Toyota to race NASCAR's top series
Monday should mark the next step in
Toyota's campaign to become an American car company, with the automaker expected to announce its much-anticipated debut
in NASCAR's Nextel Cup and Busch stock car series.In just three years in NASCAR's Craftsman Truck series, Toyota has become a championship contender, and there is no reason to believe that Toyota will find it any more difficult to compete with Ford, Chevrolet and Dodge in the upper levels of stock car racing.
It has been widely speculated that Toyota's withdrawal from the Indy Racing League was partly fueled by a desire to focus on its NASCAR program. The next question - will Honda be far behind?
The last time a foreign car won a NASCAR race was in 1954. (It was a Jaguar!)
[Thanks for the tip, dinges!]
_opt_thumbnail.jpg)
_thumbnail.jpg "2011 Audi A8: Live from Miami")
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Rob C 10:59AM (2/07/2006)
It is truly a sad day when a foreign auto maker enters what was a great sport. It's bad enough they all have the same body , not showroom size and shape, but to allow a non American vehicle in American racing is just wrong. Granted they are assembled here, but the corporate dollars don't stay here! It seams like there is no loyalty left here. With all my vehicles, American made, I can truly say Im proud to be an AMERICAN!!
Reply
Robert White 1:03PM (2/12/2006)
Toyota has added over 300,000 jobs to the United States, they are as American as the big 3 Ford,Chevy,and Dodge. All the big 3 are doing is getting rid of our jobs over seas. I think Toyota is the best built american car on the road.
Reply
Jim Staudt 2:09PM (2/25/2006)
I began losing interest in NASCAR in the 80's when they began dropping traditional V8 drive trains into those horrible front-wheel-drive bodies and continuing to pretend they were "stock" cars. I still long for the days of TRUE stock car racing, when you could go into the showroom on Monday morning and buy or order the exact same automobile you watched race to victory on Sunday. NASCAR has become nothing more than a whore for the money, but at least until now it has remained an American sport. Toyota has already brainwashed the American public into thinking they are the only manufacturer capable of providing the family car or mini-van, and you watch, with an unlimited supply of funds (thanks to that same brainwashed group of lemmings who buy their cars) they will do the same to NASCAR fans. Soon they will soon have a few of the good-ole-boys from my neck of the woods (Kannapolis North Carolina) proudly flying their rebel flags on Camrys and Siennas. How long before they'll be forcing NASCAR to run hybrids? What a hoot THAT would be, to force the drivers to stop every 50 miles to plug in the motor! I shudder to think of Dale Jr., Tony Stewart or Jeff Gordon on the same race track as one of those ugly Prius or boring Camry models. Shame on you, NASCAR. You have now sold out completely. Curtis Turner, Fireball Roberts, Lee Roy Yarbrough, Dale Sr., et al...please stop turning in your graves, it's causing a minor earthquake here in the heart of NASCAR heaven.
Reply
Jim Staudt 5:13PM (2/25/2006)
Hey, #24 (remark about trailer park trash)...you're here, aren't you?
Reply
Jaimie B 8:22PM (1/20/2006)
Toyota will have a hard time dominating NASCAR. It will take years upon years of experience building low-tech unreliable engines to excel in this league. They might seek advice from the experts of making engines designed around prehistoric technology (Ford/Chevy) on how this is done.
Reply
booger 9:05PM (1/20/2006)
your an idiot Jaimie
Reply
laserwizard 9:33PM (1/20/2006)
No need for Japanese trash being in NASCAR. However, it should be easy for Toyotas to show their sponsorship - unlike production Toyotas, NASCAR Toyotas won't have to paint over their beer can printing.
Reply
doc reed 9:35PM (1/20/2006)
Actually, Jamie is right, except maybe for the unreliable bit. As I understand it Toyota had to look and hard to find a production overhead valve engine on which to base its Nascar engine. As to being low tech, booger - when is the last time you saw a carburator on a production car? Or a virtually complete lack of electronics. Nascar has achieved parity, but has done so by mandating relics (and a policable) low technology left over from the 60's. If you think these are "stock cars" you are not paying attention.
Reply
Brian 9:38PM (1/20/2006)
It will be interesting to see if NASCAR breaks their new rules about team ownership and workmanship. Many people don't realize this, but the largest "team" in NASCAR is Toyota. They completely control the hardware aspect of the trucks, which is more like F1/CART, and not NASCAR.
This is what Yates/Roush/Woods were becoming in Nextel, but Nascar has nixed that. I'll bet that Toyota won't have any problems doing it. In 5 years there will be a 10 team Toyota team and they will dominate because Ford/Chevy will be resistricted to small 3 or 4 car teams.
Reply
The Fish 10:41PM (1/20/2006)
Whatever you say about the engine it is state of the art. They are getting an auful lot of reliable HP out of them. You don't do that with inferior equipment,parts, etc. I don't care if they are using carbs...crippled large dispacement is much better than all out 20,000rpm low dispacement engines in "stock car" racing. As soon as they start fuel injection, supercharging, variable valve timing...etc...the dispacements will drop and the RPMs will go up...bye bye in-your-pants-torque and hello ear piercing whine.
