If you’re a NASCAR fan, you’ve probably seen a commercial spoof Darrell Waltrip and Jeff Hammond did on the new #48 Lowe’s Chevrolet Car of Tomorrow during the broadcasts. Here are some shots from behind-the-scenes taken by my showcar driver on-site for the shoot. It is funny seeing DW and “Hollywood” Hammond dressed up for this skit.
Aside from the humor of this shoot, this helps to profile the hard work and time invested by my employees and me to get these new body styles ready for the public. While the race team builds brand new cars from the ground up, in the Showcar Department, we have to take the cars we already have and modify them when a new style car is mandated. Eventually we get the new style cars as they are retired from the teams, but until then, we have to have cars that look just like the real thing to do photo shoots and media/sponsor events. Lots of fabrication and body work is involved to turn about half of our fleet of one style car into a totally different configuration, but my employees got it done like they always do!
The cars not modified into “Cars Of Tomorrow” (COT), were purposely held aside to be restored to their original paint schemes/body styles at some point later. These would be cars that have historical significance to Hendrick Motorsports, so we made the decision to keep them as-is and not modify them to the COT body. Those will be restoration projects for another day and time.
Edited March 1, 2013 to add this video:
