Honda’s musical road flops

In the UK we’ve already grown used to Honda’s cool, off-beat advertising – but in America one of the brand’s marketing campaigns has backfired dramatically after residents complained about a ‘musical’ road.

Honda decided to promote the Civic by paying to resurface a stretch of highway in California with a pattern of grooves intended to ‘play’ the William Tell overture when a car over them at 55mph, the carefully-prepared surface operating on the same principle as the grooves in a vinyl record.

Unfortunately for Honda, the musical road drove local residents mad, with some hearing it as a low pitched hum and others claiming it kept them awake all night. The road is now being resurfaced, but you can hear what it sounds like in this video.