(Business 2.0) – How can a European startup afford to lease cars to customers for $230 a month, insurance and maintenance included? Easy: by covering the autos with advertising and outfitting them with GPS tracking. Matching its drivers' routes to maps of population density, Austrian startup CoolCar can estimate how many eyeballs it reaches. Each CoolCar Mini or Citroën generates as many as 500,000 impressions a month for advertisers like Sony Ericsson and Warner Bros. "Our society has learned to ignore ads," says co-founder Werner Neubauer. "But not on cars. They stand out." CoolCar had sales of $1 million in its first year and is on track to reach $3 million in 2006.

Paris-based Liberty Drive, a similar outfit, covers its 200-vehicle fleet of GPS-fitted Smart Cars with ads from Coke and Nike; Liberty Drive charges drivers only $175 a month. Newest to the market is Australia's KahDo, which provides advertisers with drivers it deems "social influencers"; the chosen renters pay just $25 a week. Everyone wins--except ad-saturated pedestrians.