What happens when you take gamers off the tube and onto the track?
11-16-09: Life imitates art, although sometimes not as fast. Ford gathered four gamers who have burned rubber on the racetrack through their video game consoles and brought their racing dreams to life at an actual speedway for the eighth installment of the Mustang '10 Unleashed campaign. It was akin to the comparison that Jeremy on Top Gear did earlier this year where he tried to match his video game track time in a Honda NSX in real life. Not a chance.
Ford staged a tournament with the best “Need for Speed” players to determine who would face an ultimate challenge. The selected gamers competed against each other in the critically acclaimed latest “Need for Speed SHIFT“, which includes the new 2010 Ford Mustang and Shelby GT-500.
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After they battled it out on their Xbox consoles, the four gamers received were taken to Willow Springs Raceway in Southern California to take the game to the streets of Willow. The contestants included Kirby Anderson (25); Troy Alessi (22); Justin Keppler (24); and Jason Morrell (24).
With the help of driving teachers from Fast Lane Racing School, the gamers were given instruciton on high performance driving and how to keep the cars from crashing for real. At the end of the day, the participants had their time added up from their video racing and their time on the real-life track, as they raced on the same track, in the same car. The person with the lowest combined time won bragging rights. As you will see in the video, the fastest video game star also turned out to be the fastest track star. Poetic.
"The whole point of the Mustang Unleashed Campaign is to intersect the passions of our life-long Mustang lovers with their most creative, wildest, most impossible dreams," said Steve Ling, car group marketing manager for Ford Motor Company. "We've taken two seemingly different worlds and weaved them into one amazing Unleashed experience for these four winners."
This experience is among several other dream Mustang experiences Ford is bringing to life with the '10 Unleashed. Famous drifter Vaughn Gittin Jr. slid sideways around Japan, consumer Roger Keeney drove blindly and 18-year-old consumer Derek Murrell drag raced his high school shop teacher. Each of the incredible videos can be viewed on www.the2010Mustang.com.
To find out who earned bragging rights on the virtual and real-life speedway, check out the video chronicling the Need for Speed experience at www.the2010Mustang.com.
