Toyota to open flood gates of foreign manufacturers
NASCAR CEO France was noncommittal about such a possibility. “Honda, or others, I have no idea about that," France said Monday. “Those are all choices people have to make."
YOUR THOUGHTS ON TOYOTA COMING INTO CUP?
“Like it or not Toyota is a very important part of our economy today. We’ve got a lot of dealer investment dollars out there and we’ve got a lot of our population that works in Toyota plants around the country. So they have every right to be here. Based on the way that they have dealt with the other series that they’ve been in and what’s happened to the series after they arrived and what happened to the series after they’ve left, NASCAR will have to think about what they allow them to do here in terms of changing the order of things technologically or the way we staff and the other things that we do. They have a way of carrying a different level of investment than would otherwise be justified based on the business aspects of the business, and we’re yet to see how that will unfold. I knew that it was inevitable and I know that they’ll be very tough competitors, but, again, like I said about the way they count the points and which races they decide are more important than other races as it relates to a championship, I welcome their being involved because I think they’ll be good for the sport. I think they’ll be great for the fans and the enthusiasm, I think, will sell more tickets to our race tracks. How we wind up dealing with the problems Ford Motor Company and General Motors are going through today and how that relates to the investment dollars that are in Japan versus the ones that are in Detroit and middle America I can’t say. I’m not enough of an economist to be able to judge that, but for the near term we’re gonna race them real hard."