World Grand Prix Race Cars - part II

After a looong nights sleep I´m back! (Or, the nights don´t seem long enough nowadays. V and A wake up 5:30 in the mornings.)

We´ve been through the first five race cars of the World Grand Prix in Cars 2, here are the others (with the more and more anoying exception of Rip Clutchgoneski):

Number 7 is a great car - Shu Todoroki:

The car is based on a Le Motor Prototype, used in the American and European Le Man Series. Shu is from Japan and the car model is a Dome S102, a Japaneese sports car. I like it a lot, the Le Mans Racers are a type of race cars that deserves more attention, they are excellent on endurance events.


Number 8 is a Brazilian Race Car - and after watching Senna - that´s just great. Carla Veloso:

First of all - If you haven´t seen the documentary Senna yet - do that now. And return to this blog in 106 minutes. Ok. Done. Good.
Carla Veloso is also a Le Motor Prototype and the only female race car. That´s not good Pixar. You ought to have more than one female racer in a film like this.
I love the Pixar films a lot but they are not very good in portraying boys and girls in equal ways. In cars, almost all the cool cars are boy/men cars. They got all the action, the girls are spectators applauding the boys. With a few good exceptions: Sally in the first movie and Holly Shiftwell and Carla Veloso in the second. But surely you could do better Pixar!

There´s two countries with more than one car in the World Grand Prix, its USA and Great Britain. Number 9 is Nigel Gearsley:

Nigel is an exact copy of a Aston Martin DBR9, a British Le Mans race car. The name is from a famous British steem locomotive engineer, Nigel Gresley. While Raoul CaRoule and Lewis Hamilton has clear inspiration for the real cars they´re resembling, Nigel is an exact copy. There´s only one more car that is made in the same way:

Number 24 - the American classic - Jeff Gorvette:

The car is a Corvette C6.R - an American endurance racer, competing in the American and European Le Mans series. Jeff Gorvette is the car that is replaced by other specific cars in different countries. In the swedish film the scene in the beginning where Lewis, Jeff and Lightning McQueen talks is changed so that Flash and Lewis and Lightning are chit-chating. In germany it´s Max Schnell, in Brazil its Carla Veloso and so on.

Scince I don´t have number #10 Rip Clutchgoneski, the next car is a rather familiar one - #95 Lightning McQueen:

The number 95 is a reference to 1995 when Pixar first released a long format movie - Toy Story. The car is a mix of different stock cars and some Le Mans racers and I love the new wing and the new paintjob. You could see that this car is a whole different kind of car from the rookie that we saw in the first film (now he´s a celebrity, with four Piston Cup victories).

Here´s the McQueen from Cars, not a very solid looking back wing...

So my favourites are Fransesco, Lewis and Max - but all the others are great and it´s so much better than in the first film where we only had three types of cars (but with beautiful different paint jobs).

This is a World Grand Prix, and it shows in the vareity of models in the contest. Bravo Pixar!