Here's some news that might throw you for a hook-and-loop: Within a few years, automakers may be using Velcro instead of nuts and bolts to assemble your car.
No kidding. The fascinating fastener that enables 5-year-olds to put on their own shoes could be used to attach the bumper or body panels to the family sedan.We're talking about the same tacky stuff that TV talk show host David Letterman wore before he flung himself against a wall - and stuck.
Now it seems the auto industry is developing its own attachment to Velcro.
Carmakers for years have been using Velcro to install carpeting and interior trim, such as door panels and headliners. More recently, they've begun using it to tie down spare tires, bundle wires, assemble instrument panels and create seats with more elaborate shapes and designs.
By 1995, predicts Velcro USA's William Kessler, automakers will be using Velcro fasteners to attach everything from bumpers to door panels.
"It could hold the Jarvik heart together," said Kessler, who once tried to demonstrate Velcro's strength by tying a Boeing Co. executive to his chair while he went to the men's room. Kessler runs Velcro's Troy, Mich.-based transportation division, which he founded in 1982.
"If Letterman used the type we use in cars, he would still be on the wall and Jay Leno would have no competition."
If this seems hard to grasp, consider this: The industrial-strength Velcro fastener he's referring to is much stronger than the one commonly found on kids' shoes, but it operates on the same principle.
Press together two mating strips - one with a series of hooks and the other with a series of loops - and they hold until peeled apart.
For more high-tech applications - such as in cars - the hooks are made of stronger materials and look like chisel heads, which gives them stronger gripping power.
One of the first tests of that gripping power came last year, when Ford Motor Co. unveiled its Contour concept car at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. The car's plastic exterior door panels were attached with Velcro.