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| Wed. 06 07. 2006 12:00 AM EDT
Start Your Engines: Cars of the Stars
Cars might be the greatest love story Pixar has ever told. Engines purr like jungle cats. Chasses gleam so brightly the audience can virtually see their faces in them. And there's a certain beauty in the way these cool characters cruise down Route 66. This is an animated movie made by and for people who swoon just thinking about the latest Car and
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Driver centerfold. We asked the film's voice-artists about the first vehicle to ever get their motors running.

  • Owen Wilson
    The former Wedding Crasher plays Lightning McQueen, a flashy racer in need of a gear change.

    I got a Go-Kart for Christmas when I was 11, so I sort of consider that my first car. But my real first car was a blue Chevrolet Blazer SUV. I totaled it in New Mexico. I was driving along, not paying attention the way I should have been, and I drove it right off an embankment. It flipped over like three times. Luckily I had my seatbelt on!

  • Paul Newman
    He's been and Butch Cassidy and Buffalo Bill. Now he's a 1951 Hudson Hornet with a secret.

    It was a 1937 Packard. It was taupe or something like that. How did it run? Well, it got me from Wisconsin to New York without stopping, so it ran pretty good.

  • Larry The Cable Guy
    The mouth of the South gets a little rusty as Mater, a tow truck with a few loose screws.

    I bought my sister's 1969 Pontiac Firebird Formula 400 from her for a couple grand - she gave me a discount. I upgraded to an even classier car, a 1986 white Trans Am with T-tops. It had the louvers on the back, the whole deal. After I saw Back to the Future, when Michael J. Fox opened up his garage and there was that Toyota 4x4 in there up on a big ole nine-inch [lift] with the big tires, that became my ultimate dream vehicle. So my next truck was a Dodge up on a nine-inch with big tires. Now I have an old red Dodge for picking up hay and feed and stuff like that. You'd think by looking at me I'd be all about hybrids!

  • John Lasseter
    Cars is the Pixar director's first movie since 1999's Toy Story 2.

    In Los Angeles, you grew up in a Ford family, a Chevy family, a Dodge family, or whatever. My dad was a parts manager at a Chevy dealership, so of course we were a Chevy family. I learned to drive in a 1969 Chevelle Station Wagon, but my dad got the "towing package," because we had a trailer. The towing package happened to be everything that the Chevelle SS396 muscle car had. It had a huge 350V8 engine with a huge four-barrel carburetor. I could lay rubber the entire block ... in a station wagon!

  • Cheech Marin
    The East L.A. comic seems quite comfortable playing a 1959 Impala low-rider.

    My first car was a 1956 Ford station wagon with a big primer spot on it. It had a big hole in the muffler, too, so it was really loud. I never had a car in high school; I just lusted after cars, but I couldn't afford one. My parents weren't gonna give me a car. So when I was in college, I bought the first car I could get. It cost like $125, and this was in 1964. I drove the shit out of it and then it died.

  • Bonnie Hunt
    The blonde Jerry Maguire star plays a 2002 Porsche 911 who has quit the rat race.

    In 1985, I bought a 1975 Ford Granada, with a hole between the gas and the brake pedals. It had no gas gauge and no heat. I used to have to scrape the inside of the windshield during the winter. I would literally wear eight pairs of socks and my older brother's parka over my student nursing uniform. Just getting in the car was like getting ready to climb a mountain. Eventually, I sold it to another kid in the neighborhood for like $20.

  • Richard Petty
    The King of NASCAR is a revered 1970 Plymouth Superbird gunning for his last victory lap.

    The first car I ever owned was a 1956 Dodge. My daddy Lee Petty had raced in it. We took it and turned it back into a real car.

  • John Ratzenberger
    The Cheers regular has appeared in every Pixar movie to date. This time he's a Mack Truck.

    John [Lasseter] knew that my dad drove a Mack truck, and so he made my character a Mack truck. My dad delivered gasoline. One of the guys who worked at a gas station he served had this car that he customized himself. He was going off into the army and wanted to get rid of it, so my dad got a great price on it. When I came home from my first or second year of college, my dad said, "Hey, come on over." Here was this 1955 Chevy two-door -- mother-of-pearl blue, with a three-speed Hearst spin-inducted shift on the floor, Hollywood mufflers. My first experience was probably the sweetest car ever. I ended up selling it later on. I wish I hadn't, but then I also wish I hadn't gotten rid of all the comic books I had in my closet!