This came from the V8 Supercars race in Bahrain in 2007 and it illustrates a very interesting point. Although V8 Supercars has marketed itself as the "Ford vs Holden" battle, do the punters really care anymore?
There may have been blue murder dried when Craig Lowndes "defected" to Ford in 2000, but now in 2009 no-one even seems to bat an eyelid that 888 Engineering are taking their whole team across the divide to Holden. Perhaps also, the fans are ignorant that whilst in Australia 888 are switching to Holden, 888 in the UK have been dumped by another GM brand Vauxhall, and it is questionable whether they will even appear in the 2010 BTCC.
NASCAR has had three "all-American" manufacturers in the past and even they ran several brands with Chevrolet, Buick, Pontiac, Ford and Dodge all throwing their hat into the ring, but the introduction of Toyota hasn't really been met with the opposition that was predicted at all. In fact it came without much of a ripple at all.
Even in Australia when you ask people about what their favourite tin-top car of all time are, invariably the Holden A9X will come out on top because it looked so wild, or even Ford's big XC Falcon coupes that Moffat and Bond took to a 1-2 in 1977, but immediately after that you start getting answers like the Nissan GTR, the Dodge Charger, the Mazda RX-7 and even Kevin Bartlett's Channel 9 Camaro.
Would the fans' noses be put that far out of joint if there was a V8 Supercar BMW, or Mercedes-Benz? How about a Ferrari or a Jaguar? Or a Hyundai, Toyota, Kia or Subaru? To be honest, I don't think we'd notice much.
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