Daytona 500 winner and famed race car driver Dale Earnhardt, Jr., announced this week that he will team up with Mountain Dew and Warner Bros. upcoming release of "The Dark Knight Rises" to allow fans to choose a new Batman-themed paint design for his No. 88 Chevrolet race car this season.
The new paint-job scheme came from Mountain Dew's interactive marketing campaign for the July 2012 release of "The Dark Knight Rises," the third and final installment in Christopher Nolan's Academy-Award-winning franchise based on superhero Batman. Mountain Dew and Earnhardt allowed fans to choose from four possible paint designs, according to a press release issued on Wednesday, the race car driver will reveal on May 25 at the Hendrick Motorsports Fan Fest in Charlotte, N.C.
"I've always been a big fan of the Batman movies, so having a special The Dark Knight Rises-inspired paint scheme on my car is pretty cool for me," Dale Earnhardt Jr., said in the press release. "I had some creative input on one of the designs, but no matter which one the fans select, it's going to look pretty awesome flying around the track at Michigan."
Among the designs, which would be painted across the engine hood, include: the white-colored Batman insignia created specifically for "The Dark Knight Rises," on Earnhardt's black-painted car; Earnhardt 's No. 88 black Chevrolet with a headshot of actor Christian Bale in his Batman outfit; and a mostly-white painted version of Earnhardt's race car with a headshot of actor Tom Hardy as masked villain Bane, as listed in the press release from Mountain Dew, a production of PepsiCo Americas Beverages. The custom-made design, chosen from voting results at www.DewCrew.com through May 22, 2012, will make its racing debut at the Michigan International Speedway on June 15, 2012.
"Dale Earnhardt Jr. is kicking off our new DEW The Dark Knight Rises campaign with some serious momentum," Brett O'Brien, Vice President of Marketing for Mountain Dew, was quoted as stating for the PepsiCo press release. "DEW, Dale Jr. and 'The Dark Knight' fans are collectively the most passionate and vocal consumers out there, and we're excited to get them in on the action from the beginning."
