Toyota’s presence in NASCAR has had a little different purpose than other manufacturers in the sport. Sure, the company wants to sell vehicles. But before Toyota could get NASCAR fans to buy its vehicles, the manufacturer had to get NASCAR fans to consider buying its vehicles. That’s where NASCAR came in – just to be in the mind of a potential car-buyer to look up a Toyota vehicle on the Web site or come into the dealership. To that end, NASCAR is producing results, said Bob Carter, a Toyota vice president who oversees Toyota Racing Development as the general manager for Toyota Motor Sales USA. “NASCAR continues to deliver what our goals were when we entered the sport,” Carter said. “We’ve been involved in racing for 30 years. NASCAR has certainly positioned itself as the premier series within the U.S. “It has a huge fan base. In 2004, for many of the NASCAR fans, we weren’t necessarily on the short list when it came to buying a car. In fact, compared to Chevy and Ford among the [NASCAR] people who were shopping, we were 20 points behind Chevy and Ford. In our third year of Sprint Cup, we’re virtually identical with Ford and Chevy. [NASCAR] has delivered more benefits quicker than we had originally had hoped for,” Carter said. “Our goal being at the race track is to be top of mind among all these race fans when they’re considering their next car purchase. This was a push on a market that we saw an opportunity to expose the product.”(SceneDaily)(8-30-2009)
