Reel Racing: Multiple-Movie-Scheme Efforts

I’m waiting until a little later this year to comprehensively rank and go over all the movie schemes that have hit the track in NASCAR, presumably overlooking one or two along the way … I’m pretty sure I’ve noted all or almost all ~107 of them down at this point.

This week, we’ll take a look at all of the multi-scheme, single-race efforts that certain films had within stock car racing. As is evident from the prior sentence, this excludes any movie represented on more than one car but in separate races; the rare, if not hasn’t-ever-happened instance of multiple cars promoting different films being in the same race; and so on and so forth. We’re specifically checking out all 12 instances and seeing which production overall performed the best on track.

1999, Atlanta Motor Speedway: Toy Story 2

One of the earliest instances of movie schemes was also one of the most expansive, especially for a single race. Toy Story 2 had three liveries take to the track at Atlanta Motor Speedway in 1999, though none of them finished inside the top 20.

Bill Elliott, driving the Buzz Thru (a play on the McDonald’s Drive Thru) scheme (and my favorite of the three) with Hamm and Rex on the hood, finished 22nd. Kyle Petty‘s Buzz Lightyear Hot Wheels car rolled home a couple spots behind, while Johnny Benson‘s Woody car crashed out and was scored 39th when all was said and done.