I was just watching Top Gear US, and they ran Tanner Foust’s “Ford Fiesta” around the track. NASCAR driver Kyle Busch drives a “Toyota Camry.” But from what I can see, neither of these cars bear anything more than a passing resemblance to the cars they are named after. What parts does Foust’s Ford have in common with a Ford Fiesta you could buy at a dealership? Does Busch’s Toyota have any relationship at all to a real Toyota Camry other than a vague similarity in body shape?
Near as I can tell (and I am no expert) is the only thing that needs to be original is the frame.
Usually they make the body look the same but replace the metal panels with fiberglass (lighter than metal).
Beyond that little seems to be original to the car.
So a NASCAR Camry really has the same frame as a stock Camry?
It looks like the only connection is sponsorship / logos - all the race cars are supposed to conform to the exact same specification: Car of Tomorrow - Wikipedia
NASCAR cars are all tube framed construction. Modern road cars don’t even have a frame or separate chassis as most people think of it.
This. Almost every car made in the last 20 years or so is a uni-body. Panels welded together to make the shell of the car. The suspension and engine and drivetrain are attached to the shell. Most trucks still have a traditional frame with a body bolted onto the frame.
The cars that you see in NASCAR have almost zero in common with their namsakes. I have always thought that it was ridiculous to name them “Taurus, Camary” etc… Of course I always thought that it would be more interesting if they actually did race modified versions of production models. That is why I tend to perfer SCCA racing.
There are lots of different raing leagues with widely differing rules. NASCAR tends towards the “sillouette racing” side of the spectrum, with the race cars all being fairly similar and the only difference being the stickers on the outside. Other racing leagues can be anything up to essentially factory cars with minimal additional safety gear.
Back in the mid 1980s I was involved in Professional off road racing. We built a truck for short course stadium races (like a larger version of what you see at the X games)
Anyway, the truck used a non production 16 valve twin cam motor that was never used over here, a custom tube frame, custom suspension, a customer built trans, you start to get the idea.
one day we decided to count up the bone stock parts on the truck. Here is the list:
[ol]
[li]master cylinder reservoir (not the master, just the reservoir, the rest of the brakes were pure racing parts)[/li][li]The tail light assemblies[/li][li]The logo on the grill (grill itself was customized to fit the fiberglass fenders/hood)[/li][/ol]
That’s it!
The Ford Fiesta is based off a street car and can be purchased directly from Ford. Ford also makes a factory Mustang for racing, as do Porsche, BMW and one or two others.
The cars in the top-level NASCAR series have very little in common with their street counterparts.
The general term is homologation. From the link:
Whatever sanctioning body is organizing a race gets to set the rules, and the individual race teams (sometimes working with manufacturers) try to create the fastest car that conforms to those rules.
NASCAR cars, as has been said, have pretty much nothing in common with the road cars that share their name. (Although teams running "Toyota"s do have some degree of collaboration and support with the Toyota Motor Corporation.) Other racing series set the rules differently. Many will specify that teams use a production car and then list what sort of modifications are allowed (engine, suspension, aerodynamics, whatever). Safety is pretty much a given; strip out the original interior and put in a roll bar, lighter seat with full racing harness, fire extinguisher, etc.
So what counts as a “production car”? Some sanctioning bodies have defined it in terms of some minimum number produced by the factory. In 1968, the FIA (which ran Le Mans and other “sports car” races) specified that 25 cars had to be produced. Porsche designed the 917 purely for competition and built 25 of them. In the mid-80s the top category in international rallying was Group B, which required 200 cars. Some manufacturers again built dedicated competition cars, supplied some to their racing partners, and sold the rest for street use. Some very quick, very rare cars came out of that era.
In NASCAR, the body shape is relevant. The fiberglass body of the NASCAR Camry has to have properties in common with street Camrys. For example, if the racing teams discovered that a huge rear bubble window would seriously improve the performance on the track, then production Camrys would need to be made with X number of these bubble windows.
It happened years ago to the Monte Carlo SS of the 80’s (circa 1987): Production version got a hideous looking rear window to help the NASCAR guys. It came to be know as the NASCAR window.
