Danny P on Cars! Pixar's Mr Jay Ward - From Modesto to Radiator Springs!

I catch up with Jay Ward from Pixar.  Jay is a classic example of sometimes if you follow your passion and have a little luck the world becomes your playground!  I talk to Jay about where his love of cars came from, how he ended up working on Cars (Disney/Pixar) and where that has taken him!

We do a bit of a deep dive on the movie franchise many of us love, we talk about it's evolution and how some legends lend their voices to add authenticity.  It was so interesting to hear about Paul Newman in what was his last movie.   We Learn about the hidden details in creating the fictional town of Radiator Springs, and how the franchise inspired a real-world adventure along Route 66. Uncover insights into the franchise's growth beyond the silver screen, sweeping through theme park rides and merchandise, with Jay on board as the full-time guardian angel of the franchise.

Lastly, hang on tight as we delve into the revolutionary impact of Cars on both the film industry and the automotive world. Uncover the magic behind breathing life into the beloved characters, the stories that inspired them, and the thrilling tale of a collaboration with Porsche that led to a modern version of Sally Carrera. Hear the enthralling narrative of the car's charity auction, which sold for a staggering $3.6 million. This adventure-packed episode is your all-access pass to the unique intersection of film, cars, and racing. A must-listen for all car enthusiasts and Pixar fans, don't miss out on this unique episode!

Pixar: Pixar Animation Studios
Mr Thorndyke's car from Herbie: This Is The Apollo GT "Thorndyke Special" From Herbie: The Love Bug (silodrome.com)
RM Sotheby's Auction of the 2022 911 Sally Special: 2022 Porsche 911 'Sally Special' | Monterey 2022 | RM Sotheby's (rmsothebys.com)

Transcript

Passion for Cars and Inspiration

Dan 0:00

This episode is sponsored by 077 Media , a boutique agency set up to help automotive and motorsport companies with everything from strategic planning , marketing support to partnership management . For more information , visit wwwo77.media . What is it about cars ? Why do we love these inanimate objects ? Why do we scour auction sites looking for dream rides ? Why do we spend our weekends meeting up with others to look and talk about each other's cars ? Why do we spend hours creating builds on manufacturers' websites ? Cars should be about more than just getting away to be . My mission with this podcast is to share more about our tribe . This is Danny P on Cars .

Dan 1:24

Very few can lay claim to having influence on popular culture in the mid-2000s . Even fewer can add car culture to that accolade . As a prominent figure at Pixar Animation Studios and an unwavering car enthusiast , jay brings a unique blend of creativity and automotive passion to everything he does . Jay Ward isn't just an ordinary Pixar employee . He's the driving force behind the movie series Many of Us Love called Cars . Jay serves as Pixar's creative director of franchise for the Cars series . His tireless dedication has not only shaped unforgettable characters , but also transformed the way we perceive these animated vehicles . Welcome to Danny P on Cars . Jay Ward , hello , thank you very much . I appreciate it . Thank you for making the time . It's great to have you on the podcast . Thank you , I wanted to understand were Cars always your thing ? Was there a particular moment that really ignited your passion for ?

Jay 2:14

Cars . I think for most of us who are car people it's usually apparent that it exposes us to that world . My father , who was an automotive wholesaler , so he would buy Cars , fix them up , sell them . My mom and dad were divorced so I only saw him in the summer when I would go out there . He had a shop in Kansas City , missouri , which is my hometown . I would sit at the front desk while he would be wheeling and detailing these Cars in the back . This is in the days of stripe tape on the side of the car and the buffing wheel and all this . He would fix up these Cars , but in a lot they were always there .

Jay 2:42

When I was a young boy , my dad brought home Frooridino when I was very young . He had a Daytona Coupe . Where I was born he had a 275GTB4 cam . He had a Ghibli Spider . It wasn't a wealthy guy but it was really smart about buying and selling and flipping and kind of one car-to-time kind of guy . I think the neighbors probably thought we were drug dealers because he would bring home these amazing Cars that were way above his pay grade . But he was just very smart , always smart about the buy and the sell . He always said the money is in the buy . What you buy it for is always going to constitute what you'll make from it on the other side . I always remember those words from him .

Dan 3:14

It's great to hear that it was your father , and presumably that was a great way to bond with him .

Jay 3:19

Yeah , it's funny , like I said , being divorced . I didn't grow up with him and yet it was in my DNA , unmistakably in my DNA , to be a car guy . As I got older and he had much more patience for adults than he did for children , we actually became almost like two peas in a pod with automotive things . He would bring a car to Barrett Jackson , the big sale at Scottsdale , arizona , and I would drive the car up on stage for him . This was a thing we did for years . Every January I put on a car show at Pixar called the Motorama for a number of years and he would come to that every year and help me set up cars for the show .

Jay 3:47

Yeah , a lot of great memories . Did you get involved with selling the cars then at all ? Only from the Barrett Jackson standpoint , of driving them up on stage and hanging out with them for the weekend and doing those kind of things and always running cars by him , or having him look for something for me when I was young and then driving it back out to California from Kansas City if he found the car I was looking for . We've worked on a number of cars together . I have a 57 Pontiac Safari wagon which is like the Nomad two-door wagon , but Pontiac's version . When I bought it he came for a long weekend and helped me get the motor running and fix all these bits on it . He was really good with his hands , amazing .

Dan 4:21

So you grew up with your mother in Modesto , California , and that was the inspiration for quite a famous movie , American Graffiti . Did that movie have a lasting impression on ?

