So now Orbitz realizes that Harley riders are at least sidewardly mobile travelers. The online travel site is now the go-through for Harley-Davidson rentals across the country. A deal with EagleRider lets you go hogging in 24 cities including Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Palm Springs, Fresno, Las Vegas, Chicago, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Denver, Knoxville, Dallas, Miami, Orlando, New Orleans, St. Louis and Washington, D.C. (Fresno? Knoxville?) Every Harley is available, including Electra Glide, Road King, Heritage Softail, Dyna Wide Glyde and Fat Boy. The package includes unlimited miles, helmets, and luggage storage in the rental office. See the Orbitz site for details on insurance and other basics - and we'll see you riding bitch.

If you remember the 1980s—and who doesn’t, other than Ozzy Osbourne—you’ll be grooving to the latest Lincoln sponsorship, this one with Eighties R&B group New Edition. When you hit the tour stop in your city supporting their new album, you'll see a two-minute video that has our guys checking out the new LT.

But for those of us who choose not to cool it now, or can't even name all the members of Bell Biv DeVoe (hint: there's three of 'em), it's a puzzling union. How many tickets are they selling? Wasn't the group's last Top Ten hit back in, um, high school? Ford's efforts with country music have sounded sweet (Alan Jackson, Toby Keith) but this one seems a little off key.

At least Ricky and the crew are still scoring record deals with Diddy. At last check, former New Editioner Bobby Brown was bailing out members of his entourage, supposedly for fighting at Atlanta's Justin's restaurant (ironically, owned by Diddy). And, in case you hadn't heard, he's married to Whitney Houston, who is rumored to be a bit of a diva.

I don't know if I'll actually pay to see Herbie: Fully Loaded, even though my earliest movie memories are of the Super Chief drive-in near Fort Washington, Md. My aunt and uncle hid me underneath the middle bench of Grandma's old white Ford wagon, of course, and I got to see a double bill of Love Bug movies for nothing. Well, except some lines on my forehead where the vinyl welting squished against me. (What's the news about corduroy pillows? They're making headlines!)

No, I don't really need to see the new flick as much as VW needs the buzz to reinvigorate the '06 New Beetle. I can tell you the plot already: earnest race team is befriended by vaguely creepy, anthropomorphically enabled Bug. In total ignorance of the obvious and compelling man/machine metaphysical subplot, they eventually win a race, even though baddies will predictably tamper with the stock storyline. I'm thinking 89 minutes running time. What's the takeaway? The camera work will reveal everything - are Herbie's headlights getting as much screen time as Lindsay Lohan's?

Hey, it's not doing any real damage to the car world - not like Days of Thunder. No actual actors are being harmed, although it's depressing to watch Matt Dillon slump further into career parody. Has it really been 1o years since To Die For? You'll spend ten bucks and might get a laugh or two. But if you're looking for a summer car movie you haven't seen before, drive in somewhere else.

Audi of America is in the midst of a most unusual marketing campaign for the launch of its A3 model that bends the standards of so-called viral marketing and carries the hope of company executives that the car will generate so much demand that sales incentives won't be needed.

Here is how the Audi A3 campaign, themed "The Art of the Heist" began. On March 31, an actor hired by Audi to play the role of Ian Yarbrough, a computer hacker and partner in a company that recovers lost and stolen art, sees that a notorious art thief stole an A3 from a Manhattan Audi showroom. Yarbrough was seeking computer files hidden in the stolen A3, which he tracked to a New Jersey warehouse where thieves took the car. Unable to take the files from the car while the thieves were on the scene, he was forced to steal the car from the original thieves. The midtown Manhattan showroom where the car was stolen became a real crime scene complete with police barriers around the showroom, a broken glass door, and security guards. Posters went up at the dealership, at the Javits Center in Manhattan during the New York Auto Show, and in wild-postings (handbills posted up on constructions sites, etc.) in ten cities seeking information about the stolen car. Ian is on the run, with police believing he is the original car thief.

Fake ads for www.lastresortretrievel.com, Ian and his partner Nisha's company, ran in the back of May issues of Wired, Esquire, The Robb Report and USA Today, appearing to be real ads for real companies specializing in art recovery. Spokesperson for Audi's ad agency that conceived the campaign, McKinney & Silver, Janet Northen says the ads were so much of a head-fake that a journalist from a major magazine sent an e-mail to through the site hoping to speak to Ian or partner Nisha as a source in a story. The agency e-mailed the reporter back and simply said the executives were out of the country. But the ads helped generate traffic to the Web sites tracking the story and leading those who want to play along to all the elements - blogs, online videos, e-mails between characters with streaming audio of the characters talking to one another on the phone.

It all sounds like extreme viral marketing. And it is. But Audi advertising chief Stephen Berkov says that it's this type of campaign that a company like Audi must employ to generate buzz around the launch of a new model. "I don't want to compete merely on share of voice in traditional advertising," says Berkov.

About 125,000 people were following "The Art of the Heist" online as of early May, and that number is expected to climb as more TV and print ads run helping people find the game. Audi only need to sell about 6000 A3s this year, but expects to sell about 12,000 per year for the next few years. The vehicle is aimed at 25-34 year olds who make over $125,000 per year. That is an audience that watches less and less TV, which is why Audi and McKinney have created "The Art of the Heist." Even if would-be Audi buyers don't see the ad, or even play, it's important, says Berkov, that they will hear about it because Audi can't be seen just doing the same old ad campaigns to a target that is for the most part tuning out such advertising.

Businessweek.com first reported the details of the game, which Audi kept hush-hush for weeks as the automaker tried to preserve the mystique of the game. But for details of how you can jump into the game even now, catch up and play along, Web sites to go to are www.stolenA3.com, www.lastresortretrieval.com, www.virgilkingofcode.com, http://heist.smirkbox.com/, and www.argn.com.



2006 Audi A3 Sportback by Marty Padgett (8/9/2004)
Audi improves its Golf game.



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Those of you on the highways this past weekend probably encountered the kind of mind-numbing traffic that every beach and monument saw. But it's nothing like the jam surrounding metropolitan Charlotte, N.C., over a race weekend. With more than 150,000 people expected in a town that wasn't much bigger than that 20 years ago, the highways can't hope to be up to speed. Electronic signs warned me as I passed through before race weekend: "ALERT! Race Weekend Traffic May 26-May 30. Alternate Routes Advised!" So even though it will add a few hours to the drive back from Washington, maybe I need to take the mountain highway this time.