With new Nationwide car, looks can be refreshing

If looks count for anything, NASCAR got this one right.

With the official unveiling of the four new Nationwide Series chassis Saturday morning at Talladega Superspeedway, NASCAR may have taken a big step in solving what many fans feel is a major identity crisis: what happened to being able to tell the cars apart from your seat in the grandstands?

And how interesting that the one series that can't be easily pigeon-holed—is this a driver development series, as a Saturday test session for Cup competitors, or a way for NASCAR to make international inroads?—will have race cars that actually share noticeable design characteristics with their on-street counterparts?

The Dodge Challenger actually looks like a Challenger from the front. The Toyota Camry looks like a Camry. The same with the Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Impala. And you can't imagine how much happier that makes the manufacturers who, in this economic climate, are needing all the help they can get.

The cars certainly look great. There's a character, an individuality there that's been missing, perhaps since the Thunderbirds and Monte Carlos were phased out. Now, Monday's test session here at Talladega will go a long way in knowing if they'll race great.

"The look is definitely unique," Dodge Motorsports Engineering manger Howard Comstock said. "Dodge worked with NASCAR and wanted brand identity for these cars. We were the first manufacturer to make a decision on the car and we felt like the Challenger would be the right fit. There certainly is brand identity to it. I think we have done a nice job in bringing to NASCAR the uniqueness of the Dodge Challenger."

Toyota Racing Development's president and general manager, Lee White, certainly agrees.

"I think the car has great potential and certainly we're very excited because it's given us an opportunity with a slightly longer front end and a much more production-looking front end, for us to get more of our character and our corporate identity into the car," White said. "We love that, our management loves that and that's why we're here."

NASCAR's research and development team deserves a huge amount of credit for the quantum leaps in safety made during the design of the new car. But in many fans' eyes, aesthetics took a backseat to functionality when the new chassis made its Sprint Cup debut. For General Motors' Nationwide Series program manager Shane Martin, the idea of the manufacturer and NASCAR working in tandem to design a new car that meets stringent safety guidelines and still has identifiable characteristics was refreshing, to say the least.

"We were given strict parameters for the aero targets for all four manufacturers and they gave us a little more window to work with than in the Cup cars does for brand identity," Martin said. "Our marketing and branding departments chose the Impala and we were given the Impala design to meet in the parameters and we worked very hard. There was a lot of wind-tunnel testing, numerous that we went through to get this car to be close with all the other cars. I think the difference between all four is I think three horsepower of drag and just a few pounds of downforce. So, we are in a very tight window."

That, according to White, may be the final determination if this bold new direction is ultimately successful.

"We've been to the wind tunnel three or four times with the aero matching and everything that goes on," White said. "Of course with the different front-end treatments of the two new pony cars that are coming into the series, that created quite a challenge matching everything so that the on-track product will be close and good competition. It took a lot of extra work to get that right and of course testing here Monday or Tuesday, whatever the rain allows, will hopefully give us some idea of how successful we all were, particularly in the ability to draft and run in a pack."

After seeing what can be done, it begs the question: How long before we see similar design differences to the "one-size-fits-all" look of NASCAR's premier series? For many, it can't come soon enough.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.