“Scientology's strategy to use motorsports as a promotional tool...”
May 11, 2016 4:58 PM   Subscribe

When Scientology Sponsored Race Cars [Road and Track] John Travolta​. ​Mario Andretti.​ The Pope. Aliens​. Germans. The Indy 500. Milwaukee. The Church of Scientology. Welcome to 1988's bizarre intersection between motorsports, religion, and sponsorship.​​
As much fun as it would be to see the National Basketball Association powered by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, The Nation of Islam's Major League Baseball series, or the NFL presented by Dianetics, Hubbard's group chose the path of least resistance.

Professional race teams depend on big annual budgets to stay in business, and for a lucky few, Hubbard's people weren't afraid to open the bank vault through Bridge and Dianetics. For an emerging religious institution like Scientology—one that thrived on the age-old practice of recruiting the masses to follow and donate their earnings—there was a simple brilliance in paying to be on race cars: It came with access to large, brand-loyal crowds at motor races.

With each racing fan representing a possible revenue stream for the church, the cost to sponsor a team was nominal compared to the collective fortune waiting to be plundered in the grandstands. As far as relationships go, Scientology and racing seemed meant for each other..
posted by Fizz (14 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
I watched a bizarrely large amount of Indy Car in the 80s, so that was both an interesting article and a nostalgia trip.
posted by jacquilynne at 5:25 PM on May 11, 2016 [2 favorites]


So apparently Road and Track's new logo has the same color scheme and layout as a Nazi flag. That's an interesting choice.
posted by leotrotsky at 5:28 PM on May 11, 2016 [4 favorites]


Okay - I have always tried to err on the side of an open mind when it comes to Scientology. I think the leaders are shady as shit, but when someone is saying they are all into it, I hold my tongue and think that well, maybe they see something in it they need and who am I to take that from them.

But all I could think when I was reading this was that this was going down right before Tom Cruise got into racing himself, and a couple years before DAYS OF THUNDER came out. And now I'm wondering whether I'm paranoid or whether I should be wondering how far down that rabbit hole goes.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:29 PM on May 11, 2016 [5 favorites]


This Indy native applauds you on your good timing on the post.
posted by leotrotsky at 5:29 PM on May 11, 2016 [2 favorites]


Fantastic article. Love that Mario Andretti refused to drive the car with Scientology branding. He just gets cooler and cooler in my estimation.
posted by gyc at 5:42 PM on May 11, 2016 [4 favorites]


There are specific clauses in a lot of modern racing banning sponsors related to religion now, right along with tobacco and alcohol advertising.

Some series that have minors racing ban strip clubs etc too, or anything without series approval too.
posted by Brockles at 5:50 PM on May 11, 2016




Fantastic article. Love that Mario Andretti refused to drive the car with Scientology branding. He just gets cooler and cooler in my estimation.

He did refuse but the Church did still find a kind of a loophole. From the article:
In the absence of Dianetics branding on Andretti's Porsche, the Kremers were steadfast in appeasing their sponsor and came up with a compromise: Instead, Bridge Publications—the publishing house that printed the book—would fill the empty space on 962's bodywork.

The fact that Bridge was founded by the Church of Scientology to publish Dianetics was sufficiently abstract; the nondescript company triggered no alarms with Mario or Michael, which eased the Andretti's faith-based objections. Problem solved.
They were just a bit more circumspect in how they promoted their faith.
posted by Fizz at 6:36 PM on May 11, 2016


One of the best-known motorcycle track instructors, Keith Code, is a Scientologist. He runs the California Superbike School and is the author of several books about sportbike technique. He is generally highly-regarded among (some) roadracers and (most) trackday enthusiasts.

He came on my radar back when I was roadracing; I read an article of his (I think it was in Roadracing World) that mentioned that Code was compiling data correlating students' track crashes and antidepressant use. At first I thought, "Huh. Well, lots of things can affect judgment and fast-twitch response." Then I thought about it a little more and thought, "Wait, why antidepressants? Is this dude a Scientologist or something?" [<-warning, autoplaying audio]
posted by workerant at 7:09 PM on May 11, 2016


Okay - I have always tried to err on the side of an open mind when it comes to Scientology. I think the leaders are shady as shit, but when someone is saying they are all into it, I hold my tongue and think that well, maybe they see something in it they need and who am I to take that from them.

I used to think that until I read Troublemaker, and man, I am not really sure what anyone gets out of it. Leah Remini mentions some techniques they did that sound like psychology or acting lessons, but in the end she said all that happened was she learned to be a better $cientologist and she'd feel fine after doing all the auditing and then come out of it with the same problems.

A lot of things make you feel better in the moment and then somehow don't seem to have lasting effect.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:15 PM on May 11, 2016 [1 favorite]


So what's with Scientology & race cars? There's the value for PR & recruitment, sure. But it goes a lot deeper, and weirder, than that.

Hubbard liked to tell stories about his alleged past lives; one of his favorites involved an alien civilization called the Marcabian Confederation. As he told it the Marcabians were really into racing; cars, planes, spaceships, anything that moved fast. According to him he lived a whole sequence of lives as Marcabian race drivers/pilots, each of whom beat the record set by the previous one. Eventually he figured out he was only beating his own records & moved on to doing something else with his lives. He even wrote part of the story into his ridiculous 10 volume Mission Earth science fiction series with the protagonist (a thinly disguised stand in for himself) spending time racing a variety of vehicles.

Scientologists do all sorts of things just because Hubbard did them, emulating him as a way of honoring him & becoming closer to him. Racing cars, piloting airplanes, even something as mundane as smoking the same brand of cigarettes as him (Kools).

They also believe that certain images trigger something deep within us & hope to exploit that to drive people into the cult. The most visible example would be the volcano on the cover of Dianetics, which was meant to stimulate our genetic memory of the Xenu saga where the galactic tyrant tossed the frozen bodies of billions of his subjects into volcanoes on a planet named Teegeeack, which we call Earth. The whole race car thing is another example of that, I guess because anything taken from Hubbard's past lives would be powerful mojo in recruiting people without them really knowing why they felt compelled to join. So it was a two-fer; they could be more like Ron & help recruit new members at the same time.

I believe that many if not most films involving Scientologist stars were chosen because they either copied some aspect of Hubbard's current or past lives, involved symbology or concepts linked to the cult or best of all, both. Deeply weird, yes. But then that's Scientology in a nutshell, deeply weird.
posted by scalefree at 11:44 PM on May 11, 2016 [5 favorites]


"Some series that have minors racing ban strip clubs etc too, or anything without series approval too."
The Australian Touring Car Championship (later V8 Supercars) used to have a team sponsored by a brothel.
posted by Pinback at 12:05 AM on May 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Scientology should come up with a subliminal logo like RJR (or whatever they are called now) did with Marlboro. Beam that thetan barcode straight into the mind brain!
posted by a lungful of dragon at 5:33 AM on May 12, 2016


As a lifelong Indycar fan, I'd certainly welcome a large infusion of sponsorship cash into the series these days. Yes, even Scientology cash. At 230+ mph, you can't really see the sponsor names, anyway.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:31 AM on May 12, 2016


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