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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
Toyota Confirms NASCAR Craftsman Truck Program
Japanese manufacturer to enter all-American competition in 2004 with Tundra pick-up
Ben Blake  | http://www.racer.com  |  Posted February 11, 2003  
SPEEDtv.com - The Online Motorsports Authority

At 10 a.m., Feb. 12, 2003, in the 55th year of NASCAR racing, Toyota made its historic announcement of intent to enter the game of stock-car racing via the NASCAR Craftsman Truck series.

NASCAR, which began as a showroom stock series for American cars in 1948, thus welcomes its first non-domestic factory participant. Toyota bring its Tundra trucks and its technology to the second-tier series beginning next year, 2004.

Toyota, already proven in the CART Champ Car series, will make its debut in the IRL IndyCar series this year. The company has spent four years experimenting in NASCAR in the low-level Dash V6 series, using an overhead-cam engine.

The company will be required to produce a pushrod V8 for the Truck series, which should be no problem.

Toyota released few details. It said it would enter with as many as six Trucks but said "team affiliations will be determined at a later date."

The initial announcement was made at the Chicago Auto Show, with further announcements to be made at Daytona later in the week. The NASCAR-dedicated V8 engine will be built at the Toyota Racing Development (TRD) plant in Costa Mesa, Calif.

Toyota becomes the second new manufacturer in NASCAR since 2000, breaking the hold of Detroit's Ford and General Motors on the hitherto all-American series. The Dodge brand, now owned by Daimler of Stuttgart, Germany, made its debut in 2001 after a 25-year absence.

The Tundra trucks, Toyota's successful attempt to break into the profitable U.S. utility market, also is built domestically, at a factory in Princeton, Ind. Toyota also recently announced plans for a new truck plant in San Antonio, Texas.

No immediate mention was made of Winston Cup, NASCAR's top level, although it is widely presumed the company will enter the big series by 2007.

Toyota did not say whether it would have a NASCAR program director, in parallel to Dodge's Ray Evernham, former Chevrolet team crew chief who was given charge of the Dodge development in 1999.

Whereas Dodge has a rich NASCAR history as a domestic brand (DC, the Daimler acquisition, was announced in 1996), Toyota is the first participant of completely off-shore origin, with headquarters in Japan.

With automobile production now a fully-integrated world industry, none of the big producers, regardless of headquarters, is fully domestic, thus blurring the boundary between foreign and home-grown.

Ford, for example, has overseas ties with Mazda in Japan. DC is connected with Mitsubishi, with some of its top-selling brands engineered overseas. Ditto for General Motors.

NASCAR rules specify (and always have specified) that Winston Cup races "are open to eligible 2001 through 2003 models of American-made steel-bodied passenger car production sedans." That, of course, does not apply to the Trucks.

Even if it did, Toyota passenger cars and trucks are produced in the United States, in several plants nationwide. NASCAR chairman Bill France noted 10 years ago that "foreign" manufacturers would be welcome. "They build Hondas in Ohio, don't they?" he said.

No dollar figures were given, and likely won't be. However, it can be expected that Toyota will bring to NASCAR its record of success in American open-wheel racing.
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