OTTAWA, TORONTO -- The latest advertising vehicle for the Conservative Party gets about five miles a gallon, a fact the opposition parties jumped on yesterday to ridicule the governing party's decision to sponsor a Canadian stock car.
"Given all their talk of green, why weren't they supporting one of the bicycle competitions going on around the country? It might have presented a somewhat more legitimate message," New Democratic Party Leader Jack Layton said.
"They'll now have their name on some of the [greenhouse-gas] emissions here in Canada, and I'm not sure that was necessarily the wisest decision," Mr. Layton said.
NASCAR spokesman Jason Christley said cars in the Canadian NASCAR circuit use unleaded gas, which is better for the environment than leaded gas. In the United States, the three major NASCAR circuits recently converted to unleaded gas a year ahead of schedule. As for fuel consumption, Mr. Christley said that depends on how each individual race team outfits its vehicles and runs its races.
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The official NASCAR gas is 104 octane and has the biofuel ethanol blended into it.
The Conservative Party rolled out its latest advertising effort on Sunday: car No. 29 at the Mosport race track in Bowmanville, Ont. The big blue Conservative C will also be on the car at NASCAR Canadian Tire Series races in Edmonton in July and Trois-Rivières in August, with Pierre Bourque behind the wheel.
In addition to his driving career, Mr. Bourque, 48, is a painter, screenwriter and blogger whose website http://www.bourque.org is often accused of emphasizing stories that show the Liberals in a negative light.
A Conservative source said the goal is to reach middle-class voters who don't like current Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion and have bad memories of Brian Mulroney's leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party from 1984 to 1993.
"We're targeting what we have termed the Canadian Tire voter. It's basically a middle-income house owner in suburban areas, regional centres and rural communities with a do-it-yourself mentality. These people in the past have often seen the Conservative Party as out-of-touch and elitist," the source said.
"We have decided this group will have a very difficult time being in touch with Stéphane Dion, because he is seen very much as an elitist," he added.
Bob Stellick, a Toronto-based sports-marketing consultant, said NASCAR Canada is building on an existing base of people who are fans of U.S. NASCAR races.
He said that generally, NASCAR fans are less wealthy and more white than fans of other professional sports.
"If they're looking to get people in rural Canada talking about them, this is probably a good way to do it. If they could get [Conservative Leader] Stephen Harper behind the wheel, that would really be entertaining," Mr. Stellick said.
Randy Paul, managing director for NASCAR Canada, said research suggests Canadian fans of the racing series are three times more likely to buy a product that supports the series.
However, audiences are still small. The Canadian Tire NASCAR races are taped and broadcast later on TSN. The audiences are expected to be much lower than the 300,000 Canadians who typically watch races in the top-tier U.S.-based NASCAR Nextel Cup series.
It's not a market that the Liberal Party of Canada will enter any time soon. "It's American-style marketing based on focus groups. I find it bizarre that they're pretending to be environmental champions with these types of actions," Liberal MP Denis Coderre said.
The target voter
The term "NASCAR dad" is used by U.S. political scientists to refer to a group of largely southern, male voters with a conservative bent. NASCAR Canada says its fans are less avid than their U.S. counterparts.
| U.S. | CANADA | |
| Number of fans | 75M | Nearly 6M |
| Fan penetration | 1 in 3 adults | 1 in 4 adults |
| Proportion that is avid | 53% | 49% |
| Gender | 60% male | 63% male |
| Age | 32% are 18-34 | 34% are 18-34 |
| Income | 42% earn more than $50,000 (U.S.) | 50% earn more than $50,000 (Canadian) |
SOURCE: NASCAR CANADA