Reply
motorman 12:01AM (1/21/2006)
toyota designed a completely new pushrod carb fueled engine for NASCAR trucks several years ago and has been sucessful in winning races. they will use this engine in the busch and cup series. they also ran in the NASCAR V-6 class with carb fueled engine and won several races
Reply
doc reed 12:27AM (1/21/2006)
Brian
Toyota will not dominate NASCAR unless NASCAR wants them to, which is unlikely. Parity is the name of the game and if Toyota starts to dominate (And I agree they could), they will be stopped, probably by spoiler height, or distance from the nose the front spoiler can be, etc. Dodge started to go pretty fast when they re-entered Nascar, and that was halted quickly - I guess it wasn't their turn. I think it will be a long time before the good old boys in NASCAR will think it is Toyota's turn. Besides, they don't need to win championships to get their money's worth.
Reply
Charles 7:27AM (1/21/2006)
Knew it was coming,and a sad day it is for us Nascar old schoolers. The last vestige of purely American racing has been breached, and Nascar itself is to blame as it has become nothing more than a marketing vaccuum, sucking up corporate dollars and media coverage at every opportunity. With Toyota's bottomless pit of racing monies, they will soon not only dominate with superior equipment, but lure away the best drivers with lucrative contracts that the existing teams could never match. The Truck Series is proof of this, as Toyota seeks to dominate, not merely compete. I've stopped watching the truck races, and will stop watching Nascar the day a foreign manufacturer puts a car on the track. What's really sad is, Nascar couldn't care less. It turned it's back on its hardcore fan base who made Nascar what it is today.
Reply
Nick 8:06AM (1/21/2006)
#9- "made Nascar what it is today" ? That would be anachronistic racertainment that is bringing down Ford and GM as they try to appeal to the "NASCAR" market, when it is patenetly obvious that owning that market will not save their hides.
Reply
Chris 10:05AM (1/21/2006)
I'm pretty sure that the "Good Ol' Boy" network will stymy Toyota's efforts.
Does anyone remember the guy who tried to get his turbocharged V6 Buick qualified for Pro-Stock drag racing?
The NHRA wouldn't allow him to run in that class, in spite of the fact that his car was cloaser to the factory offerrings, and all of the other competitors were running big block rear wheel drive power trains in cars that came from the factory with front wheel drive, and four bangers. The NHRA said that the turbochargers bave the man an unfair advantage against competitors running 500 ci engines, and made him run in modified production and altered classes, where the win money didn't offset the cost of racing his car.
Somehow I think that Toyota will balk at demands that they develop a 355 ci pushrod V8 to be in alignment with the current competitors, since NASCAR will undoubtedly declare their overhead cam designs an unfair advantage.
Reply
Kevin 10:07AM (1/21/2006)
If foreign manufactured cars that are assembled in the U.S.A. are allowed in Nascar Nextel Cup Series races, the race before that race will be my last watched Nascar Nextel Cup Race. Kevin
Reply
Bill E. Bobb 10:48AM (1/21/2006)
"I wont watch NASCAR anymore if a furrin car is on the track...."
Waaah. Waaah. Waaah.
Funny how many TENS of THOUSANDS of people in Kentucky, San Antonio, Indiana, etc., apply to work for Toyota. Any of those places NASCAR country?
Reply
John 10:49AM (1/21/2006)
Wait until Honda shows up. Remember Indy in 02 where 11 of the first 14 cars to cross the finish line were HONDA Powered.
Reply
Dan B 12:19PM (1/21/2006)
Well, I guess I saw this coming. Kinda sad to see, but I suppose it's "progress". NASCAR is to blame for things getting to this point, although it didn't start with Toyota getting into truck racing. Things started to go downhill when the "stock cars" ceased to resemble stock. There isn't a car on ANY showroom floor that has anything to do with the "stock cars", save for overall shape. And since NASCAR has been modifying the rules every couple of years, foreign owned car companies were inevitable.
Reply
Kev 12:43PM (1/21/2006)
Toyota will do exactly what they have done in every racing series they have entered in the past 10 years:
They will come in, struggle, buyout the most successfull teams, win their trophies (be it Championships, Indy 500, etc.) and leave with the series on its knees. This happened with CART. This happened with IRL.
They tried this desperately with Le Mans in '98-'99. They are currently applying their "sledgehammer of cash" technique to F1, and what will they do when they do win a championship? They'll probably leave. I don't know where they'll go, but if the past has shown us anything, they collect the trophies they came to get, tout their racing accolades in Camry advertisements, and move on, leaving the series bleeding and in a horrible state.
I'm not saying as some redneck xenophobe-- I love Formula 1 more than any other series. I'm saying this as someone who has observed that Toyota has horrible ethics when it comes to motorsports involvement. Whatever series they are in, they are not in it for the 'sport;' they are truly detrimental to racing.
Reply