It’s ironic that the National Association of Stock Car Racing race a brand of car that is anything but stock.

Yet there was once a time when at least the cars had some passing resemblance to the sort of machine that US buyers could find in their showrooms on Monday morning.

That all changed when NASCAR adopted it’s new regulations rather amusingly dubbed “The Car of Tomorrow”.

Apart from the fact that anything powered by a six litre carburettor fed pushrod V8 could hardly be looking towards the future, the fact is that they were just plain ugly.

It was as if, inspired by their cousins at the Grand-Am, they set out to create a car even less aesthetically pleasant than the awful looking Daytona Prototypes.

But this weekend at Daytona all that changes.

Oh the main game Sprint Cup will still run for the generic CoT cars, but the second tier Nationwide series will debut their next generation racer, and guess what? They actually look like the cars you can buy from your dealer and drive on the road.

The debut will see iconic muscle car models as Dodge brings its Challenger and Ford its Mustang. Chevrolet will introduce a new model to the series with its Impala, although most Chevy fans are crying “Where’s the Camaro?” while Toyota will continue to race it’s Camry, sadly theirs little that can be done about that.

Despite all the usual hype surrounding any Sprint Cup round, the main talking point at Daytona this weekend is clearly Nationwide.

And if it works well here, you can expect the main game to adopt it pretty soon as well.

“The cars look very sexy,” said points leader Brad Keselowski. “They look like a production car you always wanted to drive. … We think this is going to be a big burst of energy for the sport.”

This weekend is just a teaser, The new car also will be on track later this season at Michigan International Speedway (Aug.14), at Richmond (Sept. 10) and at Charlotte Motor Speedway (Oct. 15) before being fully integrated in 2011, starting at Daytona next February.

Judging by the cars in attendance this weekend, if they all look as good as this then 2011 can’t come soon enough.

Australian fans can get a look at the new cars in action as ONE features the Nationwide Cup from Daytona live Saturday morning at 9.30 am.

It’s a big weekend from Daytona on ONE as they will also cover the Grand-Am race Sunday morning at 1.00am then go live again to daytona for the sprint Cup race at 8.30 am.