to say exactly why the spot wasn’t used, but considering the rather somber tone of recent Lexus ads, a little humor might have been a welcome change.