RACE Chairman Barclay Nettlefold has made it clear he wants new car brands to join the Supercars field to bolster the competition between the Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Camaro – but how realistic is that?
Supercars has long-aspired to attracted more manufacturers to the sport, but apart from a brief period with factory-back Nissan and Volvo teams and a privately funded Mercedes-AMG (all of which ended with limited success and in a relatively short time frame) the sport has been a two horse race between Ford and General Motors since 1993.
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This ‘closed shop’ approach certainly helped Supercars thrive in the 1990s and early 2000s as Ford and Holden tipped millions of dollars into the series every year, supporting multiple teams and even paying driver salaries. But those boom times are over and the sport faces an uncertain future with no public confirmation of what will replace the now-defunct Camaro; although upper-management at GM clearly have a plan.
But Supercar has made life difficult for itself now, with manufacturers likely uncertain how they will be received in the sport, by both their competitors but also the fans. Given the dramatic and drawn out parity debate through 2023, which made even Ford consider its future in the sport, and was only resolved by an expensive trip to a wind tunnel in the USA.
The good news is by going to such lengths Supercars has not only reaffirmed Ford’s commitment but it should give newcomers some peace-of-mind that the sport will do its best to ensure parity between them and the established brands.
The challenger, though, will be finding new brands that have the motivation to join. And, to be blunt, there simply aren’t that many options. Gen3 is centred around V8-powered coupes and there just aren’t many of those left on the new car market. In fact, if you look beyond the Mustang the only other V8 two-door models are the Aston Martin Vantage, Bentley Continental GT, BMW 8-Series, Ferrari Roma and Lexus LC500.
Now, while those would make for a diverse and interesting Supercars grid (and live up to the ‘supercars’ name) there’s about as much chance of attracting those brands as there is of the sport going all-electric in 2025 – zero.
So, what are the realistic options? Well, assuming you can either convince a brand to run a V8 engine, even if it isn’t in the production model, or ditch the strict ‘V8-only’ policy, there are some obvious options. The two more realistic potential additions to the grid are the Toyota Supra and Nissan Z.
You can almost-immediately rule out the likes of the Audi RS5, BMW M4 and Mercedes-AMG C63 competing, because there’s no commercial benefit for those premium brands to compete against (and inevitably be beaten on a regular basis by) Chevrolet and Ford. It’s also a hard task for the local management of those brands to convince their German HQ to allow them to race a bespoke racing car in a domestic series when they have global GT3 and GT4 models available.
Toyota and Nissan are the only two cars that make any real sense for Supercars to pursue, given both are in-market rivals to the Mustang (but obviously not the Camaro because you haven’t been able to buy one here since 2020).
The challenge will be convincing either, or both, brands that there is value in spending marketing dollars on Supercars racing at a time when brands are being stretched by the needs to meet the incoming New Vehicle Efficiency Standard.
Again, to be blunt, Toyota would be a hard sell and for one overriding reason – to what benefit? The brand already dominates sales in the Australian market, accounting for almost one in every five new cars sold. Spending millions to race, in addition to all of its other local and international racing programs, just doesn’t seem necessary.
Nissan, however, is in a very different position. Its sales have been headed in the wrong direction the last few years, slipping outside the top 10 best-sellers in 2023. This year has started more positively, but crucially for the brand and for Supercars’ hopes, two critically important models for Australia are coming soon – a new Navara ute and Patrol SUV.
As has been explained countless times, Ford and Holden didn’t go racing just to sell more Falcons/Mustangs and Commodores (and Chevrolet certainly didn’t do it to sell Camaros), but rather to help lift the brand’s image overall. Nissan made little secret that it raced the Altima to help sell the current Navara, as it was then-new when Kelly Racing was fielding its factory-backed squad.
Supercars fans, like a large percentage of the population, enjoy utes and four-wheel drive SUVs, so racing the Nissan Z would give the brand a platform to speak to potential Navara and Patrol buyers.
Make no mistake, that’s still a long-shot, as Nissan was burnt by the Altima program and won’t want to spend big bucks to be uncompetitive. It will also require a significant amount of financial investment – developing a car, engine program and attracting a team – and permission from global headquarters to even get on the grid.
So while it’s promising, and perfectly understandable, that RACE boss Nettlefold wants to open up the grid, nobody should underestimate the challenges it will take to get a new brand to join Ford and Chevrolet.
By far the biggest problem supercars has created for itself is the blatant favouritism towards the Holden/Camaro.
This was obvious when Holden introduced the ZB Commodore, a sleek hatchback with secret carbon fibre panels against the FG Falcon that had the aero of a barn. No parity concessions were given to the Ford. NONE
In 2019 the Mustang won ONE race and was immediately hit with a parity adjustment. This continued throughout 2019 with another 8 parity adjustments given to the Commodore which then dominated for the next three years.
Lets move on to Gen 3 which was a complete rout for the Camaro and that has continued into 2024.
The bottom line…..if you continue to treat 50% of your customer with with utter contempt you will get what you deserve. And that is precisely and exactly the problem with Supercars.
Yes, but they still don’t see this and nor do the unbelievably one-eyed GM fans who have been fed a steady diet of over entitlement. The result is that the sport has steadily fallen down the pecking order of Australian sport to the status of a niche sport and well below several sports that it used to dominate in terms of mainstream media coverage. Those sports all have truly independent commissions that run the sport (not one dominated by self-interest) and deliver true uncertainty of outcome to fans that draws in interest. An advert for new manufacturers may as well read something like this: Wanted – new manufacturers for Supercars, must be willing to spend vast amounts of money for little benefit. If you would like to play in our sandpit, you need to be prepared to have sand kicked in your face on a regular basis. The expectation is that you play a Washington Generals role to our Harlem Globetrotters (GM) so they have the illusion of achieving wins. All of the other manufacturers could gain far more bang for their buck by sticking to their existing advertising and marketing strategies and staying well away from this self strangulating mess.
The chance of Nissan re-joining Supercars is zero or less. The company has an EV led strategy and if you have noticed has jumped out of all fossil fuel powered motorsport except for the home grown Japanese 500 series which they have a moral obligation to be part of through the Japan Auto Association. Their global commitment is with Formula E.
If Nissan Australia desired to be part of Supercars again it would need to convince the European led Region that they report into, then convince NISMO in Japan, followed by the Global Motorsport Committee. All of this will not happen, especially the first hurdle who would not see this as a suitable marketing opportunity for Nissan Australia when they clearly have cut back on all forms of above the line marketing. At the end of the day, this would be a marketing activity.
As quoted by the author, Nissan were very much burnt by the poor Supercars management of the past during the 2013-18 seasons where they were never given a ‘true’ chance of being successful. Nissan were welcomed and then trod on by the Holden biased Commission at the time, led by Roland Dane and Brad Jones, after launching in 2013. It has only been this last 12 months where we have seen Supercars becoming serious with parity when the writing on the wall stated that they would be left with one brand (Chev) and Ford pulling out. If this current commitment to parity balance was seen back in the 13~15 years, Nissan may still be racing in Supercars. It wasn’t and only lip service was offered.
Simply put, whilst the new Z and especially the newly launched NISMO Z are brilliant cars and would look great on Australian race tracks, it will never happen.