Custom Cars

Electronic Art's new Xbox Live®-enabled pro-racing spectacular, NASCAR® 2005: Chase for the Cup™, is packed with more in-depth features and nuts-and-bolts control options than you might think. This isn't Project Gotham Racing®-style street racing with tricked-out rides, but your ability to modify every last detail of how your car races—and how freakin' cool it looks while you do race—is much deeper than you might have expected. EA has taken their character creation model and applied it across the board, giving you four different looks, or schemes, for each of the four racing classes. And, now, I proudly (and a bit sheepishly) present my own design schemes from Chase for the Cup, along with how I built them.

Your design choices on display for all to see.

Auto-Quixotic Customization
Every aspect of the look of your vehicle and your driver's gear is available for modification. Customization options are broken into three main categories: Graphics, which defines the car's basic paint job style (choose from graphic schemes that add flames, stripes, waves, particle effects, and more); Paint Colors (combine and match colors to suit your preference or the graphics style); and your Sponsors, who label your car (and driver). Get customizing by choosing Custom Car Garage from the Features menu.

Scheme 1: NEXTEL Cup

This stunner reflects my high school days …

• Graphics: I went with a Ford Taurus for the basic chassis, despite my father's warnings over the years. The pain scheme is called flames, we’ve got a full set of decals (you can also choose light, none, or medium decals), and the Big Outline look on ol' number 47.
• Paint Colors: Our primary color is a bright yellow, secondary is that bright neon pink, and the highlights are mullet-guy green. Details are bright red, with blue and yellow numbers. Because that whole red-and-orange-flames-on-black look is overrated.
• Sponsors: I'll admit I chose my sponsors on this and the other schemes entirely on aesthetic value—how well do they go with the paint scheme? To that end, our primary hood-mounted sponsor is the Little Trees air freshener, a fine product I endorse in real life, too. We've also got a touch of The Sopranos with the addition of the Waste Management sponsorship and the stamp of the UAW. Not-cho Nachos and Simian's Petting Zoo round out the "companies" who bring you Scheme 1.

Scheme 2: NNS

Ladies and gentlemen, the "Tuxedo."

• Graphics: After the flash of Scheme 1, I went the opposite way with the Ford Taurus from the first scheme in the NNS series, which I nicknamed "the Tuxedo." The simple stripe pattern is called "stripe" (natch). Number 11 fits the stripe-y theme, and no one uses decals on a tuxedo, so there are none here.
• Paint Colors: Black and white, baby. No colors here, except the Goodyear logo on the tires.
• Sponsors: Stylistically, I wanted to go with black and white logos for the black and white tuxedo car, so we've got the sharp-looking Motorola on the hood and tail, Monte Carlo, and the almost impossible-to-spot NASCAR and theglen.com logos.

Scheme 3: Craftsman

The Jokermobile is a blind design, but it works.

• Graphics: Time to leave stock cars behind and move on to stock trucks. This time around, I actually built the entire car blind, navigating the menus with my eyes closed just to see what would happen. The result is the Bars paint scheme on number 55, with a full set of decals.
• Paint Colors: The blind building continued into the paint scheme, and to my surprise (and relief) turned out pretty cool. It's sort of a Joker-style mix of purple and blue-green, with black numbering highlighted with red. I think it works.
• Sponsors: I was most worried about how the sponsors would turn out, but I needn't have been. The Maxell and R. Cranium logos fit the style nicely.

Scheme 4: Featherlite

As American as NASCAR itself.

• Graphics: The blind design was a fun experiment, but I still haven't had a chance to make a scheme that evokes my childhood hero Evil Knievel (look him up, kids. I'm sure he's on the Internet somewhere). The Funnel paint scheme gives us a smooth, 70s look and lays the foundation for the patriotic additions to come. And, nothing's more American than good ol' number 69. There's a full set of decals, though it's hard to tell—this class doesn't use many.
• Paint Colors: As you can see, we used the Fren—er, the American flag as the basis for all the colors. Red, white, and blue, in case you were asleep for civics class.
• Sponsors: Again, I hunted for sponsors that matched up with the color scheme, and in the patriotic world of NASCAR that wasn't too tricky. Wincraft provides splashes of red, and Ron Waste Disposal adds a jazzy flash of white.

So there you have it. Now get out there and make your own ride shine!

By Ben Barker