Toyota joins up with NASCAR to drive domestic truck sales.

Seeing an opportunity to take market share from the domestic industry leaders, Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc. is wrapping its Tundra pickup truck marketing efforts in red, white and blue.

With Ford Motor Co., DaimlerChrysler Corp. and General Motors Corp. dominating the segment, Toyota's Torrance-based U.S. headquarters is looking to build the Tundra brand in the Southwest and Southeast, areas that have been deeply loyal to American trucks.

Among the steps Toyota has taken in recent months are entering the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series racing circuit, establishing a new race truck design facility in North Carolina, and announcing plans for a new manufacturing plant in San Antonio, Texas.

"Toyota is saying, this is an American-built truck for Americans and the NASCAR deal follows suit," said Jeff Schuster, director of North American forecasting at J.D. Power and Associates, which tracks the automotive industry. "They're trying to market themselves to the heart of America."

Through July, Ford and Dodge each had sold nearly 10 times as many full-size tracks nationwide than Toyota, according to Web site Pickuptrucks.com. In L.A. County, Toyota fared much better, with the Tundra outselling the Dodge Ram, according to R.L. Polk & Co.

Toyota desperately wants to improve in its weak regions, and has given its motorsports division in Torrance a multi-million dollar marketing budget to use NASCAR as its campaign platform.

The company is building race trucks in Costa Mesa and Charlotte, N.C. facilities and recruiting truck racing teams in anticipation of its racing debut at February's Daytona 500.

"There's substantially more marketing commitment behind this. It's a new area for Toyota to be committing resources to," said Les Unger, Toyota's national motorsports manager.

Major breakthrough

Toyota became the first foreign car manufacturer allowed into a major NASCAR racing circuit earlier this year. The fact that the Tundra and many Toyota cars are designed and built in the U.S. was a factor in NASCAR's decision to change its American-only rules, said Unger.

The Craftsman Truck Series, established in 1995, is considered a steppingstone to NASCAR's most popular event, the stockcar-based Winston Cup. Both events, which feature several races at various tracks across the country, have experienced booms in recent years.

Toyota will unveil its racing truck and teams this fall, and racing teams and track owners said the manufacturer will have little problem finding teams willing to switch over, based on the financial incentives and technology the company boasts.

Already, Toyota has lured several racing truck designers from Bill Davis Racing, a Dodge-sponsored NASCAR team, to its new design facility in Charlotte. The move touched off a Dodge lawsuit accusing Bill Davis, owner of the team, of violating disclosure clauses in his contract with Dodge. Davis could not be reached for comment, but others in the industry believe that Toyota's aggressive spending might lure more teams to switch.

"Ford and GM are facing the consequences. Race teams are concerned the business approach Toyota might take will disrupt the competitive balance," said Geoff Smith, president of Roush Racing in Charlotte.

Smith said Toyota is offering to subsidize a substantially higher portion of a team's operations, a strategy that puts pressure on teams currently required to raise most of their money through sponsorship.

Unger countered that Toyota has no interest in upsetting the order at NASCAR. "It's not our intent to have these teams 100 percent funded by Toyota. That's not how things are done in NASCAR," he said.

Toyota will also have to overcome a cultural reaction to its campaign. Some racing fans have complained that the sport should remain purely American. Whether the company can win these fans over, and translate the results into increased Tundra sales, will be affected by how well it does in NASCAR beginning next year.