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The amount of sponsors that have graced NASCAR cars of any series is abundant and covers just about every industry inside, outside, and everywhere in between the industry of NASCAR itself. Naturally in the last 75 years there have been plenty of sponsors that have come and gone and in that time as well have went out of business. So today we will be looking back at 7 former NASCAR sponsors that don't exist anymore.
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47 comments
What NASCAR sponsors do you remember that no longer exist?
Kodak cameras.
I can’t recall any other than maybe Cingular Wireless, but there is one sponsor I thought no longer, which was AMP Energy. I was pretty shocked to find out it was still being produced.
Home Depot and Lowe’s
Here is a pretty notable sponsor that was in NASCAR that doesn’t exist anymore, and that was Kodak. They were a camera company who made cameras dating back from 1888, to 2012 when they sold all their assets, to an independent British photography company. Although they still make printers and short films, the cameras which made this company famous, and no more. This same sponsor would win 3 Daytona 500’s in the 1990’s with the iconic Morgan McClure Motorsports #4 Chevrolet.
I’m pretty sure they still exist
Kodak still exists just on a much smaller scale
i thought the kodak sponsor was tobacco ? like the chew
You’re thinking of Kodiak swivil…
I miss both Circuit City and its paint schemes in NASCAR.
We can blame incompetent management for that. The Circuit City nearest me is now a Best Buy, a competitor that survived the recession and embraced the internet
I still think the Sprint Cup is the best name NASCAR has had for the Cup Series. It fits the racing stature NASCAR has better than any other the Cup Series had imo.
Nah I think Winston Cup still reins supreme as the title name. What’s more southern then stock cars and cigarettes?
I agree with Jack since I grew up with Sprint sponsoring the Cup Series from 2010-2016. Although I got used to Monster Energy during 2017-2019, I still like Sprint better
I still remember Nextel and it’s bankruptcy to Sprint. The feds chased Winston out of the cup series
I was in Japan recently and Toy’s R Us is still going strong in Asia. I came across a couple stores in Tokyo and Osaka.
I got one where I life in Canada
I think it was only the USA store that closed. I have heard from lots of people in different countries that toys r us is still around
Toys rus still exist there mostly in malls in malls in the us the one closest to me is in the Portland mall in Maine aka the biggest city in Maine if didn’t know it existed but yeah there still here
Yeah they where closed in America, Mexico, and England to my knowledge. I think there still in business every where else. It probably wasn’t a big time loss to England because they have huge toy stores called Smyths. In America we have nothing really
Toys я Us never went out of business. They closed all their stores in the US, but have online shopping. They announced yesterday they are planning on opening stores back up in the country, mostly at airports and on cruise ships.
It wasn’t online shopping that forced them into bankruptcy, they we’re still profitable. The equity firm that bought it transferred billions of dollars in debt to it and declared bankruptcy. They used Toys я Us to wipe out their debts.
I remembered Jerry Nadeau(and a few others that drove it) in 1998 with the “FirstPlus Loans” sponsorship. And Ted Musgrave/Kevin LePage’s “Primestar” in the 90’s.
Hielig Meyers to the 90 car.
I was employed from 1995 to 2002 by Service Merchandise. We were briefly an associate sponsor (rear facing) in 1997 and part of 1998. The sponsorship ended when the company declared bankruptcy in 1998.
Bill Elliott!
The Wrestling Promotion World Championship Wrestling(WCW)Was a Sponsor in the mid 90s to around 2000. As a big wrestling fan,It was cool to see wrestling sponsoring a Nascar Team
I actually have one of those cars. A #9 car that had former WCW Champion Bill Goldberg on the hood.
@Austin EmmsI remember Kyle Petty bringing the NWO Car out on a episode of Nitro
I’m an Earnhardt fan and I’d agree, GM Goodwrench, Richard Childress, Dale Earnhardt and Kevin Harvick we’re great combinations!
Interesting video I thought Pontiac was going a lot sooner after 2003 because they had to switch to Chevrolet for those teams. I did not know they lasted that long as a manufacturer till the early 2010s same as blockbuster. I thought they were gone in the 2000s.
As an Australian, it’s weird to hear someone speak about Kmart not existing anymore. They’re pretty much the go-to department store for myself and my family (in fact, I went to one just this week, and I’m in a completely different part of the country from where I live). Though, funnily enough, they’re merging with Target.
Same with me and Toys R S. I’m in Canada and there’s still several around and perfectly up and running
Australia Kmart and us are different companies….which blew my mind away
@jsmith282 Yeah, the OG Kmart was involved in the founding of Kmart Australia, but they sold their interest in the mid-90’s. Kmart Australia also still uses the pre-1990 version of the Kmart logo. Similar deal with Sears Mexico, which was founded by Sears US, but was sold to Carlos Slim in the late 90’s. They also still use the 90’s Sears logo, but in red. And both will most likely outlive the original stores.
