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The 2013 racing season will be remembered as the year that NASCAR returned to its stock car racing roots.? For the first time in many years, the race cars on the track actually look like their counterparts on the street. At Ford, achieving this for the 2013 NASCAR Fusion was a collaborative effort by Ford Racing and the Ford Design Center.
Ford says it was a tough challenge, because of the size and proportion differences: The production Fusion is front-wheel drive, the race car rear-wheel drive, with a much longer hood and a much lower and wider stance. To create a race car with the look and feel of the production car, the team worked hard on incorporating the production Fusion’s design identity – details like the shapes of the headlight and fog light openings, the grille, and the body-side character lines. Result: The race car has the look and feel of the production Fusion, even though they share no common surfaces.
The real winners in all this are the fans, who once again can really identify with the cars they’re cheering for.
