NASCAR is nothing more than a glorified joke to me, however this might make me take pause. NASCAR is considering a series using smaller coupes.

I would hope this would be the successor to the old Trans Am series, though seeing NASCAR likes to make everything even and keep the "Stock" out of Stock Car Racing in order to keep attention on the drivers and not the cars or the manufacturers (though it doesn't extend to the manufacturers money), I'm still cautious on how things would turn out.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nascar/news;...yhoo&type=lgns

 

It would be nice to see that lineup of cars running in NASCAR.

 

Definitely way kewl Another stage on which the horsepower/manufacturer wars can be staged!! A great way to bring a whole whack of new fans back into the fold!
The next step has gotta be to get these cars into a series that's run on road courses so we can watch the Camaro kick everybody's butt! This is all a Trans-Am deja vu for me! Who will be the next reincarnation of Mark Donahue, George Follmer, Jerry Titus and Parnelli Jones?!?
Don't ask how much I'm looking forward to this!! ... and it's only gonna get better!
Thanks for the info!!

Best regardSS,

Elie

 

Nextel Cup is moving to their new, slower, "car of tomorrow" next year, so I would consider this article simply wild speculation at this point. And Guy, I'm surprised someone as inside the muscle car business wouldn't like NASCAR. It's done alot IMO to keep completely impractical sports cars (such as the Camaro) around to this day. It was "stock" auto racing that brought it about in the first place.

Besides, have you been to a cup race? Not only is it a horsepower junkies dream, but where else do 200,000 people gather just to get f*cked up and enjoy fast cars?

If your beef is more towards the business side of things, though, I do understand where you're coming from.

 

Now would those still be sheet metal clad, tube steel chassis, with decals for headlights... or would "could" NASCAR survive with a series of vehicles more like their street counterparts that wouldn't be so closely matched so that no brand has an advantage..... Doubt it NASCAR will still be the WWF of autoracing. Although it would be cool to have Mustang, Camaro, Challenger and maybe the GTO compete.

 

The Camaro isn't a NASCAR racer and to my knowledge never was. IROC series yes Winston Cup no. maybe you meant Monte Carlo. And the Camaro started out as a pony car competitor from Chevy against the Mustang. They raced in the Trans Am racing of the late 60's. They did more than turn left....

 

It's says fully integrated to the car of tomorrow, which wont happen until 09'. The car of tomorrow makes it's debut 1 year from this weekend at Bristol, and will be run in 16 races in 07.

I think that would be one hell of a way to get more fans to the Busch series....make it different than the cup series.

 

I think nascar is still looking for a way to get ALL the japanese brands involved. Then it will be inascar (international assoc stock car racing) The japanese brands want to be perceived as american. I think this season will be my last watching nascar. I wont be able to take the waltrips and all their toyota talk next year.

 

Where do people go to enjoy fast cars?

Drag Racing, SCCA racing, Australia's V8 Supercar racing, even Formula 1 racing. In those races, there is actual competition between different machines an at least an association with the car you'd actually buy.

Australia's Supercar races use actual race prepared stock cars (the stuff NASCAR forgot how to do) and typically run a race course, not a oval loop. Ditto SCCA races. Formula 1 racers at least have engines built buy car companies, and drag racing at least uses production engines or production cars (save dragsters). Even drifting is more entertaining to me.

NASCAR is all about short pitstops and personalities, NOT about cars. Good drama outsells good racing. At least IROC was straightforward about what it was, and you could settle down and see who was the best driver in identically prepared same model cars.


But to answer why I don't like NASCAR:

1. NASCAR doesn't have anything to do with muscle cars.

2. NASCAR engines suck (restrictor plates because the cars are too fast?! WTF!.....stock GTOs put out NASCAR horsepower nowadays! )

3. NASCAR car bodies have nothing to do with car bodies. Whenever any car showed a slight advantage over the last 20 years, NASCAR has hammered it down instead of other competitors adopting or coming up with something better.

4. NASCAR has done absolutely positively squat to keep Camaro alive, let alone anything else (ever hear of the Thunderbird? How about the Lumina? Magnum coupe? Advenger? Taurus? Charger coupe? Grand Prix coupe? Regal?......)

5. NASCAR is nothing but a major advertising machine.

6. The only thing entertaining about NASCAR is listening to people who still believe it has anything to do with stock cars.

6. Guzzling beer & watching pretty colors with massive advertizing stickers going around in circles for a few hours make-believing they are real cars doesn't intrest me unless:

a) They actually are real cars
b) They at least resemble real cars
c) They crash.
d) They have 4 legs each, and I can bet on it at the window.


To me, NASCAR hasn't been worthwhile since the Lumina/Thunderbird rivialry of the late 1980s, let alone the Monte Carlo/Thunderbird/Grand Prix of the early 80s.

Sure, NASCAR popular with alot of people. But then again, so are "Boy Bands" and Brittney Spears. That doesn't mean they produce real music.

Ditto NASCAR.

 

I am a Nascar fan, but I hope that this rumor would have some truth behind it. I'd further hope that having these smaller cars also meant keeping the actual body shapes of the cars, factory blocks perhaps as well. Seeing a 427 Camaro, and a Hemi Challenger racing around a road course banging fenders and a Stang go driving into the wall would be entertaining as hell. Hot Rod Magazines suggesting a few months back was just like that, let any midsized car compete, has to have a factory produced block and retain the stock body shape and etc.

This car of the future means crap to me and I don't think its the way to go. Nascar would sell with real cars on the track not just with personalities. There were personalities in the 60's, 70's and 80's with real bodied cars.... they'd still turn a profit so I do not get their "business" case to make everything even. I wonder if by 2020 they will even use the god forsaken fuel injection?! maybe even take the restrictor plates off the cars too... when the pace car at daytona has 505hp and could possibly outrun a field of race prep'd "stock" cars... thats sort of sad.

 

Ever notice a NASCAR race looks the same as flushing a bunch of skittles down a toilet? Pretty colors that go fast, turn left, repeat.

 

With the lack of sucess of an American road racing circuit like CART, continuous anemic fan and TV coverage of ALMS and Grand Am its amazing someone proclaimed to have good sense would badmouth NASCAR from sticking to racecars and ovals.

When CART proves to make a dollar, people give a crap about non-Indy 500 IndyCar Series races, an average someone can tell you what day of the week the usual Rolex Grand Am race takes place, or NHRA see-saws the NFL as America's top sport then can NASCAR stop making its decisions as it has been for the last 50+ years.

It works people.

Here, we have a forum based on a car that we think will work to replace something that failed as we love it. But we take time out of our figuring to chuckle about the dumb sides of the NASCAR sanctioning body and its decisions.

NASCAR has become the new Wal-Mart among 100% American business' to be scarred by it's own people.

 

I couldn't agree with you more, those were the days.

 

I can't understand why GM, Ford, and Chrysler continue to dump million of dollars into NASCAR, which is nothing more than a big money pit for them. The cars are completely and totally unrelated to the production models that share their names. No technology is carried over (as opposed to Formula 1, where certain car companies use the technology they have in the race cars in their street vehicles). The closest a Monte Carlo gets to NASCAR is a spoiler and some decals. Then there's the advertising costs.

NASCAR is a huge waste of time and money for the Big Three. It might have worked when NASCAR was still true to it's roots, but times have changed.

Gimme a ticket to an SCCA event any day.

 

I would like to see NASCAR do something like this. As it stands, except for some of the motor tech, I don't really have much interest at all in NASCAR.


On a completely unrelated note to NASCAR, I noticed the guy who wrote that article seems to the Camaro concept is retro, so I know there are at least a few journalists out there that feel that way too.