Interestingly, Target Australia has no connection to Target USA whatsoever. It’s just an outright different chain that just copied the branding which Target USA was okay with I guess.
To me Kmart is always associated with the Newman/Haas IndyCar team Stateside, and in Australia, the Kmart Racing team with Murph and Tod Kelly in the 2000s. Murphs five minute penalty gave everyone a great chance to go look at that beautiful scheme. The Kmart scheme just worked on the VX and VY commodores…and then some.
Pontiac going out of business really hit hard for my dad because that was one of his favorite car brands. The cars he owns right now is a 1978 Trans Am (Sorely in need of restoration) and a 2009 G6 coupe (Got the car from a substitute teacher). I remember a bunch of my family members who drove Pontiacs back when I was 5 or 6 years old.
Ill never understand why they ditched pontiac in favor of buick. Who even drives a buick anymore besides retirees? And most of theirs are 20+ year old grocery getters that get driven twice a week, its not like theyre going out and buying new ones in droves. Wouldve sold more firebirds alone than everything buick has sold since id be willing to bet lol
First one is Circuit City. They were a primary sponsor for a few drivers, like Hut Stricklin in the #8 car in the 90’s, but they were also a secondary sponsor to Bobby Labonte, and I believe also sponsored a few races here and there.
Next is Alltel, sponsor of Flyin Ryan Newman’s number 12 car. Yes, they were absorbed by Verizon, but it’s another company that doesn’t exist anymore, and same with Cingular Wireless, which I think had one of the coolest paint schemes ever on the 31 car.
Finally, I think WCW needs a mention here. The rise and fall of WCW was crazy, and the amount of money Ted Turner spent on sponsorships was pretty insane. Not only NASCAR, but also Monster Jam with the Goldberg monster truck. I remember watching the number 9 car run the WCW scheme with Goldberg, Sting, NWO, all the legends of WCW wrestling. It was pretty cool, but my how quick they fell.
“Circuit City” (just the people who own the name now, not the original) sponsored the Xfinity race at Iowa in June 2019 as well as Shane Lee’s #28 car until the team turned out to be owned by a scammer.
I definitely remember the Sprint/Nextel sponsorship as a kid even before they became the title sponsor of NASCAR as Sprint sponsored Kyle/the late Adam Petty’s #45 from 2000-2002 & Nextel was heavily involved in CART & was the sponsor of the MLB Home Run Derby in 2001 (which I attended). When it comes to Kmart they were also heavily involved in CART as they were the main sponsor for Newman Haas Racing for many years who had the likes of the Andrettis, Nigel Mansell & Christian Fittipladi drive for them. Heck even Paul Tracy drove for them for a season in 1995. Now when it comes to F1 all of the paint schemes I remember from the early to mid 2000’s (apart from Williams who had HP as their main sponsor) had cigarette companies as the sponsor like Marlboro who sponsored Ferrari & Benson Hedges who sponsored Jordan. All sponsorship from cigarette companies across motorsports has largely ended due to bans on cigarette advertising in many countries including the US.
Sprint and Nationwide were the PERFECT title sponsors – because they don’t even sound like sponsors! When I was younger I legit thought those were just the series’ names.
K-Mart was also a big sponsor of the Newman-Haas Indycar team in the 90’s for cars driven by Michael Andretti, Mario Andretti, and Nigel Mansell.
I wanna say Bruno’s or Foodworld had a title sponsor at minimum (I may be wrong) at the talladega races since they where an Alabama based company. Both brands and their parent company no longer exist unfortunatly. My mom actually knew mister Bruno before he passed in the plane crash and he used to call her up or visit her in store every once in a while and ask how “My little girl from Eufaula” was doing.
The death of RadioShack still depresses me. My dad used to build custom sound systems and he’d take me there to buy components as a kid. That store was awesome
Used to get RC cars, from them.
Kmart was a pretty successful racing sponsor outside of NASCAR, and they *were* on the car for that one Lake Speed win.
Similar to how GM Goodwrench was rebranded to GM Certified Service, Ally Financial used to be GMAC. So when Ally came aboard as Jimmie Johnson’s primary sponsor in 2019 following the departure of Lowe’s, it was actually just a return to prominence for an old Hendrick/GM affiliation rather than a fresh, new partnership. So if you ever wondered why Ally sponsorship followed Jimmie to his IMSA Cadillac but not his Honda IndyCar for those two years of his career, that probably had a lot to do with it. That leads me to a similar video idea: sponsors you didn’t realize were still in NASCAR.
There’s a distinct memory I have from the Sprint era of NASCAR. They would actually block or jam the signals from other carriers such as Verizon at the tracks. So if you had a phone through Verizon, you’d get absolutely no signal at all at the track. Cause Sprint would block it somehow.
Now the sponsors I miss the most are Kmart, Toys R Us, Blockbuster and World Championship Wrestling.