Thursday, July 24, 2008 | 10:26 p.m.
I’m getting worried. Toyota has surpassed General Motors in auto sales. Ford just announced an $8.7 billion loss, its largest quarterly loss in history. Chrysler is having such a hard time selling its products that it’s had to resort to promising $2.99 a gallon gas with the purchase of a new vehicle. As these dark clouds get darker and larger over Detroit, I have to wonder how much longer the Big Three automakers can sustain their financial commitments to NASCAR.
Chevrolet has already announced that it is scaling back on its 12 track sponsorships. Could a reduction in funding for teams be next? When the clouds over the industry are this big, no area is off limits to potential belt-tightening.
Pretend for a minute that Chevrolet decided to pare back its commitment to racing teams. Which teams do you think would take the biggest hit? Not Hendrick. It’s the dominant team on the Chevy totem poll. Hopefully, Tony Stewart’s new team has a financial commitment from GM written in stone.
One has to wonder how much actual car sales are generated by the auto manufacturers’ involvement with NASCAR. How can the Car of Tomorrow, which outwardly doesn’t have much more in common with the production vehicles than the decals for the grilles and lights, help the automakers sell vehicles? Peter De Lorenzo, a consultant for the auto industry, recently commented in USA Today that promoting something so unrelated to the actual products GM sells doesn’t make sense. Sales of Chevrolet’s Impala are down 53 percent in June 2008 when compared to the same month for 2007. Frankly, I’d like to see production versions of the Impala, Fusion, Charger and Camry that had elements of the Sprint Cup car incorporated into their designs.
I hope it never comes to the point where the American car companies have to leave the sport. But don’t be surprised if at some point the economic realities result in smaller financial commitments to the race teams.
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