GM facing that big next step....are NASCAR's racers braced for the fallout?

   By Mike Mulhern
   mikemulhern.net

   DOVER, Del.
   Monday June 1st is the red-letter day at General Motors….or 'Government Motors' as some wags are now calling GM.
   What will happen next?
   And how much will the answer to that question affect NASCAR racing?
   NASCAR and Detroit have been intertwined for decades, going back to the 1950s.
   Is that tight relationship about to change, and if so, how, when GM, as expected, goes into bankruptcy Monday?
   Does NASCAR need Detroit?
   Does Detroit need NASCAR?
   Each Detroit car maker puts about $100 million or so each year into supporting its various NASCAR teams. In the big picture of American marketing/advertising, NASCAR provides really, really good bang for Detroit's bucks.
   Or so far it has.
   But now….
   With the improvement in domestic car-quality, do Americans need to buy a new car every three years? Right now five-year-old cars are generally in excellent shape.
   So Detroit may have to rethink and change how it sells cars.
   And President Obama might well have a big role in how much Detroit invests in NASCAR marketing – and how it invests.
   After all, if NASCAR keeps racing big cars and big trucks with big gas-guzzling engines, and if Detroit suddenly is trying to market and sell more fuel efficient vehicles….
   So NASCAR, it would seem, needs to figure out how to get on board this train.
   But how?
   And even with some options, as reluctant as NASCAR officials have been the past two years to face up to some of the big issues that have apparently led to significantly lower TV ratings and smaller crowds, it doesn't look like it's going to be easy to turn this ship around.
  
  

  
The Detroit-racing connection goes back more than 100 years. This is Ford's 1901 stock car racer, with Edsel Ford (L) and Dale Jarrett standing behind it (Photo: Ford)
  
  
Last week's NASCAR meeting with teams at the Concord R&D center is now looking like more than just tacit concession that there is a bigger issue here than just pumping up crowds and TV numbers.
   Does NASCAR have to have a Detroit connection?
   Does NASCAR have to reassess its connections with its fans, and with those it would like to have as new fans?
   Is NASCAR's Truck series even viable anymore as a legitimate Detroit marketing tool? Yes, the entertainment is great, some of the best in this sport. But is it just for the entertainment, or is it supposed to be part of a 'tough-guy' marketing campaign?
   Even when the season started four months ago there were serious questions about the future of the Truck series.
     

   
Is it time for NASCAR to start thinking 'Plug and Play'? (Photo: Ford)
   
   

   NASCAR has been so good at selling just about anything and everything, from Cheerios to Tide to M&Ms to big Cat equipment, and in promoting things from the U.S. Army, the Air Force, to Autism support.
   But just what is the relationship between Detroit and NASCAR at the moment…and how might that be about to change?
   Well, maybe the question is what will happen to the car industry itself in the coming years…and of course NASCAR in turn:
   Will Americans have to give up their long love affair with cars, especially shiny new and powerful machines, and become satisfied with smaller, more prosaic and more fuel efficient models? (But what is the real carbon-footprint comparison between a standard car engine and a hybrid-battery-powered car engine, when battery-disposal itself is taken into account?)
   Will car sales rebound big when the economy turns around? And how big?
   Can NASCAR play a role in that?
   How many Detroit parts suppliers may go under in the coming weeks? GM and Chrysler are more than just two companies; they're part of a huge matrix of parts suppliers – a very big part.
   One man with 30 years in the car business says if you want to buy a car, you'd better buy one soon, because he says next year cars will be in very short supply, if these multi-faceted parts suppliers – Visteon, for one clear example – start falling overboard. The possible ripple effect is scary. Some predictions are that more than one million jobs in the automotive sector could be lost by the end of this year.
   And NASCAR can't afford to stand idly by.
   Certainly the stands at Michigan International Speedway for the June 14th Michigan 400 could be a key indicator of just what's going on in that state.
  
  

  
NASCAR has been helping Detroit sell automobiles since 1949, since that very first race at Charlotte (Photo: RacingOne/Getty Images for NASCAR)
  
  

Well, here's one suggestion – President Obama could do just what the German government just did, by offering a $3,250 tax incentive for anyone buying a new fuel efficient car. That program is expected to increase car sales over there by as much as 600,000.
   Would you go out and buy a new car if Obama wrote you a check for $3,250?
   If so, just what car would you buy?

   And then there are the anti-greens. And maybe all this ecology, save-the-earth stuff is just so much bull.
   Yes, a recent MIT study says that things are actually getting warmer faster than we all figured just a couple years ago. But the earth has been warming up, really, the last 16,000 years. And 40 million years ago, during the Eocene epoch, Siberia and northern Canada were 65 degrees, and there were no ice caps, and the sea level was much higher.
    So maybe the 'anti-greens' --- the tongue-in-cheek 'movement' that sees humor in the whole green thing -- have a point.
    But then maybe not.
   And maybe NASCAR should follow that Wall Street adage 'Don't fight the market.'
   

   

   
One form of NASCAR Green. Does NASCAR need more? (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)