Toyota to race NASCAR for '07 season

[Enola Straight]

http://www.sportingnews.com/yourturn...b12bf207694fe4

Toyota will enter a Camry in the Nextel Cup and Busch series.

Question is, does Toyota have an engine and transmission required by the rulebooks?

IIRC, 358 cubic inch (5.9 liter) pushrod V8, one intake and one exhaust valve per cylinder, one four barrel carburetor, and a four speed manual tranny driving the rear wheels.

[commasense]

Toyota is the second largest car company in the world, after GM. They spend a reported $500 million a year on their Formula One racing teams, which in five seasons have yet to win a race or even place better than 3rd. They're a car company. They can make anything they want!

Are you asking because you assume that that because the acronym NASCAR includes the words "stock car" that the engine or other components of the racecars have to be taken from cars in the manufacturer's standard production line? That hasn't been the case for decades. (There have been several threads about this: search on "stock car.")

Today, all NASCAR cars are custom made racecars with cosmetic external trim and stickers to make them faintly resemble their nominal production counterparts. Toyota's entries will be no different.

[Enola Straight]

I'm not talking about the body...I already know the race car body is nothing but custom-formed sheetmetal and plastic fitted over a custom-formed rollcage.

The only Toyota engines I know of are overhead cam designs, not permitted by NASCAR.

[E-Sabbath]

http://www.fastmachines.com/archives/nascar/001066.php

Yeah, they do. They had to build it for the NasTrucks, which they've been involved in for a while.

[butler1850]

They've made one, and submitted it to NASCAR for approval.

Still waiting approval though.

IIRC it leans heavily on the Craftsman truck engine they currently run there.