the ragged U.S. economy and slumping car sales are leading General Motors to the brink of what looks like a buyout of Chrysler, which has NASCAR’s 11 Dodge teams [#’s 2,7,9,10,12,19,41,42,43,45,77] on pins and needles. One Detroit source says he senses the merger as inevitable and says that merger could really shake up the NASCAR garage, because rival car makers GM, Ford and Toyota may be quite unlikely to want to pick up any new NASCAR teams. George Gillett has been looking at buying Bill Davis’ Toyota team and becoming a three-team Toyota operation; however there now appears to be a major stumbling block to any such move by Gillett – Toyota itself. There are also worries that when the 2009 season dawns at Daytona there will be only 30 teams with full-time non-factory corporate sponsorship.(Winston Salem Journal)(10-25-2008)
