- Le Mans
- Formula 1
- Dakar
- GT3 Racing
- Race-Based Road Cars Are Better Than Ever
- A Golden Age For Automotive Enthusiasts
We're seeing a resurgence of OEM entries in motorsport, and it could be the best thing to happen to the car industry in decades.
Read in this article:
- Win On Sunday, Sell On Monday Is Back
- Le Mans
- Formula 1
- Dakar
- GT3 Racing
- Race-Based Road Cars Are Better Than Ever
- A Golden Age For Automotive Enthusiasts
Coined by Bob Tasca Sr., a Ford dealer in the 1960s who invented the Cobra Jet, “Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday” was a term used to justify manufacturer entries in motorsport as the ultimate marketing tool. If you could produce a car to win on the world stage, be it Le Mans, Formula 1, IndyCar, NASCAR, or whatever, and sell something similar to the public, you had a recipe for success. Case in point: Ford beating Ferrari at Le Mans in 1966, a win that catapulted Ford into the performance car limelight against the world's most prestigious sports car brand.
But the 'WOSSOM' philosophy took a hit after financial crisis after financial crisis meant manufacturers withdrew from the competition, and the car market changed entirely. Motorsport evolved, too, no longer requiring homologated road cars for an abundance of top-flight series, until eventually, motorsport and road cars existed in two separate realms, barely intersecting on a Venn diagram of automotive operations.
But 'Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday' is alive and kicking once more, and that's big news for motorsport fans and car fans alike.
Le Mans
Five years ago, the 24 Hours of Le Mans sucked to watch.
You could count the number of teams running LMP1 cars on the one hand, and there was virtually no crossover to road cars, as hybrid diesel engines simply didn't work in a real-world scenario.
But then the FIA revamped the rules with a new class, Le Mans Hypercars, which was intended to bring back the homologation era of decades gone by. Suddenly, interest spiked from Aston Martin, Ferrari, McLaren, and more, and while the rules evolved to no longer require roadgoing versions of entrants like the Toyota GR010, which are still rumored, they opened the door for massive crossover between race car and road car development.
We now have more manufacturers in the top flight of the WEC than ever before. Porsche, Toyota, Ferrari, Cadillac, Peugeot, and Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus were in the centennial running of Le Mans, and next year, BMW, Lamborghini, Alpine, Acura, and more are set to join. Best of all, several of these cars are running versions of engines found in road cars.
The Ferrari 499P that won Le Mans uses an iteration of the V6 engine from the 296 GTB, and BMW's entrant will use an evolution of the V8 from the E90 BMW M3. More exciting still, however, is that Lamborghini is developing a new twin-turbo V8 that will reportedly power the Huracan's successor and allegedly rev beyond 10,000 rpm in roadgoing form. Motorsport is finally having an impact on road cars again, and Le Mans Hypercars are a huge driving force.
Formula 1
Formula 1 might not have the same overlap with roadgoing technologies as Le Mans now does, but it's quickly proving to be an incredible marketing tool for a number of brands. Forget about Ferrari and McLaren (the racing divisions for these teams predated the roadgoing divisions anyway); I'm talking about Mercedes-AMG, Aston Martin, Alpine, Alfa Romeo, Audi, and even Ford.
Aston Martin noticed a massive uptick in brand interest since it became a works team two years ago, with brand executives telling me at the launch of the DBX 707 that the brand awareness had skyrocketed, more than justifying the expense of branding the F1 team as Aston Martin.
Alpine F1 has had a similar effect on brand awareness for the French automaker's only roadgoing car – the Alpine A110. Alpine is looking to break into the American market in the next few years, and company CEO Laurent Rossi said that since Renault F1 rebranded as Alpine F1, Americans have flocked to the company's website. After Esteban Ocon won the Hungarian Grand Prix in 2021, there was a 400% increase in traffic to the A110's configurator, and the USA was fourth on the list of traffic sources.
Alfa Romeo may be leaving its partnership with Sauber, but Audi is buying in, and in 2026, it won't just be a team on the grid but one of the six engine suppliers for the sport. Porsche wanted to join, too, with F1's move to synthetic fuel being the perfect marketing tie-in for Porsche's own pursuit of e-fuel, something Porsche bosses told CarBuzz was a “significant movement that we appreciate very much.”
Then you have Ford, which is partnering with Red Bull as of 2026, and will leverage both the synthetic fuel and hybridization elements of F1 as a marketing and development tool for its roadgoing EVs, hybrids, and combustion cars.
Other automakers want in, too. While Porsche has all but given up on joining F1 after numerous setbacks, GM has partnered with Andretti Autosport and tabled an official application as Andretti-Cadillac to join the F1 grid.
And then there's Mercedes, which won the Constructors' Championship seven years on the trot, put an F1 engine into the roadgoing Mercedes-AMG ONE hypercar and will leverage the powertrain development labs of the F1 in the UK for future cars, as evidenced by the Vision One-Eleven concept's new e-motor and battery technology.
