This Christmas, we managed to get our hands on a hot new gift item for any age or flavor of automotive enthusiast. "Road Mice" are American Muscle cars made to fit in the palm of your hand and serve as your mouse when you cruise the web.  They are fast (800 dpi) and fun, and are officially licensed for the hottest new cars, the Mustang GT, Camaro, Corvette, and more.

Yesterday's car guys have become major computer geeks in recent years as absolutely everything in the automotive industry has gone high tech. Therefore, the cross-over between cars and computers seems a natural fit, so leave it to a group of guys in California to come up with the newest "cross-over," a cool model car, a kids toy, and a computer accessory all in one.

The details on the Road Mice are incredible, and the construction is solid (not the thin cheap plastic you might find on many real mice).  The left and right mouse buttons are well-conceiled as perfectly fitting halves of the hood. The roller wheel on the mouse lights up red, and kind of looks like a hood scoop.  When you click on a mouse button, it lights up the blue LED headlight, an obvious nod to modern HID headlights.  To make the included batteries last longer, you can turn off the headlights (after the novelty wears off, I suppose).

We decided to give the Ford Mustang GT mouse to a guy that tunes Mustangs for a living, using a laptop computer plugged directly into the engine computer.  The "this-is-really-cool" smile was amazing!  Immediately, though he tried to operate the mouse on the hood of a shiny polished vehicle, and the optical mouse wouldn't behave.  So, our only feedback is that version two could probably use some sort of cool mouse pad to complete the package.

The Road Mice folks will be constantly unveiling new hot models, so check their website at www.roadmice.com to see what is available today.