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The idea was never very far from his mind. John Lasseter is
one of us. His imaginary garage has always included a collection
of road machinery that we all love and some kind of
a cross country road trip to, if not gather them up, at least
find them in situ, collect their spirits and plan a return run
for the best set. Setting off without a real plan Mr.Lasseter's
cross country adventure that fed the final commitment to
this collection came in two heats.
First Nancy – one of those soon-to-be-canonized wives –
suggested a sabbatical from making award-winning films
24/7 for too long. That became a two month, coast-to-coast and-
back odyssey with the family in a motorhome. Finding
an affection for each other and for the inhabitants of this
vast and losely-federated country in almost equal parts.
Then another two weeks was more carefully planned to
replay some of that adventure with a team of his creative
professionals to collaborate on the assembly of this enchanting
collection of cars.
It was a shopping spree for the two-lane soul of America.
The color and sound, successes and failures, the suspended
enlightenment and purposeful intellectual strength were all
collected in memories, on paper notes and drawings, in
boxes of flash memory cards and filtered through gallons of
too-old coffee and second-use bottles of local beer.
The end result is a collection of American machines that
have been carefully formed, fabricated and finished and will
be shared and enjoyed by adolescents and aficionados in
pertetuity. The Lasseter collection will survive without the
protection of a museum. In fact it will live in many of our
personal collections as long as digital structures are safe.
The following stories are those told to the Lasseter team while the collection was being assembled.
LIGHTNING MCQUEEN was on a roll, so to speak. He
was en route to the final race of the season and had a good
chance of winning the Piston cup. But fate intervened and
he found himself in a slowly decomposing village that had
suffered the infamous interstate-pass. With all the young
racer's gifts of dexterous skills, courage, single-minded arogance
and good paint, he had no tolerance for country folk
of the villages where they watched grass grow. The end
result was the loss of several of his youthful gifts, not the
least of which was single-minded arrogance and to a considerable
degree his shiny surface. Some credit must be given
to his crew chief and mentor Mack the Super Liner who
pulled him through everything and will always have an
important place in the collection. |
