I used to like NASCAR....

This is a 2010 Ford Mustang.

NASCAR would like you to believe that THIS is a 2010 Ford Mustang. But it is not.

First, we get the pointless-as-tits-on-a-boar "Chase" "playoff" scheme.

Then we get the abomination that is the "Car of Tomorrow".

Then they give us this "Mustang," apparently, sadly, with Ford's blessing.

It's not as if we needed any more evidence that NASCAR has become a gigantic stinking dungheap.

Witness the hatchet job that NASCAR did in trying to get the Mustang compliant with the "Car of Tomorrow" template to be used in the minor-league Nationwide Series, starting in 2010. The last I checked, the new Mustang didn't have a trunk. But that's not what NASCAR would have you believe. Toyota and Chevrolet haven't been done any favors by the new Nationwide rules either.

Ford and Mustang fans should be marching with pitchforks and torches on NASCAR's Daytona Beach headquarters.

Chevy fans should be thankful that GM didn't let NASCAR butcher the awesome new Camaro in a similar fashion. Their reasoning here, as told by GM Racing Director Mark Kent to autoextremist.com (emphasis mine):

"We've looked at racing the Camaro, and one thing that we do not want to do is to force a car where it shouldn't be. As we looked at NASCAR, for example, we took a very hard look at running the Camaro in the Nationwide Series. That was a request made of us by NASCAR. We've had a tremendous partnership with NASCAR, so we took a very hard look at it. At the end of the day, because of the quest for very close competition and the need to have templated bodies in that series, we just felt that by forcing the Camaro into the Nationwide templates, we were compromising the lines of an iconic car. At the end of the day, we could not get the Camaro in the Nationwide Series to satisfy our requirements."

It's hard to tell what value, if any, the automakers are supposed to derive from NASCAR participation anymore. The automakers are third-class citizens behind the drivers and sponsors. The cars bear no resemblance, either inward or outward, to the cars that we can buy in showrooms. When was the last time you could buy a new car with a carburetor?