Motorsports: Part Three

Segment 3 from “The Race is On”

Detroit Public TV
Sunday, 2/17 @ 10:30am ET
Speed
Sunday, 2/17 @ 7:00am ET
Thursday, 2/21 @ 4:30am ET

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Podcast:

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  1. Entire Show: Watch Entire Show

  2. Segment 1: Motorsports: Part One

    Guests:

    • Dan Davis, Director, Ford Racing Technology
    • Mark Kent, Director, GM Racing

    Panel:

    (6:11)

  3. Segment 2: Motorsports: Part Two

    Guests:

    • Dan Davis, Director, Ford Racing Technology
    • Mark Kent, Director, GM Racing

    Panel:

    (6:33)

  4. Segment 3: Motorsports: Part Three

    Guests:

    • Dan Davis, Director, Ford Racing Technology
    • Mark Kent, Director, GM Racing

    Panel:

    (6:37)

  5. EXTRA: Dan Davis, Director, Ford Racing Technology, Mark Kent, Director, GM Racing


    (11:06)

Synopsis

By the time country music great George Jones hit the top of the charts with this 1964 classic, Detroit's Big Three had been "racing" for some time. Chrysler, Ford and GM started marketing themselves to the motorsports crowd as early as the '50s, but the next decade is when they really started to burn rubber. That's when all three signed on with NASCAR and a couple even began marketing to other racing circuits like IndyCar, Formula 1, NHRA and Le Mans. By the '70s the race was still on and has stayed that way despite "heartache going to the inside" for the Big Three and their budgets over the last thirty years.

On this week's Autoline, John McElroy introduces you to the two executives responsible for keeping their brands in front of the massive racing audiences around the globe. Dan Davis is the Director of Ford Racing Technology while Mark Kent is his counterpart at GM Racing. Joining John on the panel is a racing expert in his own right, Peter De Lorenzo of the Autoextremist.com.

So strap yourself in for a 200 miles-per-hour look at racing's impact in the auto industry on Autoline.