The First Shot of 2013 Has Been Fired

When Ford Racing Director Jamie Allison introduced the new Ford Fusion race car the company developed for 2013, I sat there with my mouth open.

As a car, it was...beautiful. And it didn't look like the cars we saw race last year or will see this year. The nose looks like the one on the Aston-Martin DB9, the side panels are tapered and the roof line is not angular but smoothly sloped. The windshield angle is rakish, the rear glass and deck more bubble-ish, if that's a word.

In other words, it looks like a race car.

And it should give Ford's competitors a jolt, too. Ford had theirs on the track Tuesday, with Greg Biffle at the wheel, and it looked fast. Of course, Biff wasn't trying to put it on the pole or anything, but it looked pretty neat out there on the track.

For the 2013 season, NASCAR will take the next step on making the race cars look more like what's in the showroom and in people's garages. It's about darned time.

In the late 1990s, NASCAR hit upon the idea of a common template, a "NASCAR," not a Chevrolet, Ford, Dodge or Toyota. They left a little room for manufacturer styling cues, but it was a generic Impusion/Camger type of thing, and the only way you could reliably tell one from another was the tape on the front grille.

As Julia Roberts famously stated in Pretty Woman, "Big mistake. Huge."

Manufacturers are the lifeblood of stock car racing. That's why they race, to sell more cars, build brand loyalty and beat the Other Guys. Duh.

You don't spend millions of dollars, thousands of man-hours and a ton of marketing budget so that you can design a nose, some side pillars and a rear deck. You need the whole car, and that is what, it is purported, that NASCAR plans to do.

When you were growing up, did your family buy one make of car only? Did you know other families that bought another brand, exclusively? I did. Of course, I grew up on the shiny underside of the buckle of the Rust Belt, and in East Central Indiana, you bought GM. Period.

Oh, there were folks devoted to Fords and Chryslers, but they weren't many. Chevys, Buicks, Oldsmobiles, Pontiacs, GMC...those were the marques of my youth.

When you went to the track, you rooted for your driver, of course, and hoped he was driving a Chevy/Pontiac/Buick/Olds. If he wasn't, you sorta still cheered, but wished he'd see the light.

I hope that the other makes have similar plans and do it the same way Ford did. Chevy will likely have a new car for '13 (I hear Camaro, but don't hold your breath. I'm also hearing a new model), Dodge will run either the Charger or Challenger, and Toyota will still have the Camry, according to reports.

Can't wait to see them, for all it represents and for all it means for the future of NASCAR. Plus, I'd like to be able to tell the make without having to read the front bumper.