The Hard Sell

The guys on the lot are convinced GM still needs NASCAR.

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Lots are often empty even as the NASCAR tracks stay full.

Down at the local GM dealership the boys are nervous.

In the shadow of downtown Charlotte, a group of car salesman sat in the shade outside their showroom on a too-warm early June day, two on a golf cart and two standing alongside. It used to be on a Monday following a Chevy win in NASCAR's Sprint Cup Series (Jimmie Johnson won on Sunday with a thrilling late Dover dash) the fellas would be courting excited customers by talking racing.

"Now," one of the neck-tied men said as he stomped out a cigarette, "all we talk about is gloom and doom … and politics."

The visibly jittery men had reluctantly welcomed a sportswriter into their midst, but only on the condition that their full names and exact location not be revealed.

"The word is that GM is going to close one in five dealerships across the country," said Jack, the oldest man in the group. "I can damn near see five GM dealerships from this golf cart. So we don't need anyone in Detroit or Washington to read anything we say here and go, 'I don't know about those other four lots in Charlotte, but the hell with those complainers I read about on ESPN, shut 'em down!'"

Pardon the paranoia, but that's what happens to a man when his livelihood has been batted about in the headlines and speculated upon on the cable news channels for more than a year. On Monday morning, the day before the salesmen held court by the golf cart, General Motors filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and entered into a complicated mosaic of an ownership plan that involved the U.S. and Canadian governments and the United Auto Workers. These four didn't care who owned what (two said they voted for Obama, two for McCain), they just wanted to feel a little optimism again.

All morning long they pored over GM news stories and Dover post-race coverage in The Charlotte Observer, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. Sadly, they had plenty of time to do it.

"I sold four vehicles in May," admitted a middle-aged lot jockey the guys called Doc. "That's not just May anywhere, that's May in Charlotte while the All-Star Race and the Coca-Cola 600 are going on. And now they are running the race in Darlington during May, which is just down the road. Hell, people usually get so car crazy during the race weeks that it was nothing to sell four a day."

"People still get excited when their driver wins a race and they come down here and start poking around, even if they don't have the money to buy."

So, does that mean that General Motors staying in NASCAR is a mistake?

"Hell no! If it hadn't been for racing people I would have sold zero."

As GM, Chrysler, Ford and even Toyota and Honda have taken their licks during the Great Recession, most financial analysts have been quick to dismiss the "Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday" mantra that has long been used to justify the relationship between auto racing and automakers. The lack of hard evidence linking racing to sales was a particularly favorite piñata during the wintertime automaker congressional hearings, when lawmakers questioned the logic of a struggling company sinking cash into motorsports.

Those critics have managed to dismiss even the endless public testimony of NASCAR owner Rick Hendrick, who owns 67 automobile dealerships, 27 of them GM affiliates, including Jeff Gordon Chevrolet in Wilmington, NC, Jimmie Johnson Chevrolet in San Diego and Terry Labonte Chevrolet in Greensboro. After Johnson's win at Dover, Hendrick's 180th Chevy victory, the team owner bristled when ESPN.com's Ed Hinton asked what about life if GM were forced to withdraw from NASCAR.

"My Plan A is Chevrolet and my Plan B is Chevrolet and my Plan C is Chevrolet."

One can understand how the folks in Washington could sidestep a man with so much vested in the century-old company, both on and off the track.

But it would be much more difficult for them to ignore the comments from the golf cart.

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A month of sales now used to be a day.

"People still get excited when their driver wins a race and they come down here and start poking around, even if they don't have the money to buy," Jack said. "Especially women. When Jeff Gordon started winning 15 years ago you were guaranteed to have at least two women standing here in the lot when we opened on Monday morning. You could set your clock by it. And when the little blue-eyed kid wins … what's his name?"

Kasey Kahne?

"Yeah, him. When he wins my buddies over at the Dodge dealerships say that it looks like Desperate Housewives over there. Success in racing still sells, especially if the guy winning in your cars is a good guy. Why do you think we have this stuff out in the showroom?"

By "this stuff" he meant NASCAR posters, banners and life-size cardboard stand-up cut-outs of Jimmie Johnson, Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Junior and even an old faded display of Dale Earnhardt Senior, which shoppers still posed with, snapping photos with their cell phones. The men laugh off comparisons to mere advertising, saying that performance-based marketing is another animal entirely.

"Yeah, anyone who tells you that GM should get out of racing just doesn't know what the hell they're talking about," added Doc. "I don't have a spreadsheet or anything to back me up, but I know what I know after a couple of decades of selling cars. It's like Tiger Woods using Nike equipment. He's not just wearing a shirt with a logo on it. He's using their stuff in his hands. If you want to build this deal back up you can't take away our greatest source of brand pride."

Added Jack: "Racing may not mean as much as it used to, but it's one of the last real footholds we've got. Take that away and you're pretty much killing the last real connection we have to the public. God knows the guys up in the Detroit have done a damn nice job of burning all of the other bridges we had. They can't take this one away too."

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