Jay 4:30

you . Yeah , it's funny . It came out when I was very young . I was too young to have seen it in the theater . Star Wars came out when I was a little boy , from the same director . It did in a lot of ways because in Modesto there was a very strong car culture in that town . Gene Winfield also did customizing Modesto for years , so it's a very suburban town for those who don't know in the Central Valley of California and as a boy it was quite boring to live there . There was nothing there but agricultural things , and so you ended up riding motorcycles , working on cars , riding three-wheelers , playing on dirt bikes . All that necessitated out of this boredom of living in this sort of nothing town about 85 miles from San Francisco . I'm grateful for it because it did expose me to a lot automatically before I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area .

Dan 5:13

Yeah , so not only was it in your blood growing up , but also it was around you in terms of the inspiration .

Jay 5:19

Yeah , and it's funny , the first weekend after high school gets out every year they call it graffiti night and basically the whole central strip of Modesto called McHenry closes down and cars cruise down this strip and it was sort of this rite of passage just like in the film George Lucas showed it of this cruising up and down this main strip and kind of looking for friends and other cars and talking and it was almost like this automotive mating ritual that happened as a teenager . Sadly I don't think it happens that way anymore . The town really changed a lot in the 2000s when the dot-com boom happened in the Bay Area . It changed that town . It grew up a lot and changed and it's just not the same place anymore . But when I was a kid there it was still a little bit like the American graffiti version of what you see .

Dan 5:59

So what did your early car and the ship look like ? What was your first ?

Jay 6:02

car . I had a number of cars . So one thing I used to do was every Sunday , when you used to get the Sunday paper the large , proper Sunday paper that was the biggest day for classifies because if people were going to sell their car they would pay for the one time Sunday sale . And I would open that up as a kid and I'd go to the classic cars for sale and I would go down all the classic cars for sale and I'd circle the ones that looked interesting . And then I had a book called Tad Bernes' Car Spotter Guide and I'd look up the car and go , oh , 58 Impala , that's cool . Oh yeah , oh , chrysler 300C , let me look that up . And it taught me a lot about 50s era

Car Enthusiast Involved With Pixar's Cars

Jay 6:34

cars .

Jay 6:34

I had a really beat up Ford Grand Trino wagon that me and my buddies I think I paid about $300 or $400 for it . It didn't run very well . It had a cracked block . We drove that to the beach and would put surfboards on it and goof around with that car imploded . I bought my sister's old carman gear and fixed that up . That was my main high school car for many years . By the time I got to art school I wanted an old car again . Through a friend , I found a 1970 Buick Electra 225 convertible , which was a massive , massive convertible , with a Buick 455 . This is back in the days when gas was extremely cheap and that was a great car as well . It was a six passenger convertible .

Dan 7:11

So , apart from the VW , have you generally always gravitated to American cars ?

Jay 7:15

I think it's because it's what I was familiar with as a boy . I couldn't afford something European at that point and American V8 cars were sort of plentiful and cool . As a young man and honestly I rode motorcycles probably more than cars because they were even more accessible Yamaha RD2 strokes I loved and rode gotten a lot of trouble with those all kinds of vehicles . Whatever I could get , I would pick up and drive and check out and you mentioned that Pontiac Safari .

Dan 7:39

I think I spotted you on a BBC Top Gear video a few months ago . It was a video for an RS6 , but it was talking about California car culture and specifically wagons , or estates as we would call them in the UK .

Jay 7:52

How did that video come about ? It was funny . I have another . So for years I ran a hot rod and custom show called Billet Proof which was like low buck , build it yourself , hot rods and customs and met a lot of great people in the car world . It's a long story , but in the 90s there was this resurgence of traditional 50-style hot rods and customs , which I love .

Jay 8:09

So me and a friend started a show and it blew up and became this massive show . So I met a lot of cool people in the hot rod and custom world . One of them was a guy named Henry Gong who has a 56 Nomad that was built by Cole Foster kind of a famous customizer in the Gilroy area , salinas , and he told me about this thing and he said you're wagging to be really cool for it , and so somehow I got connected and ended up being part of this shoot once they saw my car . So Ollie from the Top Gear website said yeah , I think it'd be cool to have you , so I ended up being part of it . Presumably there aren't many two-door wagons Are there .

Jay 8:43

No , it's funny . The Pontiac Safari was a very expensive car when it was new . It cost more than a convertible . The only more expensive car would have been a 57 Bonneville and they only made in 57 , they made $1,292 . So less than $1,300 , which for General Motors numbers that is a paltry , paltry number . You know there may be some other makes that $1,300 cars is great for them , but $1,300 for Pontiac is a very low production number . So they're extremely hard to find .

Jay 9:06

And when my daughter was born I wanted to get a two-door wagon and looked and looked and found this thing in LA and it was a rotted Hulk and the floors were rotted . It was just a tetanus shot on wheels , put it on a rollback , brought it home . My wife was there waiting in the driver with our baby daughter and she was like what have you done ? What have you bought ? And I said give me a year , give me one year and it'll be safe and it'll be running . She said , fine , just make sure it has seatbelts in it and that it's safe and it won't break down . And within a year it was completely rebuilt . I put disc brakes on it , seatbelts , you know , dynamat liner , so it was all insulated inside and we still drive it everywhere together . It does look stunning .

Dan 9:43

It looks brand new if you look at the video . So to do that in a year is it's a pretty mean feat , right ?

Jay 9:49

Yeah , it was a bit of work . Yeah , I'd say probably more like two or three years before everything was worked out , but I got to the core of what I promised her within a year . Yeah , and what ? Do you have a car collection at the moment ? Yeah , I've got a small number of cars . I've got a 29 Model , a Roadster , a traditional hot rod that has a Cadillac 331 in it that I've driven to Bonneville and back with a friend . That was one of the best trips of my life .

