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 Funny
Car driver Bob Gilbertson calls it discrimination. He wants to buy a
new GM body for his Chevy Camaro. Harry Turner, General Motors Racing
Group Manager, says get in line -- at the end of the line, pal.
Gilbertson's sponsor Jim Stewart calls that arrogance and exclusivity.
GM calls it supply and demand.
Stewart concedes that much. He's aware that Hairy Glass, GM's primary
production source in Jacksonville, Fla., is backed up with orders. But
that "don't call us and we won't call you, either" punch to the gut
he felt he got in Chicago during the Lucas Oil Products NHRA Nationals
has him reeling.
"We're in such a predicament that if anything happens to the one decent
body we have, we could be dead. We are perilously close to not being
able to compete,' Stewart says. Crew chief Paul Smith adds of the operation,
"It could end this next run."
Evidently GM can live with that.
And a certain Turner 'tude has Gilbertson and his Terminator Motorsports
team miffed.
Stewart, staggered by what he calls Turner's "absolute, incredible,
sheer arrogance," says his Stewart & Stevenson Military Truck Division
has been a GM client outside the race track for 38 years. And he claims
when he suggested he might contact some of his own business associates
there to get some satisfaction, Turner replied -- with what Gilbertson
says was "a big smirk on his face" -- "I'll give you a quarter. You
can call anybody you want. It won't do you any good. Not only will we
not sell you one, we won't put you on any list." They say Turner flippantly
suggested, "Go buy a Ford."
Turner denied making any such comments: "That's not true. If they said
that, they were lying. He didn't like the story he got from me, and
he's making stuff up. And I don't appreciate it."
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