Dakar
It's not limited to circuit racing, either. Ford has just announced a massive investment to participate in the Dakar Rally next year with the old Ranger Raptor on a “finish and learn” excursion (the politically correct phrase Ford used to describe a “f*ck around and find out” trial run) prior to fielding the new Ranger Raptor in the 2025 edition of the Rally as a purpose-built racer.
When your biggest sellers in the US (and many markets globally) are trucks, the best way to advertise them is to prove they can handle the world's harshest endurance races. Ford will join Toyota (which has been racing modified Hilux pickups in the Dakar for years) and Audi, which is using the Dakar as the ultimate proving ground for its electrification technologies. With this two-pronged attack of both on-track and off-road racing, Ford is betting big on being able to market every aspect of its roadgoing business through motorsport.
GT3 Racing
GT3 and customer racing has always been big business for big sports car brands. Lamborghini, Ferrari, Aston Martin, and more have participated in these series, selling race cars based on roadgoing models to well-to-do clients who fancy themselves as gentlemen racers. But some of the best sports cars in existence have come from these development programs. Of course, the Porsche 911 GT3 and GT3 RS are the best advocates for this sentiment, using race-derived engines, suspension, and aero to better the roadgoing sports cars. And there's historical precedent, too, like the famous Porsche Mezger engine, which was one of the most prolific racing engines around before Porsche dropped it into road cars.
Ford is following suit by taking the new S650-gen Mustang racing all over the world. From NASCAR and Aussie Supercars to Le Mans with a new Mustang GT3, Ford is going hard at customer and factory-backed racing, cementing the Mustang as an icon of its era in the process.
Toyota, once the purveyor of sheer boredom in automotive form, wants to build a GT3 race car and only thereafter start to engineer a road car from it, which is part of the brand's newfound desire to develop cars from an enthusiast-first perspective. It's a philosophy that has always been present at Porsche and one that has already paid dividends for Toyota…
Race-Based Road Cars Are Better Than Ever
Need proof of that last statement above? Look at the Toyota GR Yaris worldwide and the GR Corolla locally. Both can trace their roots to the development of the Yaris WRC car, down to that epic turbocharged 1.6-liter three-cylinder engine and GR-Four all-wheel-drive system. Both were developed with not just the approval but the direct involvement of former Toyota CEO, and current chairman of the board of directors, Akio Toyoda. And both are cars that enthusiasts are fawning over endlessly.
Better still, Toyota is developing them continuously and using them to evaluate things like hydrogen combustion in motorsport, which will trickle down to roadgoing sports cars. Think the future of all cars is electric? Ha, think again! Toyota wants to keep combustion alive and is using race-car-bred technology to do so.
Need another example of how race cars are giving us better road cars? Look no further than the Chevrolet Corvette Z06 and its LT6 V8 – a flat-plane, naturally-aspirated 5.5-liter V8 with 670 horsepower and a 9,000-rpm rev ceiling. It's the highest-output NA V8 in production car existence, and you know where it was developed? Motorsport. Specifically in the Corvette C8.R race car.
Chevrolet may be discontinuing its factory Corvette racing exploits – a silly move, in my opinion, when it just won the LMGTE Am category at Le Mans – but customer teams will still receive support, and since the development work that gave us the LT6 has been done, enthusiasts are still the winners here.
A Golden Age For Automotive Enthusiasts
So what does all this have to do with 'Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday?' A few things.
First of all, there's the image it creates for a brand: that those at the top and behind the scenes are enthusiasts, too, that they love good cars as much as we do. Then, there's the aspirational side of things. Toyota may sell a few thousand GR Corollas annually compared to tens of thousands of regular Corollas, but for an enthusiast with little-to-no money, they may be more inclined to buy a standard Corolla because it shares DNA with the halo car or the race cars. Enthusiasts are no longer ashamed to buy into certain brands, because they're now buying into a family of enthusiasts. It's one of the best marketing strategies around, and it's saved Toyota from its own mundanity.
But what makes me most excited that WOSSOM is actually working again is that it means a revival for enthusiasts and enthusiast cars.
Gearheads have rapidly been relegated to the cheap seats, with few to no affordable cars appealing to our sense of automotive enjoyment, and it's been because beancounters have been calling the shots. But if the beancounters can see that enthusiast-driven development sells cars and breeds passion for a brand at a dealership level, then we may be in for a barrage of great drivers' cars in years to come.
Some will inevitably be electric or hybrid, but when the combustion engine has its back against the wall, motorsport seems to be giving it the strength to fight back, to rapidly develop new technologies that keep combustion alive. That influence of motorsport is good news for me as a lover of cars, and it's good news for anyone like me.
Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday is back, and I couldn't be happier.
Keyword: Win On Sunday, Sell On Monday Is Alive And Kicking Again