Toyota Uses NASCAR to Remind People How American It Is

You’ve heard the song Turning Japanese? Well, Toyota USA is flipping the script: There’s a great deal that’s turned American about the company’s operations in the United States, and the folks there have found a unique way to let people know about it.

Toyota has invested more than $21-billion in the U.S. market and plans to invest $2-billion more each year until 2022. 17 million Toyota vehicles have already been built on American soil. In 2017 alone, four different assembly plants turned out more than 1.2 million units representing much of the product line-up, including the Corolla (Mississippi), Camry, Camry Hybrid, Avalon, Avalon Hybrid, and Lexus ES 350 (Kentucky), Highlander, Highlander Hybrid, Sequoia, and Sienna (Indiana), and Tacoma and Tundra (Texas).

And that’s just on the vehicle side. Add in three engine production facilities, numerous tertiary suppliers, the research institute in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Toyota Racing Development’s offices that oversee the company’s North American motorsport operations from Salisbury, North Carolina, and Costa Mesa, California, and the recently consolidated national headquarters in Plano, Texas, and Toyota USA employs well over 350,000 Americans across the country.

A few years ago, Toyota decided this is a story worth telling. And the venue the company chose for doing so is just as American as the message: NASCAR.

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“We’re a car company. What better way to promote our brand than in racing?” says Laura Pierce, general manager of motorsports and asset management for Toyota Motor North America. “We can showcase our car performance and, of course, our engineering capability, so there’s a great opportunity there.”

The company started by entering the Toyota Tundra into what’s now called the Camping World Truck Series in 2004 – back then, a vehicle could only race in a NASCAR national series if it was made in America, but that rule has since been rescinded – and won a championship with driver Todd Bodine in 2006. The brand followed that up with a debut in the second- and first-tier series, today known as the Xfinity Series and Monster Energy Cup Series, in 2007.

The early days at the highest level were a long trudge through lackluster results – the seven lower-budget teams scored only two poles out of 36 races in that first year – and pushback from fans who didn’t believe that a foreign manufacturer belonged in the most American of sports.

“There was still this thinking that Toyota is a foreign brand and our cars are made in Japan,” Pierce says. “When we entered the sport, we really focused on Americanization message.”

In 2008 came a significant credibility shift when championship-winning team Joe Gibbs Racing switched to Toyota power. Before long, the wins started coming, and then the titles: first with Kyle Busch in 2015, and then again with Martin Truex, Jr. last season.

Meanwhile, in the background, Toyota was deploying small armies of product specialists to interact trackside with NASCAR fans, engaging them on various levels.

“They have their favorite drivers, and there’s a passion there,” Pierce says. To that end, Toyota installs large fan engagement areas at many tracks, including a 20,000 square foot display at the upgraded Daytona Motor Speedway, where people can share their driver fandom while touching and sitting in Toyota vehicles auto show style.

“We really try to engage with the fans and showcase our brand and what we’re doing,” Pierce adds. “We have big display board at every one of those events so that people can visually see where (each assembly) plant is at, and then the cars will say ‘born in Kentucky’ or ‘born in Indiana’ to restate that fact.”

The brand also holds entitlement sponsorships for several races. At the Toyota Owners 400 at Richmond Raceway, Toyota drivers receive VIP treatment.

“We bring our Toyota Owners Hub,” says Paul Doleshal, Toyota Motor North America’s senior manager of motorsports and asset management. “If you bring a key for a Toyota, Scion, or Lexis, you get free access to it. We feed them a hot dog and a soda and chips. We’ll have special appearances there. There’s cornhole and games that they can play.

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“It’s just a segregated area where they can get away from the mass, have a little bit of shade and a restroom while they’re walking around the midway.

“Focusing an entire weekend around our appreciation of our owners is important.”

That’s a lot of different ways to attack the same lack of awareness and acceptance. But according to the numbers, it’s working.

Toyota says its survey figures show that 61 percent of NASCAR fans now support the company’s participation in the sport, a number that’s gone up 10 percent in the past three years alone in the wake of the brand’s pair of championships in quick succession. And, critically, purchase consideration – whether someone would entertain the idea of buying a Toyota at all – is up 24 percent since NASCAR joined the sport and is now on par with the American Cup brands.

In short, it’s a classic example of that well-worn motorsport saying: win on Sunday, sell on Monday. And a dash of education and goodwill doesn’t hurt.

“Through our struggles, I think we earned a level of respect from the fan base,” says David Wilson, president of Toyota Racing Development USA. “We did it the right way.

“We partnered with teams and drivers that were credible within the sport and that had the trust of the fans, and they helped bridge that trust and an acceptance of Toyota.”

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