Sad ending for Petty, but others have seen worse

These are sad days for NASCAR. Woeful days. The clock ticks toward the end of Petty Enterprises as we know it, through either an absorption by Gillett Evernham Racing, or another, much worse fate. The organization that mirrored the growth of NASCAR more than any other, that provided the sport with a bankable superstar when it needed one, that gave birth to a man in a hat who made fans handshake by handshake, is inevitably changing. And something will surely be lost along the way.

Yet in some ways, the Pettys are the fortunate ones here. Yes, they haven't won since 1999, they've placed a car in the top 20 in final points just once since that same season, and they're suddenly unable to attract the kind of corporate sponsorship they were once renowned for. They went years without winning, without really being competitive on NASCAR's premier circuit, but for much of that time just being a Petty was enough to keep a logo on the car and money in the bank. Companies were willing to pay millions just to be affiliated with racing royalty. As the events of the past weeks have indicated, those days have passed.

Now an organization that's won 268 races and 10 championships is in survival mode, laying off employees and trying to negotiate a deal that will ensure Richard Petty and his flagship No. 43 car a place in the future of the sport. It will be a tearful day indeed when a Petty operation in existence since 1949 ceases to exist. But Richard Petty and his family will surely emerge from this in better shape than some other NASCAR team owners, who after decades of hard work were forced to sell everything at auction, and left with only pennies on the dollar for their efforts.

That's what happened to Bud Moore, the car owner who won two championships with Joe Weatherly, who won races with Dale Earnhardt and Bobby Allison and Ricky Rudd, who had enough gumption to wade into Nazi gunfire on the beach at Normandy, but couldn't make it work once sponsorship for his race team dried up in the late 1990s. He tried a merger -- sound familiar? -- but it was to no avail. His race shop in Spartanburg, S.C., which had produced cars that won 63 races on NASCAR's top series, was eventually sold at auction. The price was a $50,000, a pittance for an organization that had been in business since 1961, and was a tremendous success for much of that time.

It's a sad story that's repeated itself over and over. Current television analyst Andy Petree won two races as a car owner in 2001, but lost his sponsorship in the post-Sept. 11 economic downturn, and eventually auctioned off most of his equipment. Junie Donlavey had been in NASCAR almost since the beginning, fielding entries since 1950, but wound up selling off the cars in his garage, one by one, when the funding dried up. Almost certainly, there are teams in operation right now, organizations that dream of making it to Daytona but realistically are just scraping by, whose fates will ultimately be sealed by the rap of an auctioneer's gavel. In a sport with no franchising, where owners have no equity but the physical parts and pieces around them, it's an unfortunate fact of life.

Troubling times

• More cuts at Petty Enterprises
• Menzer: Petty dilemma tough
• Report: PE, GEM talk merge
• Wake-up call to other teams
• Kyle no longer with Petty team
• Audio: Petty Enterprises future

Will the Pettys be different? You have to think so. This is, after all, a company that smartly split off other revenue-producing entities like the Richard Petty Driving Experience, a profitable venture now in operation at 25 race tracks nationwide. Richard Petty still has a personal sponsorship deal with Goody's, a company that has become synonymous with the Pettys despite the fact that it's only occasionally appeared on the race car. If Gillett does indeed buy out the Petty franchise -- a deal that could become final by the end of the week, some say -- and the Petty Enterprises name disappears forever, we'll still see the King on television, selling headache powder.

Because Petty Enterprises is a private company, no one really knows what kind of money changed hands when the private equity firm Boston Ventures bought a majority interest in the race team last summer. Given that they were securing rights to the bankable image of the King, we can assume it was quite a lot. From there, it's not beyond the realm of possibility to think that a percentage of that money went into some kind of retirement fund, allowing Petty to essentially cash in on everything he's built, providing him and his family with the kind of economic safety net other struggling team owners can only dream of. Max Muhleman, a pioneering Charlotte-based sports marketer with a long history in motorsports, theorized as much in June, before the sale to Boston Ventures became complete.

"With the Pettys or even the Roushes, one of the things they get out of this is, they're cashing in their life's work in a way they couldn't otherwise," he said, referring also to Jack Roush, who sold half his team to the Fenway Sports Group in 2007.

"If you're trying to make a profit racing, and put away a big fat paycheck for a rainy day, that's a hard way to go. Because some season when you wreck 14 cars, you're not going to have any payday. But on this one, if [investors] are paying for what backers call blue sky -- the name and the stake -- this is their ante. They'll pay $20 million, or whatever the number. Is there any obligation for the Pettys to spend any of that money? Maybe not. So that $20 million goes into the bank. Never in Richard's lifetime or Kyle's are they going to put that kind of money away out of operating a winning stock-car team."

So yes, these are sad times. The Petty Enterprises as we have always known it, the entity founded by Lee and passed down to Richard and later Kyle, a company that's come to represent everything that's good about NASCAR, is by all accounts in its final days. Even though the King and the No. 43 car may move on to a new home, it will still be difficult to say goodbye. It will be even more difficult to remember that the Pettys are the lucky ones, and that for other team owners, the end has been far worse.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.