A vote in favor of symmetry

By DAVID GREEN

So now, according to recent Observer reports, Jack Roush likes the Car of Tomorrow but Tony Stewart still doesn't.

By the way, did we ever decide on a new name for it, now that "tomorrow" is kind of -- like, uh -- here? Maybe we picked a label, and I missed it.

Never mind. It's the outgoing car that I want to talk about. I refer to it as "the outgoing car" not because of its gregarious personality, but rather because I'm not sure what to call it. The "Car of Yesterday"? Is that too historical in connotation, especially since we're still using it in most races this season? The "Old Car"? Does that conjure up images of ancient machines such as Herb Thomas' '52 Hudson Hornet or Bill Elliott's '85 Thunderbird?

Whatever it is or will be called, not to hurt anybody's feelings, but I'm tired of the 2006-vintage NASCAR racecar and some of the things that have happened to it.

History tells us that the concept of the pre-COT NASCAR machine is many decades old, traceable to innovations of people at Holman-Moody and guys like Banjo Matthews, Mike Laughlin, Bobby Allison and others, going back into the 1960s and '70s. The last radically different NASCAR machine appeared in 1981, when the cars were downsized from full-size (with wheelbases of 115 inches) to mid-size (with wheelbases of 110 inches, the same as today). Engines, likewise, shrank from 430 cubic inches to the present-day 358.

That was no simple transition. It brought us, among other things, the "flying racecar" phenomenon. The older cars might have tumbled or leapt out of a racetrack from time to time, but without some sort of launch assist other than aerodynamics, none ever flew out.

Adjustments and modifications came and went. Side windows were missing, then reappeared. Spoiler blade heights grew; front airdams and side skirts likewise, until the cars began to look as if Jim Hall had become a NASCAR fabricator.

But my biggest pet peeve is the distorted appearance of the front of the cars' bodies, something that has become glaringly obvious in the last half-decade or so. It varies in magnitude, of course, but the high-downforce cars are the worst. To achieve a greater area of body to deflect wind upward and, therefore, press down on the left front, fabricators set the grill off-center, squaring up the right front corner and exaggerating the bend of the left front.

It's as conspicuous as a jumbo-sized pimple on a teenager's forehead. You look at the car from the right front corner, and you can read all the decals on the left-front fender.

Functional? Sure. It would HAVE to work. It couldn't help working.

The rest of the bodies are distorted, too. They are even more asymmetrical than I am, with a nose broken three times playing ball and one large ear riding about a quarter-inch lower than the other one. (My asymmetrical face, as near as I can tell, serves no function, aerodynamic or otherwise.)

Splitter or air dam, blade or wing, ride height, roof height, quarter-panel height, whatever -- nothing, in my opinion, separates the appearance of the NASCAR machine from its street counterpart the way their distorted contours do.

How important is that? I don't know anymore. Once upon a time, it was critical. Junior Johnson's "Yellow Banana" '66 Galaxie wasn't controversial merely because of performance enhancement that might have been realized. It was controversial because it looked so radically different.

In many things -- graphic design, architecture, the image of my face in the mirror, and so forth -- I have grown to appreciate asymmetrical concepts, arrangements and shapes. Perfect balance can be boring. In automobiles, however, I like one side of a car's body to be a mirror image of the other.

Whatever final tweaks may be made in the COT, I hope symmetry is a requirement. To heck with the downforce.