No official Cars prequel has emerged from Pixar since the original film arrived in 2006. Ariya Alexander Berenji, an aspiring filmmaker publishing work through his R-ya Productions YouTube channel, reportedly decided not to wait. He is building an unofficial prequel centered on Strip Weathers — the Richard Petty-voiced King from Pixar’s 2006 film — before he earned his crown. Set in the 1980s, the project carries no Pixar affiliation identified in available reporting and no official release date. What it does have are 3D models detailed enough to function as a guided tour through stock-car racing‘s visual history.
Before He Was The King
The prequel earns its NASCAR credentials one livery at a time.
Strip Weathers in the original Cars is finished mythology. Richard Petty voiced him, the character modeled on Petty’s iconic Plymouth Superbird — a seven-time Cup Series champion rendered in animated legend. The prequel finds him before all that. Young Weathers wears a blue-and-orange livery drawn from Petty’s 1980s STP-era cars, Petty Blue meeting STP Orange, rather than the solid Petty Blue associated with his older, legendary form. That single design decision signals deep familiarity with NASCAR history and gives the project a clear point of view from the first frame.
The rest of the roster is equally deliberate:
- Young Chick Hicks — the green-liveried antagonist voiced by Michael Keaton in the original film — appears here in red-and-gold, referencing Bill Elliott’s Coors-sponsored No. 9 Ford Thunderbird.
- A Dale Earnhardt-inspired character runs the iconic black No. 3, with “Goodwrench” adapted into the Cars universe as “Sidewall Shine.”
- New character Toni Jo Torque — known as “The Queen,” a five-time champion — blends stock-car silhouettes with Porsche 935 cues, her livery drawing inspiration from racers including Shawna Robinson, Danica Patrick, and Toni Briedinger.
- Planned settings include Copper Canyon Speedway, a bowling alley, and an ice-cream parlor reportedly serving “frozen coolant.”
The “Sidewall Shine” substitution is where craft becomes apparent. According to The Drive’s reporting on the project, Berenji is not simply copying NASCAR iconography — he is translating it into the internal logic of the Cars universe, the same discipline Pixar applied when building the original world. That distinction matters. Reinventing a reference requires understanding why it resonated before touching it.
Toni Jo Torque stands as the project’s most original contribution. As a five-time champion who mentored both Weathers and Hicks — and whose design echoes real women in motorsport history — she gives the prequel a narrative backbone that no Easter egg reference alone could provide.
Fan Film as Racing Archive
The black No. 3, Elliott’s No. 9, Petty Blue — encoded for a generation raised on Pixar.
Fan films frequently stall between ambition and execution. This one is doing something quietly useful instead. The black No. 3, Elliott’s No. 9, the Petty Blue-and-STP-Orange combination — these are landmarks of NASCAR visual history, and Berenji is embedding them inside characters that audiences already recognize from a beloved animated film. Whether the project reaches completion remains an open question; no release date has been identified in available reporting. The work documented so far on the R-ya Productions YouTube channel speaks for itself. Sometimes a fan’s patience runs out before a studio’s calendar clears.
