CORAL GABLES, Fla. -- Rex White remembers it as if it all unfolded yesterday. It was June of 1957, less than half a season into his new deal with a factory-backed Chevrolet team, and he had already recorded a number of promising results. That was, until the future NASCAR champion arrived at the shop one day -- only to find out that he couldn't get in.

"One day we went over to the shop, and it was over," recalled White, a native of Spartanburg, S.C., who won what was then called the Grand National series in 1960. "They had locked the gates and it was done. No warning whatsoever. Just closed the doors, divvied up all the parts, and adios."

Chevrolet, along with the other manufacturers that backed cars in NASCAR, had pulled out of racing. Worried that it didn't look good to be associated with excessive speed at a time when highway fatalities were rising, the Automobile Manufacturers Association banned domestic carmakers from participating in motorsports. It was the beginning of a tumultuous time for NASCAR and its race teams, and it serves as a reminder that manufacturer support hasn't always been as ubiquitous as it appears today.

This week in South Florida, though, is another matter. With Ford sponsoring all three season-ending races at Homestead-Miami Speedway, the blue oval logo is as omnipresent as mojitos and royal palms. NASCAR's annual championship contenders press conference was held Thursday in the posh enclave of Coral Gables, where Jimmie Johnson, Carl Edwards, and a host of past champions met the media in a hotel modeled after a Spanish palace. There will be no shortage of after-hours parties this weekend in the thumping nightclubs of South Beach.

Yet this celebratory, moneyed atmosphere masks real concerns, sparked by dire economic reports released last week by General Motors and Ford, over whether domestic car manufacturers that are bleeding money can continue to support vehicles in NASCAR. Ford, which reported losses of $2.9 billion for the third quarter of 2008, has already pulled its backing of the Craftsman Truck Series. GM, the parent company of Chevrolet, reported losses of $4.2 billion, and is running low on operating cash. It's all unsettling news to a garage area already rattled by the dearth of sponsors caused by the current economic downturn.

But as past champions will tell you, NASCAR has seen manufacturers come and go, for different reasons, at various points within the sport's 60-year history. Factory support at the level known today is a relatively young phenomenon. And many of the top race teams are already providing for themselves the kind of engineering and support that organizations once could only get from Detroit.

"Back in the '70s we depended entirely on the technologies that the factories had," said Richard Petty, a seven-time Cup Series champion. "The teams now have started hiring their own engineers and doing a lot of stuff, so the technology coming from the factory is nothing like it used to be. So we can get along without the technology from the factory."

That wasn't always the case. When the manufacturers pulled out of motorsports in 1957, the effect on race teams was crippling. Sponsorship money was much smaller, so the support being provided by manufacturers was an absolute necessity. When that support went away, teams had to rely on prize money, and whatever meager sponsorship deals they could scrape together. Today, much of what manufacturers provide race teams comes in the form of cash -- always important, especially now with so many organizations unable to find the kind of multi-million-dollar sponsors that keep race teams afloat. (Continued)