With the Charger’s unveiling at Las Vegas Motor Speedway Sunday morning, Dodge became the third of the four NASCAR Sprint Cup manufacturers to reveal its 2013 Cup car. The new car’s body shares far more with the roadgoing Charger that before; it’s part of bringing back the “brand identity” that both NASCAR and its involved manufacturers lost as the cars became increasingly identical in the interest of safety and racing parity.
Ford unveiled the 2013 Fusion Cup car at the NASCAR Media Tour at Charlotte Motor Speedway in January, then Toyota briefly showed an oddly disguised—with zebra-stripe camo—2013 Camry race car at the Daytona International Speedway just prior to the wild Daytona 500.
Two major questions remain. First, when will we see the 2013 Chevrolet Cup car? The program has reportedly suffered some delays, and a reveal date has not been announced. The nameplate is likewise unknown—all we can say is that it’s likely to be an SS version of either the 2013 Malibu or the redesigned 2014 Impala.
The second question: Who is going to race this new Dodge car next year? The central Dodge team, Penske Racing, has already announced that it will move to Ford next year, which puts Dodge in an uncomfortable position for several reasons— it needs to hunt for a new (and contending) team to lead the charge for 2013, and it now has to absorb future development for the 2013 Charger in-house, as Penske was doing the lion’s share of the work. Both Dodge and Penske insist that they will pull out all stops to win races in 2012, but you have to wonder if that truly will be the case, especially as the season nears its end. (Penske also is jumping from Honda to Chevrolet for the 2012 IndyCar season, indicative of the fact that Penske has probably brand-hopped as much or more than any major racing team.)
None of this reflects on the 2013 NASCAR Sprint Cup Dodge Charger, which brings a genuinely compelling, familiar look to the brand’s Cup entries, much as the move last year to the Challenger did for the NASCAR Nationwide series cars. Dodge is, after all, the only NASCAR manufacturer to base its racer on a rear-drive vehicle with an optional V-8, which immediately puts its entries substantially closer to what folks drive on the street than those from Ford, Toyota, and Chevrolet.
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