Jay 10:09

I just sold a 39 Mercury convertible . That was a Westergaard style pre-war custom that I had for years . If you've been to the Peterson vault down below , you know about the Maroon 39 Mercury . That was called the Rulon McGregor car . My car was inspired by that car and I just sold it to a friend of mine , a dear friend of mine , who was the first guy to customize the car for me . And I just said I'm not driving anymore , it's just sitting . And he said I really want that car and so he bought it for me .

Jay 10:33

I've got a 76 911 S . That's an original Bay Area California car that's never left Bay Area its entire life . We bought it from the widow of the man who had it , and I just picked up a 2009 911 and 997.2 , which is a great car that's going to be my daily driver . I think that's everything at the moment , and lots of old motorcycles and scooters . I just restored a Heinkl Tourist , if you know what that is . That's a little German scooter made in Stuttgart , zufenhausen , electric start , a German scooter from the 50s and early 60s . It is a brilliant little bike , really cool design . It looks like the Rocketeer scooter .

Dan 11:05

You're handy with the wrench and such .

Jay 11:08

Yeah , if it's straightforward things . I'm not a body and paint guy . I'm not expert at that . I don't know how to chrome plate or those kinds of things , but most mechanical things are not truly difficult and these days we're so fortunate with YouTube and all the websites you can figure out how to do almost anything on your car . If you're just patient , you can buy any specialty tool on Amazon . It's pretty incredible the resources we have to work on things . Now . Do you guys have Haynes manuals over here ? Yeah , we did have Haynes . You'd have that manual or you'd ask a friend or you'd break it and then you'd have to redo it and then break it and then finally figure out after the third time of breaking something . That was the other way that we used to do things .

Dan 11:42

A longer learning experience , but it would be a miss for me to not talk about the cars franchise , which has been fantastic . My understanding from previous research is that you joined the car , the original cars movie , after being commissioned . You were on a more of a junior role but really your passion for cars and enthusiasm was something that elevated you within the team . Is that a fair commentary ?

Jay 12:08

It's one way to put it . It's funny because Pixar I'm very fortunate I've been there almost 25 years . I started in December of 1998 on Monsters Inc so it's very close to 25 years now and I did start in an entry-level role called a production assistant in the art department on Monsters Inc as I was finishing up on Monsters Inc and I moved up from what was called a PA to a coordinator and the next role was called a manager for cars . It was early days , so cars started back in 2000 , actually before Monsters Inc was even done . We started on cars and I came on in the art department as I had been on Monsters Inc as a coordinator Immediately . I just knew this world as a car person . I was already running the Bill Prusa on the outside world and was already starting to work on the Pixar Motorama as well . So they knew I was gearhead and I came on to cars .

Jay 12:51

And then the director , john Laster , kept hearing me talk about things We'd be in review and I'd say that's actually not the right poll pattern for that car . No , actually Fiat 500 has transverse leaf suspension , one front mirror spring . And he kept listening and he kept saying are we getting this right ? What about this and he said what about bias , ply versus radials and all these things ? In my kind of car geekdom was able to really come out when St John began to sort of utilize me more as a car what I call a car sultan for the film , on top of the role in the art department .

Jay 13:18

And then the producer , adelaide Anderson , said I want you to manage the character team , so you manage the process of the characters being built on the computer , which was a step up to a manager , and also being involved in the technical process , which I knew nothing about . But it really helped me oversee the cars being built in the computer . And then , of course , all the research trips , and then it just kept on evolving from there . But yes , I was with cars almost from the very beginning until the release date in 2006 . And then I moved on to Ratatouille after that .

Dan 13:45

Just a great example of how following your passion and finding a role where you can utilize your passion is the kind of dream for many , and many don't achieve that .

Jay 13:53

So yeah , you don't always expect that something you love as a hobby will somehow integrate with your work . I think it's always important to have a hobby or a passion project or something on the side so that your work doesn't become your identity . But it was really cool to be able to bring something I knew about and infuse that in with the car world and the animated world .

Dan 14:12

Obviously , the first film focuses on a fictional town on the route of Route 66 . Have you done that pilgrimage and , if so , what have you done it in and who have you done it with ?

Jay 14:26

Well , we did the first research trips back in 2000 , and I didn't go . Actually , the first group that went was the story team that were developing . The story went with John Some time later . A few of the artists went and I didn't go on that trip either , for whatever reason . I went to our Detroit trip . So I did all the automotive research trips but not the Route 66 cultural trips . So during the pandemic I thought you know , I've been down parts of Route 66 , but I've never really done a proper tour I got a Ford F-250 Powerstroke diesel with a trimmer package from Ford , a media vehicle , and I have a friend who works at Airstream and I borrowed the Airstream media unit which was a 27 , 28-foot Airstream , and so I had this beautiful F-250,

"Cars" Impact on Route 66

Jay 15:05

.

Jay 15:05

I had this beautiful brand new Airstream . I hooked them up to each other . I printed out some large-scale piston cup decals and put them on the sides of the front of the truck and it was a red truck which worked out well . I unloaded up my family and we went across from San Francisco . We stayed the first night in Bonneville on the Salt Flats . Literally the cars were racing .

Jay 15:23

The next day we were there at the Bonneville Salt Flats so my kids got to see that . And then we went on a cross , visited some friends in Salt Lake all the way across Cheyenne , wyoming , dropped into Kansas City to see my family and then connected with Route 66 in a little town called Lebanon , missouri , and began to make our way out west and our goal was to stop at all the towns that influenced the movie cars along the way to see how they were doing 20 years later . And it was really eye-opening and fascinating to stop at all these places and you can watch the cars and if you go to the in-credits you'll see . We gave thanks to all the businesses on Route 66 that influenced the film . So those are the ones I targeted visiting on the way back and it was an amazing trip with my family , about two weeks on the road just stopping , talking and enjoying it and then , of course , with an Airstream you're pulling your own hotel behind you .

