Ace Young from American Idol, poses with a car.Ford is giving its new Fiesta a different kind of rollout, with 100 contest winners who will get a car, gas and cameras to chronicle their travels for six months.
The results will be posted on social networking sites like Facebook, YouTube and Flickr starting next month, the automaker said at an event in Times Square Friday.
Ford is hoping the campaign makes the compact Fiesta - billed as its most fuel-efficient nonhybrid - as big a small car in America as it is in Europe.
The "agents" who will help them hype the car's new features - iPod ports, driver's knee air bag, voice-activated commands - were chosen from 3,300 entries on YouTube.
Graphic designers Paul Heath, 32, and Zac Shaw, 28, of Kingston, N.Y., were among the winners.
The pals, who perform in an indie rock band called Dead Unicorn, plan to use their Fiesta for a cross-country trip.
"We heard about it from a friend," Shaw said of the promotion.
"We got real excited because we had a car that was broken down. This opportunity came up, and what better way to get back on the road?"
"We'll put the gas mileage to the test," Heath said. "It's a liberating thing."
The Fiesta is soldout in Europe and on back order in Asia, and Ford is banking on it to lift the company out of the doldrums in the U.S.
Ford hopes the model - which will be released here in 2011 - will change the public's perception of small cars. The Fiesta will cost around the same as a Focus, between $13,000 and $18,000, and get 40 miles to the gallon.
"A lot of people think of small cars as econo-boxes," Ford spokesman Alan Hall said. "You don't have to sacrifice what you want to get a small car."
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