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Bob Cutlass - Disney Pixar Cars: Oldsmobile Aurora (Top left)
With roots as regional entertainment in the Southeastern U.S., NASCAR has grown to become the second-most popular professional sport in terms of television ratings inside the U.S., ranking behind only the National Football League. Internationally, NASCAR races are broadcast in over 150 countries. It holds 17 of the top 20 attended sporting events in the U.S.,1 and has 75 million fans who purchase over $3 billion in annual licensed product sales. These fans are considered the most brand-loyal in all of sports and as a result, Fortune 500 companies sponsor NASCAR more than any other governing body. In 2007 NASCAR made a profit of just under $3 billion, and was the second richest motorsport (Formula One was first). NASCAR's headquarters are located in Daytona Beach, Florida, although it also maintains offices in four North Carolina cities: Charlotte, Mooresville, Concord, and Conover. Regional offices are also located in New York City, Los Angeles, Arkansas, and international offices in Mexico City and Toronto. Additionally, owing to its southern roots, all but a handful of NASCAR teams are still based in North Carolina, especially near Charlotte. The Oldsmobile Cutlass was an automobile made by the Oldsmobile division of General Motors. The Cutlass was introduced in 1961 as a unibody compact car. Over the years, the Cutlass name was in effect used by Oldsmobile as a sub-marque, with a number of different vehicles bearing the name simultaneously. The Cutlass name accumulated great brand equity and became one of the most popular nameplates in the industry in the 1970s. However, the proliferation of Oldsmobile Cutlass models caused confusion in the marketplace in the 1980s, when four different vehicles bore the name: the Cutlass Calais compact, the midsize Cutlass Ciera, the Cutlass Cruiser station wagon, and the Cutlass Supreme personal luxury car. The Oldsmobile Aurora was a performance / luxury sedan car made by the Oldsmobile division of General Motors and launched in 1995. The Aurora rode on the same Cadillac-derived G platform as the 2-door Buick Riviera. With the demise of the Ninety-Eight in 1996, the Aurora became the flagship Oldsmobile. A V6-powered version of the car was introduced in 2001 as supplanttation for the Eighty-Eight and the LSS. The Chevrolet Monte Carlo was an American-made automobile. Originally introduced by Chevrolet for the 1970 model year (as competition with the Ford Thunderbird), the car has gone through six generations as of 2007. All Chevrolet Monte Carlos to date have been two-door personal luxury coupes, closely based on a contemporary mid-sized sedan. Early Stock Car Racing - In the 1920s and 1930s, Daytona Beach became known as the place to set world land speed records, supplanting France and Belgium as the preferred location for land speed records, with 8 consecutive world records set between 1927 and 1935. After a historic race between Ransom Olds and Alexander Winton in 1903, the beach became a mecca for racing enthusiasts and fifteen records were set on what became the Daytona Beach road course between 1905 and 1935. By the time the Bonneville Salt Flats became the premier location for pursuit of land speed records, in 1936, Daytona beach had become synonymous with fast cars. Drivers raced a 1.5 to 2-mile (3.2 km) stretch of beach as one straightaway and beachfront highway A1A as the other. Stock car racing in the United States has its origins in bootlegging during Prohibition, when drivers ran bootleg whiskey made in Appalachia. Bootleggers needed to distribute their illicit products, and they typically used small, fast vehicles to better evade the police. Many of the drivers would modify their cars for speed and handling, as well as increased cargo capacity, and some of them came to love the fast-paced driving down twisty mountain roads. One of the main 'strips' in Knoxville, Tennessee, had its beginning as a mecca for aspiring bootlegging drivers. The repeal of Prohibition in 1933 dried up some of their business, but by then Southerners had developed a taste for moonshine, and a number of the drivers continued "runnin' shine," this time evading the "revenuers" who were attempting to tax their operations. The cars continued to improve, and by the late 1940s, races featuring these cars were being run for pride and profit. These races were popular entertainment in the rural Southern United States, and they are most closely associated with the Wilkes County region of North Carolina. Most races in those days were of modified cars. Street vehicles were lightened and reinforced. The Lightyear Blimp (a parody of the Goodyear blimp), is a blimp whose name is Al Oft. His only line is "Oh yeah, Whoo!" Blimp has got the best seat in the race track. You can always find Blimp flying above the racetrack, providing breathtaking overhead action footage of the race with his video camera. The title is also a reference to Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story. His name, Al Oft, is a reference to "aloft" meaning in flight. Disney Cars Fred is a starstruck, but very rusty old car. Everybody knows his name, because his license plate says "FRED." When McQueen says his name, he shouts, "He knows my name! He knows my name" and, in his excitement, his front bumper falls off. Later, when he is unable to gain access to the tie-breaker race and Mario Andretti (who would be waved through the gate on sight as a celebrity) likewise reads his license plate, Fred says, "Mario Andretti knows my name! You gotta let me in now!". Fred is a loyal Rust-eze customer. Sprint Cup - The "NASCAR Sprint Cup Series" is the sport's highest level of professional competition. It is consequently the most popular and most profitable NASCAR series. The 2006 Sprint Cup season consisted of 36 races over 10 months, with over $4 million in total prize money at stake at each race. Writers and fans often use "Cup" to refer to the Sprint Cup series and the ambiguous use of "NASCAR" as a synonym for the Sprint Cup series is common. The winner of the most recent season was Jimmie Johnson in 2007; Johnson was also the 2006 champion. In 2004, NEXTEL took over sponsorship of the premier series from R. J. Reynolds, who had sponsored it as the Winston Cup from 1972 until 2003, and formally renamed it the NEXTEL Cup Series. A new championship points system, "The Chase for the NEXTEL Cup " was also developed, which reset the point standings with ten races to go, making only drivers in the top ten or within 400 points of the leader eligible to win the championship. In 2007, NASCAR announced it was expanding "The Chase" from ten to twelve drivers, eliminating the 400-point cutoff, and giving a ten-point bonus to the top twelve drivers for each of the races they have won out of the first 26. Wins throughout the season will also be worth five more points than in previous seasons. In 2008, the premier series title name became the Sprint Cup Series and The Chase for The NEXTEL Cup became the "Chase for the Sprint Cup", as part of the merger between NEXTEL and Sprint. | |||||||||||||||||||
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