Cars 3 behind the scenes cool stuff

McQueens nemesis in Cars 3, Jackson Storm, was given a gloss black finish with an iconic “S,” which is the international sign for a hurricane.

His number is (two point oh) 2.0, as in the revised/better/improved version of a race car

Richard Petty's wife, Lynda came with him to the voice recordings for Cars, and John Lasseter asked her if she’d like to record the voice for Mrs. King, the character wife to Richard's Super Bird, and when given the choice of what car her character would be, as she could be any car she wanted, Lynda said, “Station wagon—it’s what I took my kids in to see the races.”

There was an early sequence in [Cars 3] where McQueen drove out to the El Mirage dry lakebed to get his mojo back. It was cool, but the scene didn’t flow well with the story, so it got cut.

The creative director for Cars (1, 2, 3) was Jay Ward, who was the editor of Hop Up magazine from 2007 to 2009. He started at Pixar on Monsters, Inc. in 1999 as an entry-level assistant position in the art department, then worked his way up as a coordinator. When Cars came along, they asked him to manage the character team process because he understood real cars.

Jay Ward had owned a ’49 Lincoln Cosmopolitan Coupe, a ’49 Lincoln Coupe , a  1929 Model A with a Caddy 331,  a ’39 Mercury convertible., and a ’57 Pontiac Safari station wagon.

Cars did not win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, Happy Feet did.

http://www.hotrod.com/articles/creative-geniuses-behind-cars/