1951 hudson hornet

Paul Newman appeared as Doc Hudson in "Cars," the short film "Mater and the Ghostlight," as well as "Cars 3." While there were plans to keep Doc around, the creators felt Doc was too close to Newman's own personality for anyone else to play him.

The character was actually birthed out of Newman's own love for racing. According to "Cars" and "Cars 2" director John Lasseter, a lot of what Newman recorded as Doc was actually just the screen legend waxing poetic about his true passion in life outside of acting.

It was much of this dialogue that was used for "Cars 3."

"In between takes, he would tell me stories about great races, and you could hear the passion in his voice.

Paul newman doc hudson

So as we started Cars 3, we went back to every recording we did on Cars 1 and catalogued and listened to it all, and ended up with a lot of material that we could use. Lines that were cut from the original film and never used, as well as some of those pieces from in between takes," the filmmaker told Entertainment Weekly.

Though Newman was gone when "Cars 3" rolled into prod

doc hudson explains