Dan 16:08

If someone hasn't , then someone needs to write the official cars guide to Route 66 .

Jay 16:12

Yeah , or just watch the in-credits , write down all those businesses and go in that order and you will have , I promise you , a really great trip . And many of the original owners from 20 years ago are still there , I would guess that the movie franchise has probably injected more life into those towns now as a result .

Jay 16:28

More than you know . It's really insane because if you go back to the year 2000 , route 66 was kind of dying a little bit . It wasn't doing extremely well . Who you found was a bunch of Germans on Harleys . Ironically enough , germans on Harleys got the Route 66 American and more than Americans . And after that film came out there were so many , especially kids , who wanted their parents to take them to find Radiator Springs that infused life and all these businesses . And when you go on Route 66 now you'll see Lightning , mcqueen's and Maders and Sheriffs and Cars logos all up and down Route 66 . You have small towns where they'll go to the local Walmart and buy all the cars die cast and sell them in their shop because kids will ask for them on Route 66 and they have to have something to sell .

Dan 17:11

It's incredible and it goes back to my introduction around just that the impact where those films have had on popular culture is just incredible , just incredible . We had no idea . But that's the beauty , I guess , in terms of at the time you don't realize how big something's going to be , and when you deliver it , it then just becomes bigger than you could ever expect , which I guess is an amazing achievement .

Jay 17:29

Yeah , it's cool because you're trying to tell a story and you want your story to be authentic . I think Pixar prides itself on telling authentic stories and so when you've done your research and you get the details right in the cars and you get the details right in the towns , it feels like it's real and it feels authentic and it feels genuine and you're telling your story based on stories you've heard and that is meaningful to those businesses along Route 66 to have their story heard and to be seen in that way . So it was really special . We didn't know how much it would give back , but we're so glad that it did .

Dan 17:58

The franchise became much bigger than just a set of movies . There were rides at Disney or there are rides at Disney . Did you get involved with all that sort of stuff ? That came as a result of the movie's success .

Jay 18:09

Yeah , absolutely . In fact , after Cars , like I said , I went on to Ratatouille . But as I worked on the End Brave and as I worked on these other movies , john kept calling me back and saying hey , I want you to work on this project . There's a Cars thing , there's this , and it was an incredible amount of things going on .

Jay 18:22

By 2012 , we were opening Cars Land in California , which I worked on . All five years , from the groundbreaking to the opening day , I was there and part of it we did a Cars themed resort , the Art of Animation Resort in Florida . So we opened that . At the same year we were working on the second Cars film . We had life-sized Cars that we had worked on and built that we're touring around . So there were so many things going that by about 2011 , 2012 , I went to John and John said I really want you to oversee Cars as this franchise full-time . And I said I can't do that and manage the art department on Brave . I just I can't do them both . And he said well , write down what it would be to manage Cars full-time , what that looks like , video games and publishing and consumer products and authenticity and all these projects . And so I wrote it all out and he said I really think that's it is a full-time job and that's kind of how it all started to really go deeper into

Connections Between Film, Cars, and Racing

Jay 19:11

that .

Dan 19:11

Another great example of how writing your own job description is kind of following your passion , isn't ?

Jay 19:16

it ? Yeah , it is , and that's expanded now to creative director for all franchises and not just Cars but Toy Story . It's how we carry on our legacies In the film world . If you're James Cameron and you make Titanic , he's not the perfect example because he really loves Titanic , but your average director will make a film and when they're done , they're done , they move on to another project and they chuck whatever that is over the fence and somebody continues to make the merchandise and the products for Ghostbusters or Titanic or Wizard of Oz , but it's usually not . The filmmakers usually aren't hands-on . Pixar has always taken this stance of we want to be directly involved in the legacy of our films and how they're portrayed and how they're seen in the world , and luckily Disney has been very supportive of that .

Dan 19:57

Has that opened doors for you with car manufacturers ? Have you had some amazing experiences as a result of the success of the movie ?

Jay 20:04

Yeah , in fact it starts going all the way back to the motorama . When I was doing this car show at Pixar , it started very small as just an employee car show and we have these kind of wings out in front of work , these walkways , and I put basically 70s and older cars that belong to employees on one side , 80s and newers on the other . And then across the street from Pixar is a high-end European sort of car broker called Fantasy Junction . And Fantasy Junction said we'll bring over some cars . So I had a 300 SL and some other fancy car and put them out front and that was our show and that worked for 2001 and then 2002 . And then I started reaching out to the manufacturers . We had relationships with them and said hey , ford , I'm doing this little show called the Motorama . It's just for employees , it's not open to the public . Would you be willing to bring something ? Sure , what would you like ? Could I have the Ford 49 concept car ? Yeah , yeah , we'll bring that out . Hey , general Motors , I have this show called the Motorama . It's really an homage to your 50s motoramas . Would you bring it ? Sure , what would you like ? Would you bring it ? Yes , please .

Jay 21:01

And so we started getting all these amazing cars . Jay Leno starts sending cars , chip Fooz started sending cars , scott Pruitt , the Indy car driver , sent cars , danny Sullivan , former F1 and Indy racer , brought cars and it just became this amazing thing . It got to this point where the CHP landed a helicopter on the soccer pitch at Pixar during one of our motoramas . It was just incredible . The Wienermobile came like the Oscar Marr Wienermobile was there . Autowheak Magazine said it's the best car . Oh , and , by the way , the Peterson Automotive Museum , who we both love , has been sending cars every year forever , and Autowheak Magazine said this is one of the best car shows in the world that you'll never get to see . It's really just for the employees , but I loved it and John loved it , and the passion for cars got to happen because of this relationship we had with these manufacturers that opened all these doors to get these great cars there .

