Is NASCAR Following the American Automobile Industry's Tire Tracks?

After the World War that had commandered the American Auto Industry's factories and foundries to forge anti-aircraft guns and tanks the returning veterans returned from Europe and the Far East with pockets full of "combat pay" and poker winnings in the case of a young Ensign named Richard Nixon. They were eager to resume civilian life and the first major purchase, after the engagement ring for the hometown sweetheart, was going to be a new car from one of the nine American Automoble Manufacturers. Except for one little detail.

There were not any Buicks, Cadillacs, Chevrolets, Dodges, Fords, Henry J's, Hornets, Mercurys, Metros, Oldsmobiles, Plymouths or Studebakers being made; the anti-aircraft guns and tanks were still being produced to fulfill the wartime contracts inked when the war in Europe was winding-down, but it looked like the fighting was going to last another two years in the Far East. The American war planners were just as suprised at the abrupt end of the war as the enemy was! American's were capable of keeping a secret back in the 1940's, if it involved national security.

Back on the home front, the automobile assembly, engine plants, steel-rolling mills and transmission factories had to be re-tooled from making armored-plate to making the cold-rolled steel that auto bodies were made of and case-hardened gears in the transmissions that made the tires go around where the rubber meets the road. Oh yeah, that was another facility that had to be modified, the tire vulcanising plants that had been making tires for B-27 bombers had to be converted to making car tires.

Many "G.I.'s" (that stood for "Government Issued") were impatient and along with new fatherhood became the proud owner of a very "pre-war" Ford. The Ford's were "powered" by a very reliable "flat head" engine. That is the cylinder heads only contained the spark-plugs and a slightly concave completion of the mating part of the "combustion chamber." The production genius Henry Ford (the one the high school is named for) devised this engine design as the most economical for him to produce in the millions; it turned out to be very reliable due to it's simplicity compared to the next generation of "over-head valve engines.
The flat head Ford was a great engine for driving mom to the grocery store, or even travelling across America, if you had plenty of time and knew how to fix a flat tire. It was not very powerful; the revolutions-per-minute were in the low thousands and that limited the horsepower output at the flywheel. Although Henry Ford made his name with the "99" racing car, his production models were just for basic transportation.

The cars engines were easily accessable and sheet metal intake manifolds could be made for as many as four carburetors and ex-Us Army tank mechanics could weld material on camshaft lobes and do the math to alter the intake and exhaust valve sequence by grinding different shapes on them. It didn't matter much that the modified parts didn't last very long, there was an endless supply of wrecked engines in vacant lots that coud be stripped for their modifiable parts.
As the postwar automobile production caught-up with demand the same-old 1920's designs had to be replaced with bigger, more powerful engines to power the ever-growing mass of sheetmetal that the "design studios" (a postwar innovation to constantly change the appearance of the vehicles every "new model year", another new marketing strategy) were shaping into voluptious flowing lines over ever-extending chassis frames.

Chrysler introduced the "Fire Dome V8" the first mass production hemispherical-head overhead valve engine for it top of the line Chrysler New Yorker and Desoto car lines. (The hemispherical-head was a decades-old racing engine and Harley Davidson Motorcycle mainstay, so it was not really a "new design.")
Chevrolet introduced the 265 cubic inch V8 in 1955 that would be the basis of the NASCAR engines right up to-2007! As improbable as it may seem, this basic engine design is the reason so many NASCAR racing teams go with Chevy racecars, it can produce enormous amoonts of power while being lightweight and it is reliable under the severe stress of racing full-out, pedal-to-the-metal.

The high-volume Chevrolet engine was paralled by the Buick, Oldsmobile and Pontiac engines up until the mid-1970's; that's right, separate engine blocks, camshafts, crankshafts and whole volumes of part numbers that it takes to warehouse and supply complete car line offerings to American drivers who could tell the difference in performance between the cars.

Ford had a basic V8 as well, but another engine block and transmission combination for the top-of-the-line Lincoln Continental (a spare tire molded out of sheet metal on the trunk lid gave it it's name, it made an esthetic statement at the time,)

The smaller manufacturers didn't have the sales to support the development of the new, more powerful hardware and the engineering talent also soon went where the money was, with the companies that were to become the "Big Three."

There were generations of american families made-up of "Ford men" and "Chevy men", those were the days when the "Head of the Household" made all the important deci$ions, the wife might get to pick the color of the seats if the family was flush enough to "custom order a Ford or Chevy built just for them-with a two-month wait-no computer-syncopated production back in the 1950's through the 1980's.

As the family grew and progressed along the American Dream Expressway the Ford and Chevy would be replaced by a Mercury or an Oldsmobile, later by a Lincoln or Cadillac as the well deserved retirement years were spent slowly driving that last chrome laden luxury car so it would truely "last a lifetime."
Then the Harvard Business School graduates invaded the American industrial system.

How inefficient! Keeping separate engine and transmission stocks for parallel car lines, after all they had the same essential function-transportation. The American car-buyer wouldn't notice the difference if his Oldsmobile or Lincoln had the same basic engine and transmission as the larger Chevrolets and Fords, as long as it had enough "passing-power" for Expressway onramps. Harvard Business School graduates made American cars more similar to each other as the decades went by, so as buyer boredom set-in, where could American's sastify their desire for more than basic transportation?

Imported automobiles came with a greater variety of engine designs, and even where the motor was mounted in relation to the drive axle(s) was as likely to be rear-engine-transaxle, front-wheel drive or four-wheel drive for desert sand or mountain snow.

American's "love affair" with the traditional "family sedan" was over, more specialized vehicles became the major sellers for the Detroit-based corporations.
Meanwhile in Daytona Beach, florida NASCAR was promoting a nationwide series of "Superspeedway" races featuring...the Detroit-designed and built family sedan.

NASCAR Superspeedway Racing is a very specialized type of event. 43 cars traveling in a mass at speeds of up to one-hundred-eighty-miles per-hour while only inches separate front fenders from rear quarter panels of the car in front of it. In a typical Daytona 500 19 of the 43 cars starting the race were Chevrolets, 10 were Fords and 9 were Chrysler Corporation's Dodge models while TOYOTA had four entries in it's rookie year as a manufacturer and racing team sponsor in NASCAR's premier race of the new season.

Dale Earnhardt was a legendary driver known for his agressive style of driving who was killed in a last-lap wreck at the 2001 Daytona 500 Mile Race. Dale Earnhardt's death was the cause of many meetings at NASCAR's headquarters, even after restricting the maximum speeds that the race cars could achieve the drivers were still facing unacceptable risks every time they entered a race.

The concept the NASCAR executives came up with to make the sport safer for the drivers was coined "The Car of Tomorrow." Designed by NASCAR Research and Development the the COT would be used as the sheetmetal platform for the various manufacturer's engine and drive trains, up to a point. NASCAR approved components would be used for the steering gear and suspensions and brakes, The Cars of Tomorrow would be more alike than they would be different, following the tire tracks of the American Automoble Industry in decades past.

How the fans of the NASCAR cars, will react to the barely perceptable differences in appearance of the different makes will become known as the roll-out of the Car of Tomorrow progresses. Or it may be that NASCAR fans are more keen on the drivers and their dust-ups with each other on and off the track than they are with the manufacturers competition.

Only the NASCAR Superspeedway parking lots will hold the answer in the coming years.www.blogcharm.com/nascarcountry
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