Foreign invasion?

CHARLOTTE – Toyota is coming, Toyota is coming.

So what?

Monday's announcement that Toyota will finally fulfill its long-rumored entry as a competing manufacturer in both Nextel Cup and Busch Series competition is much ado about nothing.

Sure, there are purists and old-time fans who would love to take NASCAR chairman Brian France out to the woodshed, saying along the way: "How dare you bring in a non-American car manufacturer? It's sacrilege, and yet another nail in the coffin of GM, Ford and Dodge."

"It's un-American," the red-necked, white sock-wearing and Blue Ribbon-beer loving crowd will say. They're also part of the same group that probably believes NASCAR should not be running races in Mexico or, someday soon, in Canada.

If this was the old USA, circa 1986, it would be more understandable that Japanese automakers would create such a stir. But this is 20 years later, the 21st century, and America is more culturally and ethnically diverse than ever.

So what if Toyota is headquartered in Japan? Tell the nearly 400,000 employees (direct and indirect) the company has across the U.S. that it's a Japanese-only firm, or that it only produces cars in the Land of the Rising Sun rather than in places like Erlanger and Georgetown, Ky.; Princeton, Ind.; Fremont, Calif.; St. Louis and Troy, Mo.; Huntsville, Ala.; San Antonio; and Buffalo, W. Va.

Those sure sound an awful lot like American towns to me. And unless I miss my bet, I'm guessing that almost all of those employees in those towns are red-blooded Americans just like you and me.

There's more.

• Of the roughly two million Toyota cars and trucks sold in the U.S. in 2004, 1.15 million of them were built right here on American soil.

• Toyota pumped nearly $25 billion – yes, $25 billion – into the U.S. economy in 2004 with purchases of American auto parts, materials and other goods and services.

As much as some people may not like it, the America of 20 years ago is gone. We're no longer semi-isolationist. Rather, we're part of an ever-growing and thriving global economy that is blurring the lines of what is made where or who works for whom.

While it's understandable that many might lament that the global economy and outsourcing sometimes costs jobs here in the U.S., Toyota coming into NASCAR isn't about politics – it's about competition and sport.

(Incidentally, when I visited the Toyota Research and Development Center in High Point, N.C. a couple of years ago, I came away quite impressed with the facility and the plans the company had for the future – and I also noticed that an overwhelming majority of the employees I saw that day were American.)

Sure, some may disagree. But when Dodge came back into NASCAR nearly five years ago, there was no backlash over the fact that parent company Daimler-Chrysler is based in Germany. Dodge is based in Auburn Hills, Mich., the purists adamantly said, ignoring that Daimler-Chrysler's top executives spoke with decidedly European accents.

But it's common to see American NASCAR fans driving to the races in Toyotas sporting stickers of Dale Earnhardt Jr., Tony Stewart, Jeff Gordon, Rusty Wallace and the like – and don't forget the countless other Japanese-brand vehicles such as Nissan and Honda in race track parking lots from Talladega to Fontana.

I've owned only four brands of cars in my life, and they've all given me years of good service and reliability: Dodge, Chevrolet, Buick and Toyota. They were all fairly well-made and performed almost identically to the other. So what if one was built in Canada (Dodge Intrepid), or another in Japan (Toyota Supra), while the others were built in the U.S.?

These are cars, folks, and this is the reality of business and sport in the U.S.

Toyota is coming into the top two levels of NASCAR because it feels it can be competitive on the race track, sell cars in dealership showrooms, make money and show a different kind of ingenuity against its American counterparts.

That's not any different from the reasons Ford, Dodge and Chevy are in NASCAR.

Toyota's roots may be in Japan, but the ingenuity will come from American drivers, American-owned teams, American crew members and American engineers.

You can't get much more American than that. It almost makes me want to go out and buy some apple pie and vanilla ice cream to go along with my sushi.