Dan 21:46

It just goes to show that car people are car people , aren't they In terms of you know , you have a love for something and that affinity takes place , then all things can happen .

Jay 21:54

Yeah , and the same thing happened for me with Formula One . You know we have a US Grand Prix that has been happening in Austin since 2012 . And in 2013 , I wanted to go . We had just released cars two and it had Francesco Formula One car and I contacted Austin . I said I'd like to bring myself one of my character team artists and a story artist just to do some research about the world of Formula One racing , and it opened up so many doors .

Jay 22:18

I met that weekend . We met Suzy Wolfe and I met some friends at Williams and all these other teams and have continued these relationships now , 10 years later , because they have this love of Pixar and I have this love of racing in Formula One and it's , you know , that's continued to grow the NASCAR world . I've met , you know , all these amazing drivers from the past and current drivers and we continue our relationship with NASCAR from the movie car . So it's phenomenal . Do you have a Formula One team you support ? Then ?

Jay 22:45

You know I love Williams for the legacy and the history of it . Since Sir Frank is not with us anymore and Claire has sort of moved on , it's not quite the same to me , but I do still love underdog teams . It's very cool to me to see what Williams has done in the last few years and how much they have elevated themselves . And , of course , Lewis Hamilton was a voice for us in cars two and cars three , so I will always support Lewis . He was absolutely fantastic to work with , so he's been amazing . And for a while , Botos went from you know Williams over to be his teammate , so that was pretty fun as well .

Dan 23:15

My friend used to work for Williams , so I got a massive affinity for Williams and was lucky enough in 2016 to join them in the garage for the race .

Jay 23:23

Oh , that is cool .

Dan 23:24

At which one is Silverstone , the Cota race actually in 2016 . Oh , cota , okay and .

Jay 23:30

Massa , massa , massa . In that year , yeah , I went to Monza in 15 and Felipe Massa for Williams , got on the podium . I think he got third that year at Monza , and so I got to be there for that . And of course , the Tafosi loves anybody who ever , you know , walked past the Ferrari factory for five minutes , and so they were so thrilled that Felipe Massa was up there . And yet it was Williams and it was . It was a really one of the best weekends ever . I really enjoyed that . But honestly , none of that would have happened without the movie Cars and Felipe Massa had . Actually way back when we featured Michael Schumacher at the end of Cars , felipe Massa was the one who took John around the track there at Maranello . So there again , all these connections back to the movie Cars . It's incredible , was it true that ? I think ?

Dan 24:13

I read somewhere that for one of the international markets , Alonso was used as the voice of one of the characters . Was that true ?

Jay 24:19

Yeah , we did that quite a bit . So Fernando Alonso was a voice in Spain , sebastian Vettel did a voice for us in Germany , mika Hakinen did a voice for us and I'm guessing a Finnish market or something like that A number of drivers , it's pretty incredible . And Michael Schumacher , like I said , when he did the F430 at the end of Cars , he did his part in German and English and Italian . So you know , it is incredible that we've , of course , mario Andretti was in the film for us , richard Petty was in the film for us , dale Earnhardt Jr was in the film for us . So the list goes on and on . At the number of drivers that we've had or racing people that we've had involved in our films , can I ask you about ?

Dan 24:56

Paul Newman , because I think that was the last film he did it is . What was it like ?

Jay 25:03

working with him . People always say who's your favorite Cars character ? And I always say it's Doc Hudson , because that character was Paul Newman . We always have a script , we have pages of dialogue written . But when Paul Newman sat down and he read the script he was like , well , that's not right , that's not what a race car would do , that's not what he would say . We let Paul sort of write his own dialogue . So when he's talking it's really Paul Newman talking . He is himself , he is Doc and he was brilliant . I mean , he was not a young man when he came and did that part for us . He was 79 years old , 80 years old when he recorded with us and he was still so amazing and still had that spark on his eyes and still had this love of racing . In fact , I think he raced that year that we finished Cars at the 12 hours of Sebring . He raced and we did a Cars sponsorship logo on his car .

Jay 25:53

It's just incredible that the guy raced to the end . If you haven't seen Adam Corolla's film winning the Paul Newman documentary , it is very well done about this guy , paul Newman , who began racing in his 40s and was actually incredibly good in a race car , and if he would have started in his teens or 20s he probably would have been a professional driver .

Dan 26:11

You also put one of my personal heroes in the third film , a mutual friend , Terry Cargis from the Peterson Museum . I want to know how that came about , because it was actually the first time that I was aware of you . I saw this blue car with Terry Cargis written on the side . I'm like Terry , you're in Cars and he's like Jay , sort of helped for me . So how did you meet Terry and how did it come about that he became a car ?

Jay 26:34

Well , we have a relationship going back with the Peterson a long , long way and , like I said , they brought Cars to the Motorama for years . We have a lightning McQueen , a full-size lightning McQueen , in the Peterson Automotive Museum and Terry is one of these people that is just a friend for life when you get to know him . And it was just a way of really honoring Terry Cargis and the Peterson for everything they had done for us . I have a number of die-cast Cars and we have to name all these Cars and so in the film it's a background car , it doesn't have a voice . You can sort of give it any name you want . I always like to carify these names of these people that have been integral to the Cars franchise and Terry's just one of them and his name happened to work out really well , named Cargis . So that was fun to do .

Jay 27:12

Are you in any of the movies ? I did a voice for the first film . I'm a radio announcer in the first film and then I'm interviewing Jeff Gourvet in Cars 3 . At the end I'm the car interviewing , so I get little bit parts . I would be a little part of the film in some way . It's really fun and special .

Dan 27:26

So also , you recently did a collaboration to turn one of the Cars characters into a semi-real car in terms of the Porsche , the Sally series Porsche . Yeah , out of that kind of a , was that something that you were directly ?

