NASCAR’s decision to use the Car of Tomorrow exclusively next season has rendered an entire fleet of expensive race cars obsolete. After this weekend’s Pep Boys Auto 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, the conventional Nextel Cup cars will be run only two more times, at Texas Motor Speedway and in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Industry leaders say that means that 400 top-of-the-line race cars, many of which have spent hours in wind tunnels to fine-tune the bodies, will be sold for a fraction of what they cost to build.
But NASCAR’s loss is ARCA’s gain. Although the market for obsolete Nextel Cup cars is limited, the ARCA series, a second-tier circuit that runs on many of the same tracks as Nextel Cup, has rules that allow old Cup cars. So that’s where most of the cars sold so far have ended up.
“You’re going to see a lot of good ARCA races next year,” Nextel Cup team owner Ray Evernham said. “The ARCA race at Talladega was really good because there were a lot of good cars out there.”
And that won’t be the only benefit for the ARCA series, he said. “There are going to be so many of those cars available that when an ARCA team wrecks one, they don’t have to fix it; they can just go buy another one.”
Evernham said he’s been selling cars minus key parts, such as brakes, for about $15,000.
Teams like Richard Childress Racing are saving some for driver development.
“We’ve sold a lot of them, but we’re going to run some of them in the Busch East series and in ARCA,” he said.
Childress is selling some cars with engines and transmissions for about $30,000. He said that’s because the new R07 engine developed by Chevrolet has left him with a shop full of SB2 engines he no longer needs. “We’ve got to get rid of 150 of them,” he said.
ARCA driver and team owner Andy Belmont said the real bargains can be found at the smaller teams. “It wouldn’t look good to accounting at the bigger teams if they dropped the price,” he said. “Some are holding the line on price because they don’t need the money, but others are having fire sales because they need the space.”
Britt Ponder, who owns Ponder Racing Services in Cumming, said most of the old Cup cars that were built for road courses already have been snapped up by drivers who compete in amateur events on those same tracks. But the majority of Cup cars were built for speedways, and there’s not much market for those cars, he said. “There’s no place for weekend racers to run an oval-track car,” Ponder said.
But there are other uses for the old Cup cars. The Wood Brothers aren’t selling many of theirs.
Team co-owner Len Wood said he and his crew are stripping their cars and re-using slightly worn parts. He estimates that about half the components on the car can be used on a COT.
“I’m not overly proud of these cars, but I’m not going to give them away,” he said. “It’s more economical for us to part them out.”
And since his team still has its old shop in Stuart, Va., he has room to store cars that might one day be wanted by a museum or collector.
Petty Enterprises vice president Robbie Loomis said his team is donating some cars to schools and colleges that have motorsports programs. And they’re saving some for posterity.
“These are the cars people are going to want to look at 10 years from now,” Loomis said. “They’ll think these cars are cool-looking.”
Article was written by Rick Minter for the AJC website, and was sent to us by Stock Car Gazette contributor Ed B. (thanks!).
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