Anthropomorphizing Engines Is Not Easy

I’ve talked about my intense pareidolia – the propensity to see faces in things – and my related urges to anthopomorphize cars in general here before, lots of times. For the most part, cars as a whole lend themselves quite well to being anthropomorphized, with plenty of elements on their front ends – lights, grilles, badges, bumpers, and so on – that can stand in for human features. An engine, on the other hand, is a much more difficult challenge when it comes to finding a recognizable face. And yet it seems as if at least someone out there is giving it a go.

The other day I got an email from Luke, an Autopian out of Bath, England, or just out of the bath – it wasn’t clear. I think either way we can assume that Luke is clean, English, or perhaps both.

Anyway, he sent me this ad from Esso – that’s a gas station chain, which we know as Exxon here in America, at least since 1972. Do you know where the name Esso comes from? Standard Oil. S.O. Get it? I always suspected that the sliced-meats-between-bread fast-food chain Arby’s was the same way. Arby. R.B., as in roast beef. Anyway, here’s the ad:

Look at that lady, enjoying a cup of tea and a nice, vigorous chuckle with what seems to be a V6 engine, which is able to reach the height of the table thanks to a stack of three shockingly dense pillows, considering the likely weight of an engine like that.

I looked around to try and find more examples of Esso’s friendly engine, but could only find one:

Here we have what seems to be the same red-block V6 engine, only now it’s on the floor, acting sort of like a pet of some kind. That engine does seem pretty gregarious, I have to admit.

So, what do we think of this attempt at engine anthopomorphization, or at least whatever the general animal/living being equivalent here is? Let’s look:

At first I wasn’t really crazy about it, though to be fair I think my bigger issues come from the annoying inaccuracies of the engine itself. Like, why are the pistons exposed at the top? Where are the valve covers? Or, really, the whole cylinder heads? This engine wouldn’t be capable of running, and I think that’s a problem.

But what about the use of the pulleys as always-shocked-looking eyes, and a mouth that’s just a random hole in the block? It’s not great, but lets look at what some modern engine types actually look like:

Images: VW, GM

Here’s the thing: this isn’t easy. Engines simply do not lend themselves well to pareidolia at all: they’re not especially symmetrical, they don’t really have parts that are analogues to facial features – they’s just not face-like. So, I guess I grudgingly have to admit that using the pulleys as the eyes to anchor a sort of face is really all they could have done. But they could have at least made the engine look more, you know, right.

So I tried this quick attempt:

Okay, so I’ll use the alternator pulley and some other pulley – water pump maybe, let’s say – as eyes, and while I too need to use a little hole in the block for a mouth, maybe we can justify it by having other casting details in the block that it could be.

Our engine has proper heads and valve covers at least, a belt on those pulleys (we’d want to de-emphasize that crankshaft pulley, where it can sort of stand in for a chin), and since we have exhaust manifolds at each side, why not utilize those as arms? Then it could actually maybe drink that tea.

I have to admit; this is a pretty big challenge. In light of everything, Esso didn’t do too badly, I guess.