Dear Mr. Nasscar,
How the hell y’all doin’? I was down to the barber shop the other day when me and the boys got to talkin’ ‘bout cars an racing an stuff. Clarence sed how he’d red that NASCAR was fixin’ to change all the cars all over again. He said y’all was fixin’ to make all the cars the same, and the engines the same, and on top of that, they’s ugly. He said they’s all gonna be slower too. Then Earl piped-up and said that meant there weren’t gonna be no more good crashes no more. Why them crashes is the only reason Ida Mae goes to the races in the first place! Jake sed y’all gonna kill the sport ded.
And why in the name of Sam Hill y’all lettin’ them Toy Otas in? My granpappy didn’t fite in dubya dubya two and lose half his damn cheek bone so they could come over here an run them thangs with hour Chevy’s and Fords. He fawt for our rites. And anyway, everyone knows them farn car’s got four doors and six cylinder engines and front wheel drive. That jest ain’t gonna to cut it. We wanna watch cars built rat cheer in ‘Merica, runnin’ on ‘Merican tars, like one them Ford Fusions. You let them farn cars in and the next thing you know we’ll all be tawkin Jap’nese. Hell, we’re jest getting’ used to aabling Espan Yol. Yew thank about that some time.
And another thing, what’s with truck racin’? It’s stock CAR racin’. Trucks is how we git to the race track, not what y’all are supposed to run on the track. ‘Sides, they ain’t trucks! Ain’t none of ‘em got a rebel flag er gun rack in the back window, and y’all shore cain’t tie no dead deer ‘cross them flimsy hoods. Monster trucks – now them’s trucks! They jest pop a couple of wheelies over some of them farn cars, blow our eardrums all to Hell and we’re good. Yew ever seen it? Now that’s entertainment!
Now me and the boys got to thinking. We came up with some ideals how y’all can make everthang better. Git back to racin stock cars, not them college boy engineer cars y’all are running now. It jest ain’t the same like when I useta could go down to Bobby Ray Ford and buy me a car just like what Cale Yarborough drove. Us Ford boys can’t brag much when ain’t no difference ‘tween a Ford an a Chevy an a Dodge cept for the stickers on the front.
Sumtin else y’all can do is stop chargin us so much to see the races. It cost me and Ida Mae so much to go to the last race that I had to put off payin for her granma’s new teeth. Y’all are making all kinds of money on adds. Y’all got adds on the cars and adds on the tracks and adds on the TV races and adds all over y’alls web site. Y’all got more dam adds than even that edmunds web thing has. Peers to me with all them adds and everthing y’all sell with NASCAR stuck on it y’all could let us plain folk into the races and sell us beer for about what they charge at the tractor pulls! Jew catch my drift?
An stop changin’ all the dam rules. Ever time I think I got things figgered out y’all up and change things, even in the middle uv th’ season. Sometimes I think y’all do it just cause yew can. I don’t know how them poor drivers can keep up with it all. Us fans shore cain’t.
The main thing y’all got to fix, though, is all them dam purty boy yankees y’all are hirin to drive. Ain’t hardly no good old boys driving none of them nasscars no more. And y’all are runnin them in places with names like Poky-no and Watkins Glen, wherever that is. (One of them Watkins boys who lives out to the old Turner place is named Glen, but he ain’t never heard of that place neither.) Y’all need to Mason Dixon the dam sport fore them northern college boys rurn racin’ any more than they have, what with their ‘puters and tell ‘em a tree stuff. That ain’t right neither.
Y’all know them races got started down here with a few of our boys runnin shine. I know most them done retard, but it’s high time y’all gave them races back to us southern boys an quit actin all high-falutin, big city corporate-like like y’alls Walmart. If y’all don’t, well, forgive me for sayin’ so, but it’s bin quite sum time since we gave someone in a suit a dam good ass whoopin’.
Sincerely,
Billy Jim Blankenbaker
Amen.
My sentiments exactly! I started watching nacar in the Chevy Lumina era. That’s just before it started getting extraordinarly popular and before most races were on network tv. Then I don’t know what happened, but NASCAR just shot up in popularity, moved to network TV and became a big corporate ordeal almost overnight. I’m don’t want to sound like those emo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emo_%28slang%29) losers who only like indy bands until they get popular, my contention with it getting popular is that once it gets popular, then the corporate greed starts and the marketers work on making it appeal to everyone and not offend everyone. As a result the cars need to be made more equal so they all have an equal probability of winning, the drivers need PR folks to manage what they say on camera, and drivers get suspended from races for DUIs off track rather than the good old days where fans would right letters to the governor to drop charges against their favorite driver being arrested for road rage (I can’t find a link to it – but back in the late 90’s Richard Petty bump drafted someone on I-95 because they were going too slow and he got arrested for reckless driving. His fans were so outraged they wrote to the governor to drop the charges! Today, with the whitewashed image of NASCAR a driver would be lynched if he did that).
Ugh… the spelling, crimes against literacy.
