By John Coyle

Deputy Editor

Everybody who’s ran hot laps in a video game has wondered how their skills would translate to reality, and that’s why the latest video from Ford’s Mustang ‘10 Unleashed campaign is so fun to watch. Ford held a competition to find the best Need For Speed gamers, had the top four practice driving a Mustang in the game, then took them to a track to see who could come closest to their times in a real car. From the clips of them practicing virtually—um, and why the hell are they playing with controllers instead of wheels?—I was thinking the poor Ponys selected for this stunt were going to wind up in the crusher, but the Ford folks wisely chose to do this on a course without barriers.

By Speedhunters

Car Culture At Large

Our friends at Need for Speed are celebrating 16 sweet years of gaming by giving away 8 trips to the Formula Drift finals in Irwindale, California, October 16-17.

If you live in the US or Canada, and you want to enter the random draw, all you need to do is submit a photo or video – 60 seconds or less, please – telling them about your Need for Speed experiences, gaming, cars, or anything that drives you.

For more information and contest rules, visit happysweet16nfs.com We’ll see a few of you at Irwindale next month perhaps!

By Rod Chong

During lunch, the staff at CarDomain Headquarters occasionally takes over a conference room for some racing action, and the Need For Speed games are favorites. We haven’t gotten our hands on the latest edition yet, but from what I’ve seen, NFS: ProStreet looks pretty wicked. Unlike the last offering, NFS: Carbon, all the races in his game are held on closed tracks, so you won’t have to worry about running from the cops—??but you will have to worry about bashing up your ride. Apparently, the guys over at Electronic Arts have tweaked the game play to make the cars handle more realistically, and they’ve paid special attention to reflecting how crash damage will affect performance. Maybe if we’re nice, they’ll send us a copy for, um, research purposes? Check out the clip below.