The Pixar animation Cars will turn 13 years old in May, so the boys who loved it are probably more interested in girls and drinking than anything else right now. But Lightning McQueen is still on every school backpack and pencil box ever, probably the most famous animated vehicle since the Batmobile. He's like Elsa with wheels.
But it almost didn't happen that way. Chevrolet had a deal with Pixar have the main protagonist looking like a Corvette, which at the time was the C6, which could have been quite boring.
You see, many of the other characters in Cars are almost entirely accurate, especially Sally Carrera, the 996-based Porsche. But after doing a draft render of McQueen as a C6 Nascar racer, they realized it was dull.
"Due to aerodynamics, the shape of NASCAR cars relatively flat and not very interesting," stated the director and writer of the film, John Lasseter.
Streamlining on stock cars makes them low and box, not ideal for a lovable red race car with bulging eyes and a flashy smile. So according to this Drivetribe video, animators added elements from the Ford GT40 and Lola Le Mans race cars. However, the video also argues that McQueen looks exactly like a reclusive 1963 MGB dragster called Megalomania.
This conversation has been going on for quite some time and is unlikely to end. James May was asked what he thinks Lightning is and saw a Viper somewhere in there. We wonder if he knows that Jeremy Clarkson voiced Harv in the British version of Cars.
After being gifted the toy car, the Grand Tour presenter decided to give it away, which sparked an "I would like to win that plastic novelty car" competition between YouTube commenters. Captain Slow is signing and giving away Lightning - there's a paradox somewhere in there.
Mihnea's favorite cars have already been built, the so-called modern classics from the '80s and '90s. He also loves local car culture from all over the world, so don't be surprised to see him getting excited about weird Japanese imports, low-rider VWs out of Germany, replicas from Russia or LS swaps down in Florida. Full profile
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