Back in November, a PR company for Busch Beer used the phrases “#Basic,” “V lit,” “lit AF” and “#Swag” all within the same email. It’s unclear whether eyes and/or brain of the person who wrote it spontaneously combusted afterward, but one thing was clear: that whatever this was would be a cringe-fest.
It was, too: Busch made a bet that if its driver Kevin Harvick didn’t win the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series title last year, he and Busch would run some kind of “millennial-inspired” car at this year’s All-Star race.
“Millennial inspired,” of course, sounded like it was written by someone who shares those “Millennials Are Killing [x]” articles on Facebook, as had the rest of this marketing scheme so far—meaning this car would probably be the least millennial-inspired thing ever. (Millennials, by the way, were born between 1981 and 1996, and some are nearing their 40s. Harvick, who calls himself an “old guy,” was born less than six years before the start of the millennial generation. Those darn kids, though!)
But Busch unveiled the full paint scheme on Tuesday, just over a week before the exhibition All-Start race that it’ll compete in, and it somehow doesn’t look that bad. The styling of the car doesn’t seem like it’s trying too hard, and the phrases are decently current rather than memes from six years ago:
It’ll fit right in at Litwood. If anything, it’s much better than it could have been, especially considering the mockup car Busch shared when the idea first became a reality.
That scheme was a thing of nightmares, including words and phrases like “fleek af,” “YASSS,” “turnt,” “shade,” “stay woke,” which NASCAR certainly is not, and, a personal favorite, “YOLO SWAG.”
The race car with the mock scheme was actually David Gilliland’s from the 2016 Daytona 500 instead of Harvick’s, pulled from Getty Images since it was almost entirely white due to a lack of sponsors. The person who edited it left Gilliland’s name above the driver’s window.
Given all of that, the final paint scheme isn’t nearly as bad as it seemed like it would be, and it looks like someone with an actual Twitter account and halfway decent knowledge of current internet culture—something older people define as “millennial,” no matter which generations are actually participating, because facts don’t matter—had a say in what went on the car.
If not, then Busch did an alright job of faking it.