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.

As far as what to expect in 2007, well, it would be hard to wax eloquent about how the team is poised to dominate, given that they haven’t even officially announced their driver lineup, with just a few weeks before the season gets underway. Kevin Lepage had an average finish of 34.3 in 2006, which is hard to get very excited about. Toyota’s entry into NASCAR racng is only going to make life harder for underfunded teams like Front Row, BAM Racing, etc., as it’s only going to get harder and harder to even qualify for races.

The team has had a rough start since its first full season in 2005, as it’s been rumored to have been up for sale at various points, and the team has struggled to even qualify the #34 for much of its history. Again, it’s the chicken-egg situation that most new teams without deep pockets face when trying to break into NASCAR, as far as trying to bootstrap your way through the early lean years, hoping to put together a miracle run that separates you from the other also-rans and gets you noticed and, more importantly, greatly improves your cash flow situation.