Elon Musk unveiled the Tesla Cybertruck in November 2019 and it became the most famous product launch failure in automotive history. Because the "unbreakable" windows shattered on live television in front of the entire world. Franz von Holzhausen, Tesla's head of design, was supposed to throw a metal ball at the driver window to demonstrate the armored glass. In rehearsals it worked perfectly. The glass held. The demonstration was supposed to be the dramatic highlight of the presentation. On stage Franz threw the ball. The glass shattered into a spiderweb of cracks. The audience gasped. Elon stared at the window. He said "oh my god." Then he told Franz to try the rear window. Franz threw the ball again. The second window also cracked. Elon stood on stage for the remaining 15 minutes of the presentation in front of a truck with two shattered windows. He did not leave the stage. He did not cut the presentation short. He continued presenting features and specs as if the most embarrassing product demo in Tesla's history was not sitting behind him in full view of every camera in the room. The stock dropped 6% the next day. The internet produced a million memes. Every automotive journalist wrote that the Cybertruck was dead on arrival. Then Elon tweeted the behind the scenes video of the rehearsal where the glass held perfectly and implied that the stage demo stress tested the glass beyond the rehearsal conditions. Within a week the Cybertruck had received over 250,000 pre orders. More than any truck launch in history. The broken windows generated more attention than a perfect demo ever could have. The failure became the marketing. The man who stood on stage in front of his most public failure and refused to flinch turned embarrassment into a quarter million orders.