If you look at NASCAR body, all the headlights, turn signals, and other styling cues are just decals to make the car look like the street version (to some degree).
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W/regard to NASCAR, the only thing common with a car you buy from Ford, Dodge, Chevy and/or Toyota is the manufacturers’ logo. As noted earlier all sit atop custom-made tubular frames, which are all pretty much the same. They all use the same suspension pieces, transmissions, rear ends, etc. The only manufacturer-unique component is the engine (which does not at all resemble the V8 you may have in your Dodge Charger. The bodies are virtually identical, just different decals that make the nose area (grille, headlights, etc.) resemble the manufacturer they represent.
All this may seem odd, but it’s the reason 43 cars can run 500 miles and finish within seconds of one another. NASCAR has basically legislated parity into the sport. And parity makes for excitement/fan interest.
Touring cars on the other hand are at least based on their production road car equivalent.
NASCAR bodies used to be a lot closer, but its been years since there has been any realistic link between road cars and NASCARs as has been stated. Around about 2000 I remember GM introduced a Chevy Monte Carlo model that was supposed to be closer to the look of the “Monte Carlo” Jeff Gordon et. al. drove. Thing was horrid to my eyes, but popular. Nobody is making cars based on the look of the Car of Tomorrow right now…probably because it is pretty universally hated.
In the case of the Mustang, if by “factory” you mean shipping it off to Roush and having them do the work, then, yeah, it’s a factory job. Similar for the Fiesta. We simply don’t build factories to accommodate such one-off variations.
I have heard broadcaster Dave Despain of Speed TV say the only thing that a NASCAR has in common with its equivalent on a car dealer’s lot is the engine hood and it’s been like that for decades. Early on it was “stock” but for various reasons such as safety and performance, that went out the window. But teams do get massive support from manufacturer’s who feel it is good advertising to be in a vastly watched sport “Win on Sunday, sell on Monday” is the saying although the correlation is doubtful. But some exists, NASCAR fans are known for being loyal to car brands and sponsors for their favorite drivers.
Other important differences between NASCAR vehicles and the road-legal cars they represent are that the NASCAR versions are rear-wheel drive (the street versions of the Chevy, Ford and Toyota are all front-drive), and the racing engines are normally aspirated (carburated) when most street vehicles have used fuel injection for decades (although injection will be introduced in the top NASCAR series sometime in the next year).
NASCAR is basically stuck between a rock and a hard place regarding vehicle design. Many fans complain about the cars being caricatures, but going back to truly stock-based vehicles would a) introduce technical variations that would tend to reduce parity; b) probably greatly reduce average speeds; c) and most importantly, would udoubtedly reduce driver safety to an unacceptable degree. The amount of bracing and re-engineering of a stock unibody to allow driver survival at impacts of 180-200 mph would be so complicated that it’s less expensive and simpler to just start with a standardized racing chassis.
How does the National Association for Stock Car Racing (or whatever it is) get away with having zero stock components on its racing vehicles? Where would I go to find real stock car racing?
As explained above, it really has no choice, if it is to provide the degree of competition and driver safety that are considered desirable.
I neglected to mention aerodynamics as another important limiting factor; at the last major redesign of the NASCAR spec car, it took several years of continuous testing to find a way to produce a more ‘stock’ looking body that handled more or less predictably in traffic at 200 mph top speeds. Even there, some tweaks have been required since the new body was introduced.
Meanwhile, one can usually find ‘real’ stock cars at one’s local quarter- or half-mile track, usually in the bottom one or two series that race on a given Saturday night. These are referred to as ‘pure stocks’, ‘eco-stocks’ or something similar, and these series can be a hoot, mainly for the spectacle of them haring around the course leaned over almost on their door handles, street tires screaming in protest.
Note, however, that these days, all the senior series at local tracks (late models, modifieds and the like) are run on custom racing chassis as well.
I don’t know this for sure, but they may now be simply NASCAR. Much like KFC used to be Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Two other production race cars from Ford. One an open wheel car for the Formula Ford spec series, the other a Ford Focus eligible for several series. autoextremist.com
Despite their basis as “cars-in-white”, they are quite expensive and your typical teenager will never get their hands on one.