Foreign Concept

All-American sport? You bet. As red, white and blue as it gets. Chevrolets, Fords, Pontiacs and Dodges. They're all made by multinational corporate entities nowadays. A good many of them assembled in Canada or Mexico, but they're American brand names just the same.

NASCAR Winston Cup Series rules have always stipulated that its racing machinery is to be based on "American-made, steel-bodied sedans" in keeping with the vision of its founder, William H.G. France, who saw the appeal of a racing series based on automobiles with which spectators could identify. It's pretty much what NASCAR racing is all about and always has been, right? Well, yeah, mostly.

In 1954 at Linden (New Jersey) Airport, France's stock car series held its inagural race on a road-racing layout. The race was won by a Jaguar, so the British automaker, now owned by Ford Motor Co., is represented in the Winston Cup manufacturer victories list.

American rock 'n' roll and the U.S. racing classic, the Indianapolis 500, had to contend with "British invasions" in the early '60s.

Present-day NASCAR racing, at least in one of its divisions, is not quite all-American, either. Toyota's Celica has been mixing it up with Pontiac Sunfires and Mercury Cougars in Goody's Dash Series competition for the past few seasons.

Robert Huffman scored a breakthrough win for Toyota on June 16 at Kentucky Speedway, and has added to his total with a couple more victories since then. However, Huffman's win at Kentucky--the 32nd of his Dash Series career--was hardly the first for a Japanese automaker in recent NASCAR competition. Nissan's Datsun brand not only competed and won, it dominated the Dash Series in the late '70s and early '80s. Datsun has 39 race victories, and its drivers won three championships.

Is NASCAR racing ripe for a Japanese brand--or perhaps a European one--to crash the Winston Cup party in the coming years?

Feels So Right

Given the red-hot nature of the sport, with its robust attendance and television ratings figures, its enormous corporate sponsorship involvement and the famous brand-name loyalty of its fans, it might seem that Winston Cup racing would be the ideal activity for any foreign automaker that could afford to become involved. The reality is, it's a little more complicated than that.

"If today somebody waved a magic wand and said, ‘We want you in Winston Cup in a year. Can you make it?' We'd have to say, ‘No. Can't do it,'" says Les Unger, Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. spokesman. "We flat don't have the resources."

Toyota, a conservative company in most respects, is anything but conservative in its motorsports appetite. Its California-based Toyota Racing Development (TRD USA) supplies engines for Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) competition. An effort based in Europe will begin competition in Formula One this year, and the brand will enter Indy Racing League competition, with an eye on an Indy 500 victory, in 2003.

In addition to its NASCAR effort in the Dash Series, the company is also the engine supplier and title sponsor of the CART-owned developmental Toyota Atlantic Series, and remains active in off-road truck racing. Toyota provides assistance to grass roots-level competitors in Sports Car Club of America events and in previous years has mounted major factory-backed efforts in sports car racing in America and at the famous 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance event. "If we get to a point where NASCAR feels it would be beneficial (for Toyota to participate in Winston Cup), and we feel it would be beneficial, we might have to reallocate some resources," Unger says.

One Japanese company that apparently is not at all interested in Winston Cup is Honda. Also like Toyota, Honda is a CART engine manufacturer and also has a Formula One pedigree. Like Toyota, it is a big player in the U.S. automobile market.

However, technological advancement is Honda's priority. Compared to NASCAR's 5.7-liter pushrod V-8s with Holley four-barrel carburetors, Honda's Indy Racing engines are high-tech.

"NASCAR racing, with its extreme limits on technology, doesn't allow us to explore that at all," says Honda racing publicist Dan Layton.

Another unlikely candidate is Nissan, which continues to compete as an engine supplier in the Indy Racing League with its Infiniti brand. A Nissan spokesperson said: "While we admire NASCAR's success, at this time Nissan has no plans to participate in NASCAR or any of its affiliated series."

Subcompact Success

The Dash Series has been a part of February Speedweeks at Daytona International Speedway since the series' inception in 1975, when the cars were called "Baby Grands"--scaled-down versions of Grand National stock cars.

The series' origin is an example of how NASCAR has offered the racing consumer spinoff series from time to time, to keep in step with popular trends in production automobiles--a Convertible Division in the '50s; the Grand American Division in the late '60s featuring "pony cars" such as the Mustang, Camaro, Cougar, etc.; and, most recently, the Craftsman Truck Series, established in 1995 in response to the immense popularity of pickups.

"Baby Grands" came along in the years following America's first energy crisis of the early and mid-'70s. As fuel economy became more important, small cars--once considered synonymous with "foreign cars"--became a more common part of the American landscape. Mini Stock classes began to appear at some of the grass roots tracks where NASCAR stars had begun their careers, and NASCAR added a regional series for four-cylinder, subcompact cars.

From the beginning, non-traditional brands have been a part of the series. Dean Combs has been a part of the series, too, dating back to the year before NASCAR launched it.

Combs, who turns 50 in February, was champion of the new series in its first three years, and added two more titles in 1980 and 1981. He won 60 races (still tops on the list), and he won his last two titles racing Datsuns.