Jay 27:41

involved with Very much and it's interesting because I really have to give credit to Porsche Cars North America . Ingus Fitton had contacted me and he had let me know that Porsche , during COVID , had auctioned off the last 991 built , which happened to be a Speedster . So it's a valuable model . They auctioned it off for charity , for COVID charities , and it raised $500,000 . And Porsche matched it and gave a million dollars to COVID charities , which I thought brilliant .

Jay 28:06

And he said you know , I want to do something for a female based charity , for Girls Inc , and I think Sally is probably the strongest female character I can think of .

Build and Auction Special Car for Charity

Jay 28:14

We , by the way , going back a bit , we built a life-size 996 Sally for the first Cars film and I donated it to the Porsche Museum . So it lives . This 996 Sally that we built for the film in 06 lives in the Porsche Museum and it is the most popular car in that museum 917s , 550 Spiders , the Sally Carrera Cars , their number one requested car in the museum . And so he said I really want to build like a modern version of Sally . I said I think it's great , I will support it , we'll make this happen . I said I don't want us to build a character car I don't want you to put eyes on the windscreen or a mouth on the front and have somebody driving a character car down the road . God forbid they crash or whatever . But let's build a car that's an homage to Sally . Let's build something that has all the details . It's like a modern road legal version with all the Sally attributes . And so I brought in Bob Polly , who was the original designer of Sally . Bob Polly designed Lightning McQueen Sally . He designed Mater . He designed Buzz Lightyear . He's a brilliant , brilliant designer , one of my good friends . I said , bob , you got to be on this . You designed Sally and we worked with Porsche directly over the course of about a year and we started with the Carrera GTS , which was the top spec of the Carrera range .

Jay 29:22

She's Sally Carrera , no sunroof , manual transmission . So we really got the driver's spec . And then we added a bunch of what's called Zondervunch options , special wishes options . So we did a very bespoke interior , we did special door sills , we did a special dash black . That's one of one with a little Sally illustration . She's got the pinstripe tattoo on her rear wing and the trickiest part was matching that Sally blue , that really brilliant Sally blue paint . We worked with a designer at Porsche named Danny . She's called the Queen of Color at Porsche and she helped us spec this paint color and we brought the car to Monterey in 2022 to auction off at RM and my hope was , if we got to $6,000,000 , $700,000 to be great .

Jay 30:05

You know , we'll see what it does . The car had stickered around I think 300 or 400,000 with all these options . We had gone crazy with options . So we thought , okay , 7,800 grand , great , I don't know . As the options getting close , this is Monterey car week . I had somebody from RM say I've had so many people interested in this car talking about I really think you guys can maybe get almost almost to a million . I'm like that'd be amazing , but let's not get ahead of ourselves . That's a lot of money for a 9-11 Carrera , but you know , we'll see . And so Angus and Porsche North America flew Bonnie Hunt , the voice of Sally Carrera , in for the auction and she got up and did this beautiful speech and said look , this is going 100% for charity for Girls Inc and for Ukrainian refugees .

Jay 30:45

At that point , the war in Ukraine had started , so we split the charity . This car is really the embodiment of Sally . Sally is a person who loves to give back to others . This is your chance to give back to others in the spirit of Sally Whole rooms .

Jay 30:56

We be eyed and the auction begins and it went to a million dollars and 17 seconds and then went right past it 11121314151617 . And the room is just exploding . It's at $1.7 million and a guy from RM comes over and he says I've got somebody on the phone who really wants this car . I think he'd be willing to go a bit more . What would you be happy at ? 2 million ? I said I was happy .

Jay 31:20

You know , quite a while ago . Sure , he's walking away and it gets to 2 million before he can even get back . And it goes 21223242526 . It gets to 3 million and the whole room erupts again . Now we're at $3 million for a 9-11 . This is not a GT3 that was raced at Le Mans , this is just a car we built . And it's at $3 million and the whole room is freaking out , buzzing , and the room calms down and it gets down to two bidders One gentleman in the room and another one on the phone and it hammered at $3.6 million and all of it went to charity . And Porsche had never sold a new car In the history of Porsche had never sold a new car for that much money . So it was unbelievable , and I think it speaks a little bit to the love of Sally Carrera in the film Cars , but also to the charity and to what it was , how it was helping other people . So it was great .

Dan 32:08

Now , that's fantastic . I believe that original Sally is in the Peterson of the Minute , the one on loan . It is but Steve Loning and Sally reunited at Rensport this year , that's right , we had them together .

Jay 32:21

I was there for that reunion . In fact the Sally Special , the GTS that we built , was at Rensport as well . It was in the Zondervoen special wishes building with all the PTS kind of special cars , so it was there as well . And then the Monday after Rensport I had the gentleman who won the Sally Special bring it up to Pixar and I had the original Sally 996 at Pixar , which those two cars had never been together at Pixar . So that was pretty special .

Dan 32:45

I know that the movie franchise spun off a couple of kind of offshoots , if you will , so I wondered if there was a J Ward Plains .

Jay 32:54

Well , Plains was done by Disney , by our friends at the Walt Disney Company , and we you know it was one of these sister things . It was , like you know , we couldn't really work on it directly . I did help them with a lot of research and took them to a lot of events and showed the director around and did help them on a number of things . But I don't think I'm a plane in there . I stick to four wheels , Can we ?

Dan 33:14

expect anything new from the cars franchise in the near future .

Jay 33:19

Yeah , I've got a couple of things brewing I can't talk about at the moment , but there are some things coming down the road , as I like to say , and cars just keeps having this love that keeps going . There's every day there's a new kid watching the film for the first time and it's exciting to see . So , yeah , we do have , we do have more coming , so hang in there . I don't know if you know , but this is just a funny story to tell you about how popular cars is

Crocs and Mundo Pixar

Jay 33:41

. We make these little crocs shoes for kids .

