Huddle House, a 420-unit nationwide family restaurant franchise with deep ties to the South, along with Front Row Motorsports have announced a partnership for the No. 37 Dodge driven by Bill Elliott at the Daytona 500 — uniting two Georgia homegrown icons into a powerful force for the opening of the Nextel Cup season.

Huddle House, fresh off an infusion of funding from its recently announced $124 million acquisition by Allied Capital, has signed on as the primary sponsor of racing legend Bill Elliott, giving the Huddle House brand extensive positive exposure to tens-of-millions of Americans who are known to be very loyal to the companies that sponsor their favorite drivers.

While there’s been increasing chatter in recent years that Elliott needs to hang it up and fade gracefully into the sunset, if he insists on turning laps I guess it’s good news that he’s got a sponsor. And I suppose it could have been worse and potentially more degrading, if it’d been the AARP, Ben-Gay, or Life Alert that stepped up to sponsor him.