In NHRA racing that year, longtime rivals Don Prudhomme and Tom McEwen inked their deal to promote Mattel Hot Wheels with their Funny Cars. Colt sponsored by Johnny Lightning toy cars. In 1970, Al Unser won the Indy 500 driving a P.J.
Most STP customers were buying and using the additive themselves, after all, because as Andretti noted, it was not strictly necessary.Īfter that, sponsorships in motorsports blew up, especially for consumer products that were even less directly related to street cars and their maintenance than was STP. And it formed a link, inadvertently, between traditional sponsors selling auto-related products-such as gasoline, tires, and spark plugs-and more ordinary consumer products. It was proof that racing sponsorships could move merchandise. To this day, it's the only Indy 500 win that any member of the Andretti family has earned as a driver.īy the time he kissed Andretti in Victory Lane, Granatelli had built STP's market share from 7 percent to more than 85 percent. Foyt for the lead in the first half, took control of the race when Foyt was held up in the pits with turbocharger trouble.
But then Andretti qualified second in a backup Hawk and, after battling A.J. The wreck left him with minor flash burns on his lip. The 1969 campaign seemed doomed as well when Andretti crashed the team's all-wheel-drive Lotus in practice after the right-rear hub failed. Granatelli's brilliant turbine-powered entries suffered frustrating failures in the 19 Indy 500s, unless you were measuring free media exposure, in which case they were clear winners for STP. STP logos appeared on the wildly popular Novi Indy cars in the early 1960s, for instance. Part of the genius was campaigning cars that drew attention even when they weren't winning. And at the core of all that promotion was racing. He appeared in the ads, gave away countless STP stickers, and turned an obscure oil treatment into a cultural icon and a wildly successful product. The company put him in charge of a small division called Chemical Compounds that had one product-Scientifically Treated Petroleum, which Granatelli renamed "STP." In the early '60s, Studebaker acquired Granatelli's company, Paxton, and he came along with it. And they had been running cars at Indianapolis as far back as 1946, earning reputations as brilliant, intuitive mechanics but finding no success at the Indianapolis 500. Granatelli and his brothers, Joe and Vince, were racing entrepreneurs. What little consumer-product advertising existed was muted and often temporary. And GM built the Camaro Z/28 to win the SCCA's Trans-Am series. Chrysler's specialized 426 Hemi engine was an instant legend. Ford spent millions to win at Le Mans and developed engines and/or models of its production cars for open-wheel, stock-car, and drag racing. Racing in the '60s was about manufacturers.
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