Nascar, ugh… a crime against motorsport AND literacy.
Lets face it making money on bumpkins is easy when it takes a minimum of cameras to film the race and the cars can be filmed for extended durations due to the course layout (oval). Essentially its an easily filmed drawn out dogfight of sorts which makes for brilliant on car advertising. Compare that to a road course where you get a couple of secconds at most before the car is in and out of view.
Recently I saw nascar mints at a home depot checkout $2 for crappy mints in a tiny tin that looks like a race car. Its all about smearing the logo all over garbage which isn’t related to the “sport” and capitalizing on the wave of popularity which has come your way. OH and I recently saw a Cintas uniform truck purporting to be the preferred uniform of nascar.
The sooner that this nascar craze is over the less depressed I’ll be. For now I’ll stick to my opinion that Nascar is the lowest common denominator of motorsports. Just kidding about the for now part, that opinion is set in stone.
Letting Toyota into NASCAR is an absolutely brilliant move. Pitting foreign cars against the home teams provides the sport with an instant villain — another easy and available plot device.
Talk about compelling, it’s like they talked to Vince McMahon, or something.
I’ll be shocked if this article was written by an actual southerner.
Good points all around, but nothing that hasn’t been railed against by Peter DeLorenzo time and time again. Most kids don’t even remember when there were semi-real Monte Carlos and Thunderbirds out there. At least I do, but ensuing generations will grow up with this “Car of Tomorrow” bullshit and wonder what the big deal is. NASCAR can try to capitalize on its history on the Murdochalicious Speed Channel (another institution that’s turned into a joke within the last few years) or wherever else, but eventually people are going to wonder why there aren’t real cars racing anymore like in those old clips. Toyota being involved speaks more to their own arrogance than anything. I pray for a massive backlash once these blasted “furriners” get involved.
Running short of material? Decided to dog pile on the Johnny Reb bashing? First off, it’s a tired joke. We get it – y’all thinks suthners is dumb. Secondly, you’re late to the party. The Nascar/hick joke is played-out. (Aside: Even your stereotyped nom de plume would know how to spell Nascar.) Most importantly, I expect more from TTAC. There’s enough pablum out there on sites such as autoweek, autospies, C&D, …
Mr. Williams is a bonified southerner. That is all.
It’s a Fact !
NASCAR is actually an ancient Indian word meaning “greed”.
However, it also translates to “boring” when describing an event or activity.
I find it hard to believe that Mr. Williams is a southerner. While I’m a damn Yankee, (well, no longer, but I was), even I found this editorial offensive. Of course, NASCAR is dead to me, has been for years. The latest move to parity has killed off all of the technical interest I had in it.
I started watching NASCAR in the early-70’s when King Richard was really a king and had the Hemi to prove it, too! It started getting a little smelly when it became ALL about the cult of personality.
Let Toyota run in NASCAR, they can join in on the joke, too. Like someone else posted on here, instant villain, just add storyline.
BTW, Mr Farago, the proper term is ‘bona-fide’. I’m assuming you weren’t being your usual sarcastic self when you posted that about Mr. Willams.
Gotta love restrictor plate racing. You’re lucky if half the field finishes the race, and those that do usually bear scars.
Racing is about both the car and the driver. Speed differential makes for exciting races. Having the leader encounter lap traffic adds another element to the race.
NASCAR is so far from its roots now, they should just abandon the name. It’s further from its roots than the Grand Am series. At least there they race cars that you can go down and buy at a dealership. Hell, the European Touring Car series is closer to NASCAR roots than NASCAR.
HAHAHA!!
Best thing I read all week!
Oh yeah…
That is the best line, right thar! Thanks, Frank.
There is nothing wrong with a nascar event in the “poky-nos”. People in pennsylvania don’t have teeth or shoes! In pennsyltucky there is a GM on every lawn and most people for some reason drive mid 90’s pontiacs. I think they are standard issue. I actually went to college (a private school in NY) with a kid from the poconos that had 3 dead chevys in his yard, and one sitting in a ditch with a moutain of horse dung on it.
Mr. Williams very lame attempt at humor notwithstanding, let’s run down the current state of racing…
As much as we critizice the Cup Series (and rightfully so) it still stands out above the rest, even if the “Car of Tomorrow” turns the series in to a 43-car IROC. Like Mike Joy said last week, Tony Stewart can race a cockroach with wheels and still win.
Busch Series = Cup Lite, all the fun is getting sucked out of it.
Yes, they race trucks, and it’s the best racing series out there. Costs aren’t prohibitive (yet), they don’t run restrictor plates, and there are a few more short tracks on the schedule. Unfortunately, this season it’s turned into the Toyota inviational (which is what will happen to Cup by 2009 or so!).
Then again, what alternatives do we have to NA$CAR? Formula 1 is a parade, not a race. IndyCar has been losing engine suppliers left and right, and what if they gave a Champ car race and nobody cared? Oh, that’s right, they don’t!
Well, there’s always those psychos who drive WRC…
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