
by Sam Abuelsamid
Last week in The Wall Street Journal, writer Ben Austen publised an article in which he ruminates on why no one appears to be racing the Detroit Three's neo-muscle offerings - the Ford Mustang, Chevrolet Camaro and Dodge Challenger. That the piece succeeds overwhelmingly at, however, is highlighting the myopia of America's mainstream press when it comes to motorsports. Many people in media seem to be completely unaware that there are forms of automotive competition other than NASCAR, because the cars the WSJ article focuses on most assuredly are involved in active competition.
NASCAR may be the big dog in terms of the number of races, sponsor participation, and even people at the track. But by no means is anything about modern stock car racing in any way relevant. A more important question might be why automakers continue pour hundreds of millions of dollars into NASCAR every year, but we'll leave that for another day.
All three of the current crop of pony cars compete in a wide variety of racing, from drags to ovals and road courses. Ford in particular has offered turnkey Mustang race cars for several years, and they've been very successful in a number of classes, including the NASCAR-owned Grand-Am series. In fact, fans watching the 2010 Grand-Am Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge will see Mustangs, Camaros, and at least one Dodge Challenger slugging it out on a regular basis.
Pratt & Miller racing currently runs a program in which it converts Grand-Am Pontiac GXP.Rs to Camaro bodies. Dodge Challengers can be found at many drag strips (along with innumerable Mustangs and Camaros). And let's not forget that NASCAR is running Challenger- and Mustang-branded stockers in a few Nationwide Series races this year as part of its own "Car of Tomorrow" program.
Admittedly, it would be nice to see a revival on the level of the old Trans Am series, with all three of these machines running in force, but journalists like Mr. Austen would do well to remove the NASCAR blinders before summarily dismissing the modern pony cars as being absent from today's racing scene. It's just not so.
6 comments:
Fresh car..like proton emas
yes both can race with each other ,it is only the romour.
Thanks
auto parts accessories
'very interesting & informative post'
this is a really nice post! good job! it is very interesting.
Hey there,
We have been reading the articles on your website http://online-car-blogs.blogspot.com/ and are very impressed with the quality of your information.
We have a team of copywriters who specialize in writing articles on various topics and would like to write an original article for you to use on your website – this article will not be used anywhere else on the Internet.
In exchange all we ask is that we can have one or two links within the body of the article back to one of our sites. You can view a sample of the quality of our articles at http://blog.1car1.com.au/
If you are interested in having us write an article for your website please just let me know and we would be more than happy to have one written for you within two weeks.
Kind regards,
Papia
I saved about $214 on my Sebring's insurance, just by shopping around online for car insurance. Try it - http://www.mycarinsurancerates.com
i like the color of this car....beautiful!
Lexus Atlanta
Post a Comment