Columnist Rusty Wallace: Unveiling of Elvis car highlights week

Rusty Wallace

Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2002 | 9:29 a.m.

Rusty Wallace, driver of the Miller Lite Team Penske Ford Taurus, is writing a daily column exclusively for the Las Vegas Sun in conjunction with Sunday's UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

We've got a lot of really cool functions going on this week leading up to Sunday's UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, which gives me even more reason to be excited about coming to Vegas.

Friday night is going to be the really big deal: We're going to unveil our new Elvis Presley paint scheme for the Vegas race that night. John Force and Larry Dixon are going to join me in showing our new Elvis cars out there in front of Caesars Palace.

That'll be a really neat deal, on the front steps of Caesars, and we'll show off the new Elvis car that's commemorating the 25th anniversary of his death. My car is all silver and blue, so it's way different than the way my Miller Lite Ford Taurus usually looks.

The special paint scheme is the second one I've run in Las Vegas and I'm very excited about it. I had an Elvis-themed car for the first race in Vegas back in 1998 and I finished third in it -- which was my best finish so far at this track.

We've got another big promotion going on Saturday night at the Hard Rock Hotel -- we'll be there for a few hours signing autographs for the hotel's slot-club members. For more details on how to be a part of that deal, check with the Backstage Pass slot club at the Hard Rock.

The Hard Rock is our official hotel now and both Penske teams are going to be staying there. The Hard Rock did a really nice program with us and the guys should enjoy that with all the rock 'n' roll and other stuff going on.

Speaking of new programs, I just signed a brand-new personal services contract with the Cross pen company and it's a real neat deal. Cross is one of the most respected companies in the world and they join a lot of real top-notch companies that help support this racing team.

The folks at Cross are going to be coming out with a couple special-edition Rusty Wallace Signature pens, which I'm really excited about. A.T. Cross has been around for more than 150 years and this is their first venture into NASCAR racing.

I went up to Rhode Island and toured their company and met all the folks and let me tell you, watching them design one of their pens is a lot like watching my team design a race car -- they put that much effort into their products.

Right now I've got a lot of neat companies on board; I've got Motorola and AT&T and Nikon and now Cross Pens. We've also got Planters Peanuts, that's another new company for us this year. I've got some real world-class companies, in addition to Miller Brewing Company, Mobil Oil and Ford, with me this year and not a lot of drivers can say that.

I really like the car we're bringing to Las Vegas this week -- and not just because of the new paint scheme. I think we're going to have a real hot rod and I'll talk more about that in tomorrow's column.