Jay 33:43

Lightning McQueen and some adult gentlemen said I want Lightning McQueen Crocs for adults and they don't make them . And so he started a I don't know what it was , probably a Kickstarter campaign to get crocs to make adult Lightning McQueen Crocs , which sounds like a joke . He got something like 120,000 signatures , so he turns it into crocs and they're like okay , this is obviously somebody too much time on the hands . You want adult . Like . Like they're not going to sell . Like , okay , if there's a hundred thousand signatures , we're going to make 20,000 pairs and maybe we're going to get stuck with them , but we'll try . They sold out in hours , a number of hours , 20,000 pairs gone . So they relaunched them again , I think a year ago , and they made 90,000 pairs sold out within hours . So we just introduced mater crocs adult mater crocs and they sold out in less than a minute , completely sold out in less than a minute . So there is a number of adults out there with this love of cars as well . It's not just for kids .

Dan 34:40

With a love of cars and maybe a bad taste in fashion .

Jay 34:46

I've got a pair of the McQueen Crocs . By the way , they light up as well . I decided to wear them to work one day and my wife said you're not going to wear those to work , are you ? And I said you know why not ? It's the one place I can wear them . Nobody's going to give me a hard time there .

Dan 34:57

I had no idea about them until this weekend that was in Vegas for the Grand Prix , and one of the employees at the Peterson , their son , had a pair of Lightning McQueen Crocs on them .

Jay 35:08

They're quite popular . Yeah , that , and the roller bag .

Dan 35:11

the McQueen roller bags are quite popular as well , yes , yeah , I've seen that as well , so you'll have to give me the nudge the next time . Crocs are about to release the next version , so I can get it on the back . Okay , all right , I'll let you know it's not even got to be a fashionista of any show . What's next for ?

Jay 35:25

you . I've got a couple of things going . So we I helped open an event down in some Paulo , brazil , called Mundo Pixar World of Pixar . It was a ticketed event where you buy a ticket and you walk through the Pixar films in this immersive sort of way . It had sculpts and music playing and surround video and we pumped in smells of all the films as you go through it and , just like in Ikea , you walk through the different Pixar films and then you walk out through a gift shop and because it was in Brazil , they have a very high importation tax . They had to build all the sculpts down there and they made all the merchandise down there . So it's in Portuguese for your Brazilian Pixar fans .

Jay 36:00

And the event had the capacity for about 300,000 people . It was a pop-up event , was only there for three months and they put the tickets for sale and they pre-sold 270,000 tickets before it even started . So it was completely sold out , sold out of merchandise , and it went from Sao Paulo , brazil , to Rio de Janeiro and sold out again and now it's down in Porto Alegre . I just got back from Porto Alegre and it's going there now and it was so popular in Brazil that we're opening one in Madrid , spain , and we're opening another one in Mexico City . So I'm going to be going to Madrid and to Mexico City to help open these Mundo Pixar exhibits in those two markets next month . So I'm going to be doing a bit of travel for Pixar and then settle in for the rest of the year and get ready for it all to start over again .

Dan 36:45

And that's cool . It's great to think about the different ways you can bring it to life , especially when the local economy is almost creating the product , if you will .

Jay 36:53

Yeah , exactly , and for these markets that don't have a Disney park nearby , it's a great way for them to be really immersed in the love of Pixar in a really meaningful way , to get to be part of our films . And there are these certain marks that really have a love and an understanding of Pixar as a brand that we're not Disney , that we are separate in so many ways that we have our own film legacy . It doesn't always get clumped in with Disney and for those markets that love Pixar , this is something just for them .

Dan 37:19

Let's switch to a quick fire round , if we can , and this doesn't have to be quick fire in terms of answers . You know it may spark conversation , but I've got a few questions kind of lined up , with the exclusion of your own properties . Do you have a favorite movie or TV ?

Jay 37:37

car . Oh , favorite movie or TV car that I really love ? I think probably the Ghostbusters Ambulance is one of my favorites , the original one , the original film . Everybody loves the back of the future car and probably the bullet Mustang . Those are all very easy softball choices , but they're all pretty great .

Dan 37:54

Yeah , I mean , they're iconic , aren't they ? You can you know , you recognize the how line of them , for example ? Straight away , you'll know what it is .

Jay 38:00

Yeah , yeah , this is a deep cut now . I also love Mr Thorndyke's car in Herbie the Love Bug , which was an Apollo which was built in Italy and then imported to the US . It had a Buick engine and they were sold through dealers in the Bay Area . But look up the Mr Thorndyke's car , it was an Apollo . It was sold by Bonham's auctions about a year ago .

Dan 38:20

Very cool car , Definitely have to look above and up because I'm not familiar with it . Who are your motoring heroes and have you met them ?

Jay 38:26

Well , there's some that have passed . I never got to meet Jim Clark . I would have loved to have met him . I went to Hawke and I'm on the anniversary of his death and went to the spot where he passed away . But I've been lucky enough to meet some pretty amazing legends . I got to meet Dan Gurney before he passed away , who's probably the greatest American racing icon in my mind . Got to meet Carol Shelby before he passed away . Again , because of the world of cars , met Carol Shelby and then Jackie Yix . I've got to meet him , which was pretty cool and along-prost , which is amazing . Never got to meet Air Tent Senate . Would have been great to have met him . There's a whole raft of new drivers . I mean , lewis Hamilton is truly our era's legendary driver and getting to spend time with him recording has been pretty special .

Dan 39:05

Yeah , and he looked very young when you were recording with him . I watched a video today and it was like my god , he's a young Lewis Hamilton .

