This Is The Best Motorsports Will Probably Ever Get In Your Life, Enjoy It While You Can

Ford made a series of announcements yesterday about the investments it was going to make in motorsports. The amount of money now flowing into racing from manufacturers hasn’t been seen in decades, global racing is more accessible to watch, and it’s really starting to feel like the good times. Enjoy it while it lasts.

I want this to be a celebration of what’s to come with a tinge of warning. People don’t always know when they’re living in a golden era, and I think we’re living in a golden motorsports era. I even think there’s a reason to believe it might last. At the same time, there are many reasons why it might vanish just as quickly as it appeared.

Nissan is frequently in The Morning Dump as a company that had good times, then bad times, then good times again. These are definitely not golden times for Nissan (unless you’re Greg Kelly, maybe). The same could be said for Bosch. The massive German automotive supplier is hurting.

The whole world could be hurting if tariffs against Mexico and Canada go into effect… tomorrow? Maybe?

Not Since 1998 Has It Been This Good For Motorsports Fans

The idea for The Morning Dump today came from our pal Parker Kligerman who is both a professional race car driver and a student of racing history. I was introduced to Parker roughly a million years ago by a mutual friend at NASCAR who had a sense that we’d hit it off.

Meeting Parker in an RV before a race I was a little suspicious. Many NASCAR drivers, like many athletes, are boring. Just because they race cars all day it doesn’t mean they like cars. And, at first, there wasn’t a lot there. Then someone suggested Parker show me the SEMA project he was doing with Toyota.

It was a rally car made out of a Camry with those classic ’80s TRD colors, which led to a discussion of WRC, old IMSA cars, Trans-Am, everything. We’ve been friends ever since.

Ford yesterday announced it was doing all the racing. In addition to being a part of F1 in the future, Ford’s going to compete in the top GTP/Hypercar class at Le Mans; continue in NASCAR; develop drivers like Porsche does; reunite with the Triple Eight team in Australian Supercars, and on and on and on.

The company isn’t alone. GM has been great in IndyCar, IMSA, and is targeting F1 with Cadillac.. Porsche never left. Audi wants to be in F1. Honda and Acura are everywhere. It’s awesome.

When was it ever this good before? Parker and I eventually agreed that 1998 was probably the last best year in motorsports. Häkkinen v. Schumacher in F1. One of the best Le Mans lineups ever. Jeff Gordon being Jeff Gordon. The tobacco money probably didn’t hurt.

But it’s not ciggies that are funding racing now, it’s the automakers. Why? Here’s what Bill Ford said last night:

We are entering a new era for performance and racing at Ford. You can see it from what we’re doing on-road and off-road. When we race, we race to win. And there is no track or race that means more to our history than Le Mans. It is where we took on Ferrari and won in the 1960s. It is where we returned 50 years later and shocked the world and beat Ferrari again. I am thrilled that we’re going back to Le Mans and competing at the highest level of endurance racing. We are ready to once again challenge the world, and ‘go like hell!’”

Some of this is the current mix of executives at Ford. CEO Jim Farley loves motorsports and spends some of his free time vintage racing old fords. Ford’s global head of motorsports, Mark Rushbrook, is a smart guy who has brought together a lot of successful teams. Ford ended the year winning NASCAR’s top series and started the year winning its class at the Rolex 24.

I think it’s bigger than that, though, or you wouldn’t see almost every major automaker in the mix, including growing interest from the South Korean brands.

So here’s the bear case for motorsports and here’s the bull case.

The bear case is simple. Driverless cars are coming. Electric cars are here. If bad times come the first thing that’ll get cut is probably motorsports. Do loud V8 race cars make sense in 2035? Will there be an audience for them? Perhaps this is the apotheosis and we don’t even realize it.

The bull case is a bit more complex. Real quick, going back to Parker. Years after our meeting we made a TV show together called Proving Grounds that aired, usually, after NASCAR races. With this lead-in we sometimes broke the top 100 cable programs on Sunday and, with F1 being run time-delayed on ESPN, we actually beat the F1 broadcast with our silly little show.

That wouldn’t happen today. F1 is suddenly very popular here and, I think, a lot of that has to do with the show Drive To Survive making automakers realize the potential value of racing.

Is it win-on-Sunday-sell-on-Monday as in the past? I don’t think so. What the modern F1 world has shown is that motorsports can be its own business. Ferrari kept selling out its cars even when the team was frustrating and kinda bad. The difference is that Ferrari sells a crap-ton of t-shirts when it wins and, via its agreement with F1, keeps pocketing cash when it doesn’t.

Red Bull is another example of a brand that exists as both a company (it makes soda, I think) and as its own racing/action sports/media organization. There are probably limits to this (IndyCar?), but Ford is showing that a coordinated and global approach to racing is probably worth doing.

Nissan Cutting Back Shifts In The United States

Nissan’s good times were in the ’90s, before the bubble burst. Then, of course, there was the early Ghosn era when the company had a bit of energy back. We all know how that ended.

