Ford, Chevrolet, and Dodge have long dominated America’s truck market, pushing the envelope on reliability, durability, and sheer automotive strength. The formula they’ve come up with has inspired the next-generation Nissan Titan and Titan XD, which hopes to enter the pickup truck pantheon of greatness currently dominated by the Big Three, and it is launching with an unconventional ad that pays homage to the competitors that came before it.

The aptly-titled “Shoulders of Giants” even names its rivals directly, thanking Ford, Chevrolet, and Dodge for blazing the path to pickup truck greatness. It gets a bit emotional for a truck commercial, though that seems to be a big theme among automobile ads these days.

The 90-second spot debuted during the College Football Playoff National Championship and is the opening barrage of a major ad push for the completely-new Nissan Titan. Boasting both a gas and diesel V8 engine option and engineered to meet or exceed the Big Three’s best sellers, the new Nissan Titan aims grab a larger slice of the 2.2 million annual light truck sales in America. Rather than call out the competition in a series of outlandish tests like Toyota did with the Tundra a few years ago, Nissan quite literally thanked them, saying: ““To those who’ve gone before us…Ford, Chevy, Dodge…thank you, we see the way forward.”

Not something you see everyday in a truck commercial, and perhaps a better method of endearing the new Titan to oft-devoted truck buyers, rather than shaming them for the long-held loyalties.We can’t wait to see what else the new Nissan Titan brings to the table.