This is not the road you're looking for: TomTom teams up with Star Wars

Times must be tough for third-party sat-nav manufacturers at the moment. Five years ago they had the market sown up; built-in systems were clunky and expensive compared to the hand-held or windscreen-sucker alternative, and their products seemed like an ideal solution to the GPS revolution.

But major car makers learn very quickly when there's money at stake, and today there's barely a new car for sale which doesn't have a worthy sat-nav system on the option list. To make matters worse, mobile phone companies have jumped on the bandwagon. Most of these aren't quite up to scratch yet, but 18 months down the line you can bet they'll be top notch.

In an attempt to stave off the inevitable, the third-party manufacturers are striving for increasingly bizarre ways to make them stand out from the crowd. TomTom's latest wheeze is to bring the official Star Wars voices to their devices. Inevitably, Darth Vader is up first, but C-3PO, Yoda and Han Solo will follow in the summer. Though the idea might sound as tacky as a seaside gift shop, the promotional vid is actually pretty good.

Click on the link below to watch.