Following Toyota's admirable showing in this year's Daytona 500, I am left pondering a topic that comes to my head from time to time, that being why Toyota doesn't use its NASCAR success to bolster its lineup of passenger cars.
In the past, manufacturers often used the slogan, "race on Sunday, sell on Monday," as a way to describe race cars that were very much akin to their road going counterparts. That has changed in recent years as NASCAR instead now uses purpose built machines decorated with an assortment of graphics to help them better resemble street cars. Improvements were made in 2013 with the current generation car, as manufacturers have been allowed to add creases to the bodywork in the same places as on their road cars. They look good, but I am talking about taking bigger steps than that. I want to see some of the manufacturer's motorsports technology trickle down into cars that average people can buy.
Of the three manufacturers involved in NASCAR, Chevrolet comes closest to bridging the gap between the race track and the street. Both the SS race car and street car are powered by V8 engines and are rear wheel drive. Neither the Toyota Camry nor the Ford Fusion are available with rear wheel drive or eight cylinder powerplants. The Camry offers a V6 as its largest engine, and Ford is returning to the six cylinder group for 2017 after a four year hiatus with a monster 325 hp twin turbo unit.
Ford has been making significant steps to improving the connection between its road and motorsports programs beginning over a year ago with the introduction of the new Ford Performance brand. Ford Performance unifies the Ford Special Vehicles Team, Team RS, and Ford Racing under one banner. It plans to offer 12 new vehicles by 2020. We already have some, including the Fiesta ST, the Focus ST and Focus RS, and the Mustang Shelby GT350. Upcoming vehicles are the F-150 Raptor and the GT supercar. Ford is serious about giving its street cars a performance boost, something Chevrolet did a few years back when it built Super Sport versions of almost all its mainline cars and trucks, one of which I'm fortunate to own. Chevrolet still offers some performance cars such as the Camaro, the Corvette, and the SS itself. Toyota has some off road focused Tundras and Tacomas, but that's about it.
This is a shame since Toyota Racing Development has proven motorsports success. Besides NASCAR, Toyota teams compete in the World Endurance Championship, Super GT, and NHRA, and have competed in the past in rallying events and Formula 1. TRD does offer a number of performance parts, but most of them are for Toyota trucks. Next to nothing is offered for the Yaris, Camry, or Corolla. Many parts are offered for Scion cars, however, so it is likely that they will carry over when Toyota absorbs Scion's models. It's a good start, but there is so much more room to increase TRD's presence across Toyota's lineup. Diehard Denny Hamlin fans would be proud to drive their Camrys on race weekend if the cars they use to transport their family and groceries were engineered with similar technology that's used successfully on the track.
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