ADVERTISEMENT
MC: Does the old adage “Win on Sunday, sell on Monday” still apply today?
FS: It does, but it does a little bit differently. If you go back to the mid-'50s - actually I think it was '57 when "Bunkie" Knudsen first made that comment and I've got a copy of the newspaper where he spoke it for the first time, believe it or not it was purely “Win on Sunday, sell on Monday,” but if we fast forward to 2006, it still applies, but we are now active at the track during the weekend. We have display trailers at every race GM goes to with our new products on display, so yeah, we sell them on Monday, but it's more than just racecars doing their thing, it’s product display at the venue. This has been going on for about 10 years, quite frankly, we refine it every year, but the whole idea is to make sure that we have a relationship with the consumer that comes here, put the products in front of them that makes the most sense all the way around and again… let's take Kurt Johnson for example. He wins on the racetrack and draws fans to him, but likewise we have a Kurt Johnson show car program that goes with him, so it's an all-inclusive program that’s fully integrated, it’s designed to sell cars.
MC: And you have Chevy cars there too?
FS: We've got a Chevy Uplander Van on display here. You say, what is an Uplander minivan doing here? Simple, it's GM Mobility equipped with a sit and lift feature and when you look again at NHRA drag racing, where your ticket is your pit pass, there are an awful lot more wheelchair bound fans coming to NHRA than any other form of motorsports anywhere. A lot of them don't know that GM Mobility is the sole supplier of this particular feature. It's patented and the vans will kneel and come with a bucket seat in the second row that lowers down and puts the passenger in the vehicle very easily. Most fans don't even know GM makes this feature. So we've got a number of vehicles like that on display at a number of races throughout the year.
MC: Does Chevy’s involvement in drag racing actually have an effect on the brand as far as the engineering goes?
FS: It goes both ways. We learn things with our engines out here and have for many, many years, since '55, with the advent of the small block. What we learn at the racetrack we take back to production and vice versa. You take a look at the number of Chevy engines racing in competition, forget the sheet metal for a minute, just the engines out there, it's huge. I've never tried to count it, but it's got to be that Chevy engines power more than 90% of all the drag race vehicles either small or big block.