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When I first started following NASCAR in the early 90's the cars had long since gotten away from being based on production vehicles but they still looked like them. You could take a Lumina, Grand Prix or Thunderbird race car painted in bare primer and no decals and tell which was which. Now with the COT you can't tell the difference between a Impala, Fusion, Charger or Camry, since they look nothing like the production counterparts. Same with the engine. 15 years ago the engine blocks were basically beefier versions of the engines used in production trucks at the time. Today the engines are nothing alike and share no dimensions with any production parts.
Attendance and tv ratings are both way down from when they peaked a couple of years ago. Many tracks that were furiously adding seating capacity as fast as they could in the 90s are now covering big sections of grandstands with tarps emblazoned with track sponsor logos in an effort to make the stands look less empty than they really are.
So with the vehicles being raced bearing no similarity to what they are selling, and decreased interest from the public there really isn't any reason for the manufacturers to continue at their current level. I still think they should be involved since a significant portion of their customer base is there.
But yeah, I used to be a hard core NASCAR fan, but recently I don't even watch 1/2 the races anymore. If NASCAR dies it will have more to do with them getting too big too fast and thinking the growth would continue forever than anything the automakers did.
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