| rdfs:comment | - Lightning McQueen, typically referred to by his surname McQueen, and occasionally called "Stickers" by Sally, is the main protagonist of Cars and the deuteragonist of Cars 2 and is voiced by actor Owen Wilson in the films and the third season of Cars Toons: Mater's Tall Tales and by Keith Ferguson on other occasions. He is named after Glenn McQueen, a Pixar Animator who died of melanoma on October 29, 2002, although the car shares certain traits with actor and race car driver Steve McQueen. His overall profile was inspired by stock cars and a "more curvaceous Le Mans endurance racer", e.g., Lola and Ford GT40. His number, 95, is a reference to the year Pixar released its first feature-length movie, Toy Story.
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| abstract | - Lightning McQueen, typically referred to by his surname McQueen, and occasionally called "Stickers" by Sally, is the main protagonist of Cars and the deuteragonist of Cars 2 and is voiced by actor Owen Wilson in the films and the third season of Cars Toons: Mater's Tall Tales and by Keith Ferguson on other occasions. He is named after Glenn McQueen, a Pixar Animator who died of melanoma on October 29, 2002, although the car shares certain traits with actor and race car driver Steve McQueen. His overall profile was inspired by stock cars and a "more curvaceous Le Mans endurance racer", e.g., Lola and Ford GT40. His number, 95, is a reference to the year Pixar released its first feature-length movie, Toy Story. In the beginning of the first film, Lightning McQueen is a talented yet overconfident race car, especially towards his pit crew. He hopes to be the first rookie to win the Piston Cup race and gain a lucrative endorsement deal from Dinoco Oil in the final race of the season, but finishes in a three-way tie with perennial runner-up Chick Hicks and veteran Strip "The King" Weathers, after losing his huge lead on the final lap because of two blown rear tires. McQueen also wanted the Dinoco deal because of his dislike to his somewhat awkward Rust-Eze sponsorship and the rusty cars within it. His own choice to allow Mack to travel all night to L.A. sets up the predicament he suffers throughout the film. After a chain of events awakens Lightning from sleep and inadvertently releases him from Mack's van, he gets lost in Radiator Springs on his way to California. While he is punished for excessive speeding by doing community service to fix the main road, he meets new friends who seek to restore their town to its former glory. It is there he befriends Mater and falls in love with the town attorney and hotelier, Sally Carrera. He changes his look at the end of the movie to help out the townsfolk, and his appreciation for his benefactors is restored. He learns valuable lessons such as true friendship; how greed affects others; keeping promises; teamwork; and that life is about the journey, not the destination. These values lead him to rejuvenate Radiator Springs back to its heyday and relocate to the town forever to make it his racing headquarters. After Hicks rams Weathers in the final tie-breaker Piston Cup race, McQueen stops on the finish line and reverses to help push Weathers the rest of the way across the finish line, allowing him to complete his last race and retire with dignity, much to the crowd's pleasure. McQueen is offered the Dinoco sponsorship, but declines it to remain with the team who gave him his big break. In the second film, McQueen returns as the deuteragonist. He is a permanent resident of Radiator Springs and has become a bona fide worldwide celebrity winning four Piston Cups. After his latest win, McQueen expects to relax with Sally, Mater and the other residents of Radiator Springs when he gets himself entered into the first ever World Grand Prix, a three-part race that takes him and his best friend around the world. McQueen has a fresh custom paint job and real working headlights since he only had stickers in the first film. His tailfins have also been replaced with a spoiler. McQueen is unaware that the race is all a plot by a group of "lemon" cars to make cars everywhere run on oil until Professor Zundapp, captured by Finn McMissile and Holley Shiftwell, questions why McQueen was not killed by the death ray and Mater exposes Miles Axlerod as the mastermind behind the plot. His catchphrase is ka-chow.
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