Toyota ready to take next step, join Nextel Cup circuit in 2007

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- It was not a little jarring several years ago when NASCAR fans began arriving at racetracks in Toyota Tundra trucks and other vehicles built by foreign manufacturers.

Now, Japanese automaker Toyota is preparing to leave the parking lot and drive into that bastion of American auto racing and culture -- NASCAR's Nextel Cup series.

Not since the mid-1950s, when British-made Jaguars ran a handful of races in NASCAR's top series, has a foreign make competed in the Cup.

From that time until 2000, when NASCAR allowed a Toyota-powered car in the now-defunct Goody's Dash series, even the suggestion that a car or engine built by the Japanese, the Germans or any other non-American could eventually race in NASCAR kindled everything from heated debate to physical confrontation among the parochial and rabid fans of stock car racing.

Once Toyota ratcheted up to the Craftsman Truck Series in 2004, though, it became clear the next step was stock cars.

It was announced earlier this week that a NASCAR edition of the Camry, the best-selling car in the U.S. in seven of the last eight years, will begin racing in 2007 in both of NASCAR's top stock car series -- Cup and Busch.

"Like it or not, Toyota is a very important part of our economy today," said team owner Jack Roush, who fields five Fords in the Nextel Cup series. "We've got a lot of dealer investment dollars out there, and we've got a lot of our population that works in Toyota plants around the country. So they have every right to be here."