NASCAR & buggy races

For folks who follow rural culture, the sudden skid of the NASCAR circuit is startling. Only a few years ago, the high octane racing world was as iconic as football, as deeply-rooted as soccer moms.

Now, the sport is in dire straits, with plummeting revenue and travails linked to the struggles of the Big Three automakers. Here’s the NY Times treatment.

Executives of the Big Three Detroit automakers told Brian France, the Nascar chief executive and chairman, that they planned to cut their investments in the sport sharply in the 2009 racing season.

Since then, Chevrolet has said it is cutting back on advertising and sponsorship deals with 12 tracks. Ford is trimming Nascar spending by 20 percent, and Chrysler by 30 percent.

In Slate, one writer calls for the sport to be “euthanized.”

I don’t recommend euthanizing NASCAR lightly. This is the sport that gave us sporting icons like Dale Earnhardt, Cale Yarborough, and the King, Richard Petty.

I appreciate NASCAR’s cutthroat competition, consider it a major sport, and think of the drivers as world-class athletes.

But let’s face facts—even if Ford, GM, and Chrysler get the cash they want from the taxpayers, they are going to have to pull back heaps of sponsorship dough from stock-car racing.

The loss of revenue is hitting individual teams as well. This from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

No one is more aware of the downturn than Georgia’s Bill Elliott. The Wood Brothers team that he drives for in the Sprint Cup Series is planning to enter just 12 of 36 races next year due to a lack of sponsorship.

What makes this fascinating is that NASCAR has come to symbolize a type of American automobile that seems to be an endangered species: power and machismo edging out efficiency and eco-friendliness.

In the “Volt” era is there a place for Dale Earnhardt?

I would argue that we actually need NASCAR more than ever. Not as a model for how our commuter vehicles should look, but as a repository for fantasy and wish-fulfillment.

Isn’t that part of what sport is for? We dream of golfing like Tiger or dunking like Mike.

Someday, as we putter along in our plug-in hybrids, those NASCAR guzzlers will look as quaint and fascinating as the thoroughbreds and the racing buggies that compete in Saratoga.