This is the Statt Mann Baby!!  Time to Scatt a little bit.

Last week I took some liberties with NASCAR Mustang for the Nationwide series.  It’s a hideous idea and a loss for Ford if the idea actually takes the track next year.

Well there’s more this week from GM.  At the news conference announcing the debut of the GT2 Corvette this weekend at Mid-Ohio, an executive was asked if GM would put it’s Camaro in NASCAR’s Nationwide series.

General Motors' head of motorsport was quick with his answer: “NO!”

And why not?  He said because GM wants the Camaro to look like a Camaro when it hits a racetrack near you.

What a novel concept!  Someone wants to race a stock car in stock car racing that looks like a stock car available in the showroom on Monday morning.  And you wonder, with that kind of thinking, why GM had to beg the government to stay in business last fall. 

Maybe we should’ve had a racer in the front office instead of the executives that drove GM into bankruptcy last fall.

And more from GM's Mark Kent: “We felt that by forcing the Camaro into the Nationwide templates that we were compromising the body lines of an iconic car.”

Now I’m the last person to actually jump on the new Camaro bandwagon.  I don’t like the car.  But anyone who comes with a fresh look at how it will be used gets my vote and Racin’s Clear-Thinker-of-the-Week Award.

Send him – shall we say – a Clear-A-Tin right away!

Peace.