In 2013, a new Sprint Cup Series car is expected to roll out, integrating what they’ve learned from the current car and the new Nationwide Series car.
Speed TV wrote today that there are talks between NASCAR and the manufactures to bring the pony cars from the Nationwide Series to the Cup Series with the new car. Ford will most likely run the Mustang while Chevrolet would run the Camero, Toyota would run the Camry and Dodge wound run the Challenge.
“The dealers are really excited about the Challenger running in NASCAR because it’s something that (Dodge) sells,” said NASCAR team owner Roger Penske as according to the article. “These are high gross margin vehicles that they love to sell. When you start to look at Camaro and Mustang and Challenger, these are icons in the business.”
“We like to see our iconic brand in all forms of motorsports,” Jamie Allison, director of Ford North American Motorsports. ” … Any further consideration of the Mustang would have to be complemented and linked to more brand identity to the car that’s raced. It can’t just be the current car of tomorrow. It has to be a progression beyond what’s in Nationwide.”
“Chevrolet, in any series that we race in, we’re looking for three things,” said Jim Campbell, Chevrolet’s general manager. “First, we want to see technologies in the race cars that are applicable to what we do on the production side without driving a tremendous amount of cost. Secondly, we’re (wanting) race series to use biofuels, because that’s what we need to do going forward. Many of our (production) cars are ethanol-capable. And third, we want to see the cars that we race look like the cars that we sell, as close as we can.”
The new Cup Car in 2013 is suppose to take the idea from the Nationwide car in having the frontends look like a real car, though have some structure differences to increase safety and competition.
On the surface, this would look to be a good idea as it’d bring the idea of brand identity back to the series. You may pull some of the old school fans back into the sport as that is something that they’ve complained has been missing. It could also, as Roger Penske states, create the manufacture rivalery of back in the day and bring more discussions forward.
Though on the contrary, this could also be a negative as once again, you’d be bringing the Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series to an equal level. The idea of the pony cars for the Nationwide Series cars was to set the Nationwide Series as something different than the Sprint Cup. However with using the same brands and look, aren’t we just staying at the point that we’re at now?
