It's one of Pixar's most popular franchises - only Toy Story comes close in terms of the merchandise it spawned - but how much do you really know about Pixar's Cars (and its sequel, Cars 2)? With a third movie now in the pipeline, here are five cool facts about Lightning McQueen and his anthropomorphic automobile allies:
- Several Cars characters (including Sally and, in Cars 2, Giuseppe) are named after characters from Isaac Asimov's Sally, a short story about - guess what? - sentient cars. Asimov, of course, is best known for writing I, Robot and coming up with The Three Laws of Robotics.
- Luigi, the Italian car who runs the tyre shop, has the following number plate: 445-108. These are the exact co-ordinates for Ferrari's factory in Modena (Luigi states in the first film that he is a big Ferrari fan).
- Doc Hudson was voiced by Paul Newman in one of his very last roles. In addition to his considerable acting talents and his non-profit salad dressings, Newman was a keen motorsport enthusiast and, at one point, a professional racer himself. Clearly, he was the perfect choice for the role!
- A British writer named Jake Mandeville-Anthony tried to sue Disney, claiming that they stole his idea for Cars. According to Mandeville-Anthony, he had written a screenplay called Cars in the late eighties and sent it to numerous companies (including Disney), complete with character sketches and plans for the merchandise. The lawsuit was dismissed after a judge decided that the two works didn't really bear any relation to one another.