In the early years, Combs says an organization called North State Mini-Stock mixed with the Baby Grands. "I know they had a Saab and a Volkswagen or two," Combs says. The Beetles, he says, "ran really good." Combs also remembers the late Davey Allison competing in Dash Series events in a Toyota Celica.

Over the years, the series appeared at various major speedways. In the '90s, except for the annual race at Daytona, it was relegated to small tracks, but it retained the support of its title sponsor, Goody's Headache Powders. A few years ago NASCAR rewarded the sponsor's commitment by taking steps to upgrade the Dash Series.

The series began to take on a new luster when it returned to Winston Cup venues such as Lowe's (formerly Charlotte) Motor Speedway, Darlington Raceway and other major tracks, including the new Kentucky track where Huffman scored Toyota's landmark NASCAR victory June 16.

Not only did NASCAR officials make the series more lucrative to a manufacturer such as Toyota, they also worked with Toyota to devise a compromise that would permit Toyota's overhead-cam, multi-valve V-6 to compete with the inline four-cylinder engines and pushrod V-6s that powered American brand Dash Series cars.

TRD USA worked to develop a NASCAR-approved engine, adapting a carburetor to replace the electronic fuel injection of the production engine.

Going Truckin'?

One obvious path leading from the regional Dash Series to Winston Cup would be the Craftsman Truck Series. With its V-8-powered Tundra, Toyota is a full-fledged competitor in the full-size pickup marketplace, going up against the Dodge Ram, Chevy Silverado, GMC Sierra and Ford F-150. All but the Sierra are staple performers in the Truck Series. Dodge's return to Winston Cup in 2001 followed an established factory participation effort with the Ram pickup in Truck Series racing.

Unger says there have been "very, very general discussions" regarding the possibility of the Tundra gaining approval for NASCAR competition. "It's obviously something we would look at jointly with NASCAR," he says. "It would happen only if we continue to have success in Dash. That's the first if, which means we can't take our eye off that ball. Secondly, we would have to be able to reallocate some of our resources. Thirdly, it would have to make sense from a NASCAR-Toyota standpoint."

Toyota's mid-size Tacoma pickup is an approved model for competition in the ARCA truck racing series sponsored by Lincoln Welders. There is no factory participation by TRD USA, but privateer competitors are helping spread the Toyota name into another arena of American racing.

Challengers Welcomed

Just as American car companies have made bold attempts to compete in international racing from time to time, representatives of the traditional U.S. brands have positive comments about expanded participation in U.S. racing by other manufacturers.

"We would welcome any other manufacturer, European, Asian or what have you," says Pontiac's Tony Sapienza. "Our take is that competition is great. We feel that we have great products, and that competition only improves the sport, both for the fans and for us. We're ready to take anyone who's interested in coming into the ring."

Chevrolet NASCAR program manager Doug Duchardt says Chevy has no trepidation about going up against any other manufacturer. He points out that General Motors' Indy Racing engine, a Chevrolet, will go up against the Infiniti this year and the Toyota engine in 2003.

Everybody--even Honda--agrees that there are benefits to be derived from a manufacturer's participation in a highly popular auto racing series.

"Consumers like to be associated with a winner," says Terry Dolan, Monte Carlo brand manager. "Even those who are not passionate about racing ... still look at the car being involved in motorsports and because the car is successful in racing, they have the perception that our car is better on the street--dependability, durability, reliability, performance, and safety."

Breaking Barriers

In the ever-changing global economy, is a company such as Toyota truly deserving of the label "foreign?"

"With (Daimler-Benz AG's) purchase of Chrysler, I guess you could say we're now as American as Chrysler," Unger says. "The ownership of our company is Japanese; the ownership of Chrysler is German."

America now rivals Japan as Toyota's No. 1 market in the world. The company builds vehicles and components in Kentucky (Camry), Indiana (Tundra), West Virginia (engines) and California (a joint venture with GM at the plant where Tacoma pickup trucks are produced). Also, there's a Canadian operation (Corollas and Solaras are built in Ontario).

Still, the Jaguar victory notwithstanding, Layton notes that an Asian or European brand would have to knock down a barrier if it were to venture into Winston Cup.

"The first time we appeared at Indy, in '94 and '95, Honda was booed by some elements in the crowd," Layton says. "It was scattered and not representative of the whole, but there were people who were not happy that we were invading ‘their' turf."

Unger suggests the audience might be a little more receptive at some point, given the increasing number of Toyotas being built and sold in America and driven by fans, many of whom are likely to be among the hundreds of thousands of Winston Cup fans.

"I think it's not out of the realm of possibility," he says. Jim Hunter, vice president of communications for NASCAR, says that given the global nature of the automobile business, the sanctioning body would explore the possibility of various forms of international competition. Fans, however, just shouldn't look for anything to happen soon in NASCAR's premier Winston Cup Series.

"I think we would look at where it fit--number one, from a competition standpoint, and number two, from a marketing standpoint," Hunter says. "I've learned to never say never. But I don't really see that happening--in the short term (next five years), for sure--simply because NASCAR certainly is not going to take the chance of upsetting the balance that we have today in Winston Cup competition."