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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
DESPAIN: Big Bill France Was No (April) Fool
What happens if the April Fool’s joke becomes true and Obama really does force Detroit to get out of NASCAR?...
Dave Despain  |  Posted April 08, 2009   Charlotte, NC
Dave Despain, the popular host of Wind Tunnel on SPEED. (Image: SPEED)
We didn’t get into this matter on “Wind Tunnel” last Sunday (a busy news day and all that) but I think it deserves discussion here. When the Car and Driver website reported that President Obama had ordered General Motors and Dodge to get out of NASCAR, it was Rush Limbaugh who pointed out the obvious - the story appeared on April Fool’s Day - and then he asked the obvious question, “Who’s going to fall for that?” (The hilarious answer is Ann Coulter, but that’s another story!)

Dingbat gullibility aside, the April Fool’s joke apparently ruffled important feathers. Despite a 30-year tradition of doing exactly this sort of thing every April 1, C&D quickly pulled the item and apologized for “going too far.” One wonders who applied what pressure and where?

Perhaps the story was simply too believable. Appearing just days after the President forced General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner to resign, C&D’s hoax may have hit too close to home. Be honest, would we be truly shocked if the administration, as a condition of the continued infusion of taxpayer money into these two nearly bankrupt companies, required that GM and Dodge stop spending hundreds of millions of dollars on stock car racing?

Obama’s decision to deep-six Wagoner hints that the car company bailout will be handled differently from the taxpayer rescue of the big banks and insurance companies. Those financial behemoths, the very companies which drove the American economy to brink of collapse, were given trillions of dollars in return with minimal oversight, no requirement that they even keep track of the money and the option of granting lavish bonuses to those who created the mess in the first place. In contrast the new administration apparently will expect some accountability from the auto industry, though the car folks are receiving a pittance in comparison to the financial sector’s rip-off of the taxpayers.

How might such accountability work? That’s an open question but in NASCAR’s case it could mean that new and less sympathetic eyes will review that venerable strategy “Win on Sunday, sell on Monday.”

More on accountability in a moment, but first let’s recall some NASCAR history. Back when “Win on Sunday, sell on Monday” was a fresh idea, when Detroit was booming and race cars still looked like showroom models, Chrysler Corporation boycotted NASCAR’s premier series in a dispute over rules. NASCAR founder Bill France quickly recognized that the power and influence of the Big Three was not always in his best interests.

France was the master of the old-fashioned power struggle and when that one was over, Chrysler was back in the NASCAR fold and Detroit had gotten the message loud and clear; they were welcome to play the NASCAR game but they would do so by Big Bill’s rules. His show would not be dependent on their participation or on the presence of their star drivers. France intentionally put the automakers at arm’s length and it is a measure of his genius that they all elected to stick around and race stock cars on his terms.

In return NASCAR over the years has worked hard to help Detroit sell cars. It packed huge grandstands with potential customers, showering them with red, white and blue entertainment that cried out “Buy American.” It developed a major league television audience to whom the Big Three could make their electronic sales pitch. But NASCAR also put its own strange twist on the notion of “brand loyalty” and that may now prove to be the rub.


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