Toyota Celebrated Its Le Mans-Winning Racer With A Wonderful Homage To Pixar's 'Cars'
Whoever does publicity for the World Endurance Championship, particularly for their video production, gets it. They've made a video that hits us right in the feels twice over. It's a promotional video that's an homage to the first "Cars" movie, specifically a scene that, itself, is an homage to "The Fast and the Furious," capturing two popular franchises all at once.
The video begins with close-ups of a cab-over semi. Instead of Mack hauling Lightning McQueen to his next race and nodding off to sleep along the way, it's a trailer hauling Toyota's LeMans-winning car to a Toyota storage facility. We get the same music from the 'Cars' soundtrack (or a very close recreation) and underglow on the various cars, of course. We see a late-model GR86, plus a version from the previous generation with copious amounts of custom bodywork. While Toyota never made an American muscle car that Dominic Toretto would drive, they still supplied a classic sedan that appears in this double-movie homage — what appears to be a Mark II sedan (Toyota couldn't exactly use Dom's Mazda RX-7). And yes, it spits fire out of its exhaust pipe.
Rather than bounce the sleeping Mack back-and-forth between lanes, the tuner cars perform a "Fast and Furious" style heist, sans DVD players. One of them scans the trailer and identifies the TR010 Hybrid on board. Another reprograms its navigation to Fuji Speedway for the 6 Hours of Fuji. Their mission accomplished, the tuner cars buzz off.
Two tributes in one
This is not a shot-for-shot recreation of the original scene from "Cars," nor should it be. Yet they got many of the details pretty accurate. The TR010 Hybrid doesn't need windows or bright lights inside the trailer, but Lightning McQueen's trailer had these, and both are winning race cars. None of the tuner cars have a six-level rear wing, either, but that's an exaggerated cartoon image that would probably break off the car at speed in real life. The wild body kit on the older 86 certainly captures the spirit of that car.
One subtle touch I appreciated is the sound level meter in the rear side window of the blue GR Supra. The blue car in "Cars" had an enormous sound meter on the side, to go with its huge sound system. This is also the car that pulls in front of the semi and beams the signal to change course, just like how the blue car in the movie pulled in front of Mack and put him to sleep with soothing music. All in all, it's an excellent and detailed tribute to "Cars," as well as the "Fast and Furious" culture that inspired this scene.