The company has continued to pump out products that are interesting, including the new Nissan Kicks and maybe the new Murano (and also the new Z). At the same time, its bread-and-butter Rogue and Altima are in need of a big overhaul. As part of a pre-Honda merger streamlining, the company is cutting back Rogue production as much as it can afford to in the United States.

Per Reuters:

Nissan will offer the separation packages to workers at its vehicle assembly plants in Smyrna, Tennessee, and Canton, Mississippi, and an engine plant in Decherd, Tennessee.

Japan’s third-biggest automaker by volume will slash one of two shifts at the production line for its Rogue sports utility vehicle in Smyrna starting in April, and for the Altima sedan in Canton from September.

So far these are just voluntary layoffs, and Nissan said it wants to avoid mandatory ones.

While we’re talking about Nissan, I think one of the great injustices of the last 20 years in the automotive world is that the company’s Japanese arm convinced prosecutors to arrest American exec Greg Kelly after tricking him into coming back to Japan for a meeting. The accusation was that Kelly helped Ghosn fleece the company when, in reality, it seemed like Kelly was just doing his job.

To his credit, Kelly has fought the charges, even though it required a lot of time in jail and being stuck in Japan. Automotive News has the full story:

In March 2022, Kelly was cleared by the Tokyo District Court of financial misconduct for seven of the eight years that prosecutors and Nissan alleged it happened. He was given a suspended sentence and allowed to return to the U.S., but only after being jailed and grounded in Japan for more than three years fighting in court.

Now, Kelly, 68, may clear his name completely, pending the appeal of his sole guilty count.

“He will be found not guilty on all counts, no doubt about it,” Kelly’s criminal defense attorney Yoichi Kitamura said in a Jan. 29 interview at his office in central Tokyo. “He is in very high spirits.”

I have a lot of respect for Kelly for sticking to this and I hope he clears his name fully.

Bosch’s Profits Probably Fell By A Third

German electronics company and automotive supplier Bosch is everywhere. If you own two cars the odds are pretty good that there’s a Bosch product in at least one of them.

Bosche CEO Stefan Hurting says buckle up, because 2025 isn’t going to be that much easier. The company projected a small amount of profit growth last year, only to, per estimates, see profits actually drop by a third.

From Manager Magazine:

“Despite all efforts,” the company has not been able to escape the economic realities, said Hartung. They are not satisfied. There are several reasons for the situation: The world’s largest automotive supplier is suffering from low demand for vehicles – primarily electric cars. In addition, many consumers are still holding back on purchasing devices such as cordless screwdrivers, washing machines and refrigerators.

The situation was similar for Bosch’s other mainstays: Mechanical engineering is struggling with the weak economy, and many companies are not making any investments. And the European heating market is putting pressure on the building technology sector. The result shows how great the uncertainty is among customers and consumers, said Hartung. “It is unusual that there is a lack of significant impetus in all of our sectors at the same time.” At least none of the four business areas posted red figures.

Bosch really thrived in the globalized production world I often talk about. In particular, Bosch probably isn’t excited that CEOs are complaining about having 100 different systems in their car instead of the seven that Rivian uses. Why? Because Bosch makes a lot of those systems.

Making matters more complex is the new tariff environment we might be getting into? Maybe? Probably?

Are Tariffs Against Canada And Mexico Going Into Effect Tomorrow?

I don’t know what the new administration in Washington, DC will do and, to be quite honest, I’m not always sure they do. Is a 25% tariff on goods from Mexico and Canada going to happen tomorrow? No one seems to know for sure.

Car execs and suppliers are sweating it, though many of them seem to think that it’s only going to be temporary. At least that was the feeling at a recent discussion at the Washington, D.C. Auto Show as covered by Automotive News:

“Mexico and Canada have never been good to us on trade,” Trump said, saying the tariffs would be in response to trade deficits and the flow of fentanyl into the U.S.

Still, industry executives hope any new tariffs would be short-lived or phased in over time as negotiations take place in Washington, Ottawa and Mexico City. All three panelists during an afternoon policy discussion at SAE International’s Government and Industry conference here said they think Trump is likely to view tariffs primarily as a bargaining chip.

“My personal sense is that 25 percent on Canada and Mexico is going to be very difficult to do or sustain for a long period of time,” said Greg Senstrum, senior policy adviser at law and lobbying firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck.

Again, who really knows? The President seems to be focused on the recent tragic plane crash in Washington, which he seems to want to blame on DEI. That could delay the tariffs which, if they went into effect, could impact all of these cars and likely more due to our complex and interconnected supply chain.

What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD

I already did David Hasselhoff’s famous performance on the Berlin Wall in 1989 so I can’t do that again. Instead, it’s the Hoff doing the “Du.”

The Big Question

Is this a golden era of motorsports? Will it get better? Will it get worse?