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The graphic design aesthetic of stock car racing--cluttered, chaotic, vernacular--goes
mainstream.
By Phil Patton
March 2002
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NASCAR's relentless commercialism--as evidenced by merchandise sold in
huge trailers at race sites (above) and the sponsor-smothered
cars themselves (below)--has flooded into other markets.
Tommy Hilfiger, for example, has built a brand by plastering his name
and red, white, and blue logo across clothing. And Fox is using
computers to insert advertising onto the wall behind the batter during
baseball games--ensnaring prized television viewers without distracting
players.
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Photos: Top, courtesy NASCAR; bottom, Megan Doyle
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It has been little more than half a century since the National Association
of Stock Car Racing (NASCAR) began to race on the sands of Daytona Beach,
Florida. Today it can claim to be America's largest spectator sport--and
the one with the most loyal fans. It may also point to the future of other
sports: for all its aw-shucks presentation, NASCAR has eclipsed Indy-style
racing, risen to network television prominence, and expanded its audience
by clever--and relentless--licensing of its designs and imagery.
Last season marked a turning point in the sport's history. NASCAR moved
into the mainstream. Traditional sponsors such as Goody's headache powders
and STP oil treatment have been joined by Kellogg's, Home Depot, McDonald's,
and even Pfizer Drugs. Its three race series--the Winston Cup Sunday
races, the Busch Saturday series, and the Craftsman truck races--play out
at tracks of vast seating capacity whose infields are packed with additional
fans in battered pickups or gleaming motor homes. The multihour races and
tailgating in the infield amid the roar of the engines are a large
part of the appeal.
The death last February of the sport's most popular driver, Dale Earnhardt,
at Daytona--its most famous race and the first of the season--was a
reminder that auto racing remains a sport where death is only inches away.
If this shocks more tenderhearted spectators, it also lends the sport a
core of authenticity: real danger. The sickening sight of Earnhardt's black
number three car slamming into the wall at Daytona may come to be seen as
the day NASCAR became truly national. Earnhardt was perhaps the last of
the hard-edged old-time drivers. His popularity was huge and his name recognition
the highest of any driver, but he was something of a throwback. In many
ways NASCAR is like country music, with which it shares social and geographical
roots. Both are rooted in a rural past but are rapidly franchising themselves
(and, many say, growing blander in the process). Just as the old twangy
sound of Nashville has given way to softer crossover music, NASCAR drivers
have become less hell-raisers than slick corporate spokesmen who never forget
to work as many sponsor names as possible into their postrace sound bites.
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A Mark Martin computer mouse (above, left). Following their favorite
drivers, fans buy every kind of memorabilia --from baseball caps (above,
middle) to action figures (above, right)--but they're buying more than
tokens of the driver and his number; they're also buying sponsor logos.
Photos: Left, Megan Doyle; middle & right, Annie Schlechter
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Still headquartered in Daytona Beach, NASCAR presides over a circuit of
30-plus races on more than 20 tracks, running from February through November.
New tracks have opened in Nevada, Illinois, Texas, and California. The familiar
old race names like Talladega and Darlington have been supplanted by corporate
titles: Coca-Cola 600, Kmart 400. Last year NASCAR began a six-year TV contract
with Fox, Turner, and NBC worth nearly $2.5 billion.
NASCAR design seems at once to parody branding by exaggeration and to suggest
a future for other sports. Now that stadiums carry the names of corporate
sponsors and Fox is computer-inserting advertising onto the wall behind
the batter, it's no longer hard to imagine baseball and football uniforms
becoming as visually busy as a NASCAR driver's suit. The power, speed, and
violence of a sport whose fiery crashes result in amazingly few deaths
stand in jarring contrast to its relentless marketing of souvenir pewter
spoons, Christmas tree ornaments, and Beanie Babies. Souvenir and collectible
sales amount to about a billion dollars annually.
Offsite:
Making Things is online at
For the glitz and glamour of car racing on the Web log onto
www.nascar.com.
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A NASCAR vehicle is so heavily labeled with sponsor names it almost constitutes
an aesthetic. Placement of company names follows carefully worked out pricing
formulas. A six-inch banner for a shock-absorber maker on the front fender
is worth a fraction of the bold logo a soft-drink maker might buy on the
rear deck. But every bit of space is used; even dashboards can be sold,
because they show up on the images transmitted by video cameras mounted
behind the driver.
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Since number-six Mark Martin changed sponsorship from Valvoline (above,
left) to Viagra (above, right) last year, his fans have likewise traded
petroleum for pills.
Photos: Action Sports Inc.
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Making this system of images visually intelligible is difficult. "What's
tough is that you have two competing objectives," says Jamie Rodway,
manager of the licensing department for Roush Racing, for which Mark Martin,
Jeff Burton, and others drive. "One is to represent every sponsor,
and the other is to create a unified-looking appearance. The two purposes
conflict." Cars have become virtual Yellow Pages on wheels.
Avid fans decorate their own cars, turning them into rolling temples to
their favorite drivers, or build home shrines with key chains, license plates,
and models. Some hang sheet metal from cars on their walls; ideally a famous
driver will have autographed his own banged-up fender. Partly due to the
attention brought by Earnhardt's death, fashion has also discovered NASCAR.
Urban designers catering to African-American teens have begun adapting the
sport's bunched-logo look to leather jackets. NASCAR is the whitest of all
sports, and the street culture's dabbling with race-car imagery is like
rappers sampling country music.
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