Pixar's Cars began life as a script about an electric car
Before Lightning McQueen existed, a draft called The Yellow Car imagined an electric vehicle stuck in a world addicted to gasoline. The idea was reworked into a road-trip fable about a vain rookie racer marooned on Route 66, and it became the last film Pixar made on its own before Disney bought the studio.
Work on Cars started in 1998, once A Bug's Life was finished, out of conversations between John Lasseter and Jorgen Klubien. Klubien's early script, The Yellow Car, centred on an electric car in a fuel-hungry society. That premise was heavily rewritten, and the finished story drew instead on a long drive Lasseter had taken across the United States. Disney purchased Pixar in January 2006, making Cars the final picture the studio produced independently.
The plot follows Lightning McQueen, voiced by Owen Wilson, a self-absorbed rookie who ends a season tied on points with the retiring champion Strip Weathers and the scheming Chick Hicks. Racing to California for a tiebreaker, he falls out of his transport truck and ends up in Radiator Springs, a desert town in Arizona. After tearing up its main street, he is ordered to repave it under the eye of Doc Hudson, the local judge, voiced by Paul Newman. Doc turns out to be a former three-time champion whose career ended in a crash, and the town itself has withered since an interstate diverted the traffic that once kept it alive.
The climax turns on a choice rather than a win. When Chick deliberately wrecks the King in the final race, Lightning stops short of the line and pushes the older car home, handing Chick a trophy that the crowd immediately scorns. He then turns down the glamorous Dinoco sponsorship out of loyalty to his humble backer, Rust-eze, and moves his base to Radiator Springs.
Released in June 2006 after a premiere at Lowe's Motor Speedway in North Carolina, the film earned $481 million worldwide on a $120 million budget. It lost the Oscar for animated feature to Happy Feet but took the Golden Globe and the Annie in that category. It is dedicated to co-writer Joe Ranft, killed in a car accident during production, and it spawned two sequels plus the Planes spin-offs.
Source: Cars (film)