Jay 39:12

Yeah , cars too era when he recorded for us . He came to the premiere in Los Angeles . At that time he was dating the girl from the Pussycat Dolls .

Jay 39:20

And yeah yeah , exactly , exactly , and he was still McLaren with the you know the old McLaren colors back then . But yeah , it was neat to have him for that . Do you have a favorite road or track to drive on ? I'm very fortunate because Pixar is located halfway between Laguna Seca and Sonoma Raceway , so I've got two of the most iconic tracks in California both within driving distance where I live . I'd have to say Laguna Seca is my all-time favorite track for the Corkscrew , for the history of it , for the setting of it , for the whole Monterey Peninsula . There's something special about that area and I really do love that track .

Dan 39:54

Yeah , and it's great to see it's now getting the investment it deserves Absolutely . It's been collected for quite a few years , doesn't it ?

Jay 40:00

Yeah , when I was a young man I would go there to watch . They used to run MotoGP there back in the 80s when I was a young guy and I saw , you know , kenny Roberts and Kevin Schwantz and , of course , wayne Rainey the legendary Wayne Rainey and McDewan and all these guys raced back then when I was a young man in the mid-80s , mid-to-late-80s , back when two-stroke 500s ruled the roost and I just grew up loving that track .

Dan 40:25

Yeah , and I think you were at velocity a few weekends ago , weren't you ?

Jay 40:28

Yeah , I've gone to every velocity . The very first one was at Sonoma . I went to Laguna Seca for a couple of years . It's back at Sonoma and it just keeps getting bigger Every year . Jeff O'Neill , who puts it on , spends a tremendous amount of money and effort to make it a world-class event . And McLaren was there deep . I mean , zach was there , lando was there , he brought Tony Kanan from the NASCAR world . He had a Pada award there from the IndyCar world . It was amazing and because I've tried to survive in this awareness of Formula One now , there were so many fans wearing McLaren gear there , which I didn't see that a few years ago , so that was great .

Dan 41:05

I'm currently working with DirtVitch , who brought a lot of rally cars up to the event , so I got to hear from their perspective . It was great that they could take some cars and put them sideways on the track instead of straight through the corners .

Jay 41:19

I had a buddy bring his 1920 Duesenberg racer and a straight eight racer and that car was phenomenal . We did some driving around the course . I actually burnt my arm on the exhaust pipe because it has a high pipe . I sat on the mechanic's side and burned my elbow . But you only do that once , right , there's a scar of honor isn't it ?

Dan 41:39

Yeah , it is , it is . Oh , that's cool .

Jay 41:42

Stick or auto Really depends on the scenario . So I'm a manual transmission person all the way . Everything I have has stick transmission . But that 911 , that 2009 I just bought has a PDK and I was never . I was I'm gonna want a manual , but I got to say a PDK is about the best compromise because you can shift it manually . So it is a gearbox transmission , it's not a slush box , it's not a torque converter automatic . It has seven manual gears that you can shift or not shift and it's pretty good compromise . But yeah , manual usually is good for me .

Dan 42:13

And the 2009 is a good choice , isn't it ? Cause it's . It was the second generation of those , those 911s .

Jay 42:19

That's right . Direct injection . They got rid of the IMS bearing issues . Some of them had the fuel mileage improved and the horsepower went up . And it was a launch car . Mine was an early launch car , so it's Porsche racing green , metallic , which is kind of a neat , almost like a British racing green , but not a bad car . It looks good .

Dan 42:34

Finally , in a few sentences . Why do you love these inanimate objects ?

Jay 42:39

that we call cars . You know they mean things to a lot of different things , different people , that they are rolling works of art and I think even if you don't drive a car , you can still appreciate the way they look . But when you do drive them , there is something beautiful , especially about a vintage car and the way that it sounds and feels , the tactileness of it , the smell of it , the sound of it , I don't know it's . It's hard . You really gravitate to these certain cars that you just love and I'm always looking at another car that I want the way . So I also do a bit of judging at Concourse and the way that all started . I've over the years . It started actually with Amelia Island Concourse , which is a great event .

Jay 43:12

Bill Warner , who ran the Amelia Island Concourse , came to Pixar one day . Again it all , somehow it comes back . Fantasy Junction said hey , there's this gentleman here , he wants to come visit Pixar , can he come over ? It was Bill Warner and his wife Jane and I walked them through the studio and he said wow , you know a lot about cars , cause we just started talking . I said , oh yeah , we were talking about Edsel Ford and the Edsel Ford Speedster he built in the 30s and he said you know about that . I said oh yeah , I'm talking , talking .

Jay 43:35

And he said have you ever judged at a concourse ? I said no and he said I said I've been to Pebble Beach but I've never judged . And he said would you like to ? And I said I guess he would . He said what's your favorite car ? And I pulled out my phone and I said I have my top 50 American and my top 50 European . Which one do you want ? First he goes okay , you need to judge at the concourse next year .

Concourse Judging and Car Passion

Jay 43:53

And his assistant called me and I judged at Amelia Island in 2015 alongside Hurley Haywood as my co-judge , which was pretty brilliant . And then I judged at the Hilton Head Concourse that fall . And then the next year , Pebble Beach called me and then I judged at Pebble Beach and this last year , after years of judging at Pebble , I got invited to judge at Villedesta over on Lake Como . So that whole world has opened up to me the concourse judging world , which you have to know a little something about cars and culture and appreciate automobiles to get that role , but it's definitely a lot of pinch me kind of moments .

Dan 44:26

It's great to hear that . You know , a passion attracts and opens doors , so that's fantastic . Well , that's everything . So thank you so much for joining me on the podcast . Thank you even more so for bringing to life , you know , the stories of the cars films that we love so much . And until next time , this has been Danny P on Cars . Thank you , See you , danny , see you next time .