AT&T (NYSE: T) announced yesterday that the company has been given the legal go-ahead to rebrand its NASCAR-sponsored car. The #31 Chevrolet featured the Cingular name and brand on its panels since 2001 when the company began its sponsorship of the Richard Childress Racing team. The phone service was created by BellSouth and AT&T in 2001 and with AT&T's purchase of BellSouth last year, AT&T initiated the rebranding.

Jeff Burton, a Virginia-native and driver of the #31 car, currently sits at #5 in the Nextel Cup championship points and debuted with new decals on his car last weekend in Charlotte, North Carolina. The former Cingular Wireless decals were replaced with AT&T's globe image. The orange color of Cingular remains.

Over the weekend, when the judgment was made, AT&T's stock remained roughly the same and closed at $24.95 on Tuesday. Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S) rose early in the week, despite the "new" sponsor in the NASCAR series it sponsors, closing at $21.46 on Tuesday. With AT&T holding such a high position in the point standings of the Nextel series, this may be a massive blow to the rights Sprint Nextel seemed to hold on wireless service promotion in the series. The race broadcasts have always featured Cingular text polls though, which seem to overshadow the $700 million, ten-year deal Nextel made with NASCAR in 2003.

Toyota Motor Corporation (ADR) (NYSE:TM) is now poised to surpass General Motors Corporation (NYSE:GM) as the world's largest auto company. Toyota's 2007 sales forecast indicates that it will sell 9.42 million cars and trucks, while GM expects to sell less than its 2006 total of 9.09 million. GM's reign as the world's biggest auto producer stretches back to before the Second World War, but it looks like that reign will now come to end.

Today's New York Times reports that Toyota will now be competing with American cars on the racetrack too. Toyota is preparing some Camry's to race for the Nextel Cup, the highest level of Nascar racing. This is the first time since the 1950s, when Jaguar raced, that a foreign car company will compete at that level (unless you count Dodge as a foreign car company -- which, since it's owned by a German company, it really is; Dodge returned to the Nextel Cup circuit in 2001, after dropping out in 1985).

Somehow, I have trouble imagining a Toyota Camry winning the Daytona 500. I used to have a Camry -- a white 1985 sedan, with a four-cylinder automatic. It was a great car. It always started and ran perfectly. You could barely hear the engine, which got good mileage and consumed no oil. But it was anything but fast and fun to drive. It was more like a golf cart than a racing car. It was so pokey that it forced me to drive more safely -- for which I'm grateful. But I can't see a Camry claiming a Nascar flag, no matter how safe. Speed just isn't part of the Camry equation -- or at least it wasn't 20 years ago. Then again, GM was a lot bigger than Toyota 20 years ago, wasn't it?

The Times reports that the American racing teams are afraid of Toyota. Apparently, Toyota has been raiding competing racing teams and hiring the best talent. But I suspect the fear goes deeper than that. American companies are losing the auto wars, and now the victors are marching in to claim Nascar too.