NASCAR a crucial part of Chevrolet's marketing arm (cont'd)

When you think about racing without Chevrolet, it's a pretty bleak landscape. As folks from the brand are fond of saying, "racing is in their DNA." Chevrolet's founder, Louis Chevrolet, believed wholeheartedly in the power of motorsports to sell cars, and that hasn't changed much.

However, Dolan did say that the primary focus of the brand is to sell cars and trucks, and that's been a big challenge lately.

"As you look at the marketplace, we're faced with an unprecedented rapid shift in consumer demand," Dolan said. "They still want utility, they still want versatility, but they want to see a more efficient use of the fuel they put in the tank."

One such effort to give the consumer a fighting chance at all the things they want is the Traverse.

"Today, we brought one of our new vehicles out, a Chevy Traverse, which provides a family hauler in a crossover-style sport utility, so it drives and rides like a car, but it looks and feels like a sport utility vehicle," Dolan said. "You can take a family of eight, load 'em up into one of these, get 24 mpg on the highway and very comfortably transport your family and the things you need to have to go on a trip without having to pull a trailer behind or put things up on the roof. It's an outstanding vehicle.

"Along with that, there are other things like our hybrid Tahoe, which takes technology being used by other manufacturers in smaller cars and allows you to again get the versatility and utility factors in a larger compartment. So consumers who have the need to haul people or to haul items or to tow something that is part of their lifestyle -- a boat, a jet ski, a motorcycle or a camper -- it enables them to do that. Right around the corner is a full-size Silverado in a hybrid format, so that the man who is a contractor, a plumber or carpenter or some other form of trade can still utilize his Silverado and get good utility and outstanding fuel efficiency."

Chevrolet, within the framework of the massive General Motors family, has to make its own business make sense to remain viable and to succeed in an arena that is every bit as tough as Indy or Pocono or Michigan -- the marketplace.

"We have a technical group of experts, the engineers of GM Racing, and literally they are direct liaisons with us on the marketing side," Dolan said. "As we develop our go-to-market strategy, we literally look at the series we're involved in and how that makes sense for us to drive the business, and we have to find that connectivity. We're in this as a business, we have to be able to sell cars and trucks, and we have to show that we're doing that through the work we're doing on-track, at-track or through the variety of marketing tools we have, whether that's print, TV, radio or the magnificent power of the Internet to get that job done."

That's why, as Dolan says, that there will likely be a Chevrolet or GM vehicle racing in the 2050 Allstate 400 at the Brickyard: It's in their DNA.