As we continue our journey through a massive library of 2000s movie paint schemes, we arrive at our first single-year installment of these articles: 2003.
The above header photo doesn’t have a film-based scheme in it, that’s true. We didn’t have any available to include up there, but two of the best-performing movie schemes that ran all year were driven by Evernham Motorsports’ own Jeremy Mayfield and Bill Elliott.
And I’ll never pass up a chance to sing the praises of that team’s designs; for my money, the Dodge stable had some of the most consistently cool liveries in NASCAR history. Those green accents on Mayfield’s No. 19 to both align with the Mountain Dew backing and differentiate it from Elliott’s No. 9? *chef’s kiss*
So, 2003 had some notable milestones: Our first winning movie scheme (and a couple others that came damn close) and our first consecutive finishers with promotional cars and multiple schemes and/or movies represented in both the same single race or the same race weekend. All films here are from ’03, except for two outliers farther down the list.
Finding Nemo
The first schemes of the year waited until the tail end of May to hit the track, but then they started in earnest. Say hello to the first multi-series weekend and the first multi-movie races in our rundown.
As May faded into June, the then-Busch Series took to the concrete banks of Dover International Speedway for a weekend of racing. One of the cars running in the secondary series’ event that Saturday was Jason Keller‘s trademark No. 57, sporting a pretty creative scheme promoting Finding Nemo.
Now, this is a rarely-mentioned scheme — probably doesn’t help that it didn’t get a diecast made. But I love how creative it is, with the water level coming up to the bases of the window posts and all the movie’s characters below the surface.
The next day, Terry Labonte ran a scheme promoting it in Cup on June 1, which was decidedly less creative. Not bad, but not super inventive.
Keller finished 11th in his race, while Labonte started eighth and finished 10th for a solid day in his own right.
But they weren’t the only movie schemes hitting the banks of Dover that weekend.
2 Fast 2 Furious
I’m not sure that there’s a more appropriate film franchise to have had a few schemes throughout the years.
These schemes also ran on Dover weekend, and Scott Wimmer had the honor of running the first of the two — alongside Keller in that Saturday’s Busch Series event.
Designers modeled the No. 23 (with its awesome-as-usual Stacker 2 branding, loved those schemes) after 2 Fast 2 Furious‘ chase scene’s 2002 Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VII. It had the blue trim, the yellow side pod things, the works. It was almost like Brian and Tej were behind the wheel instead of Scott.
See below for a shot of Wimmer’s car, and for images of the next scheme on the list.
The Fast and the Furious (2001)
While I’m not entirely sure why The Fast and the Furious had a scheme all to itself two years after it was released, I’m guessing it was sort of a retroactive promotion in support of 2 Fast.
Definitely my favorite of the two, Dave Blaney‘s No. 77 ran the Sunday of that Dover race weekend — alongside Labonte’s movie No. 5 — and was designed to echo Paul Walker’s character Brian’s 1994 Toyota Supra MK IV from the first movie.
Hulk
As summer began in the Midwest, Bobby Labonte came within .774 seconds of being the first movie scheme to go to victory lane. Continuing the trend of Joe Gibbs Racing consistently running movie cars, the No. 18 bore the likeness of Eric Bana’s gamma-infused monster from Ang Lee’s Hulk adaptation.
That’s one of the few non-MCU Marvel movies I still haven’t seen, mostly because I’ve heard generally bad things about it, but I suppose I will eventually.
Labonte won the pole for Michigan International Speedway in this car, coming home second in the race to Kurt Busch.
Fitting green scheme for a typically green car, though not enough to necessarily be eye-catching. Also, it’s extremely funny to me how Labonte’s movie schemes schemes went from dinosaur to Hulk to Jesus Christ himself over the span of a few years. I love the disparity and how random it is sometimes.
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
If my math is right, T3 is the first R-rated movie to make an appearance in this list. Michael Waltrip ran first, with his red-and-black scheme designed to evoke the Terminator’s skin tearing back to reveal the machinery underneath.
Waltrip had both Arnold Schwarzenegger and Kristanna Loken’s likenesses on the car. At Daytona International Speedway, he started third and finished second; at Chicagoland Speedway, the next week, he started and finished fifth.
The same weekend Waltrip had the movie on his Daytona Busch Series car, Jamie McMurray had a more true-to-Terminator livery. Similar design with the character profiles, but the steel backdrop is definitely more reflective of the movie itself.
Jamie Mac started eighth but finished a dismal 37th. The No. 42 got junked in the race’s lone Big One and basically just rode around the rest of the night.
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Here’s a fun, obscure one for you all: Stacy Compton, in his last-ever NASCAR Cup Series start (except for a random one-off he did in 2012), racing the Kodak No. 4 for Larry McClure.
This is now the third race of 2003 with multiple movie schemes. Compton did start dead last and only finished 33rd, but it’s the first of two Pirates of the Caribbean productions to show up on a car, and it’s a pretty sweet scheme, too. The skull, the gold coins ghosting themselves into the black background on the car, everything looks awesome here. Also love the Pontiac stock car bodies.
The Lion King (1993)
Joining The Fast and the Furious in offbeat movie schemes in 2003, timing-wise, is The Lion King — but at least this one had more of a reason.
The 1994 film was re-released on home media — but for the first time on DVD — in 2003, and as such, landed its characters on Evernham Motorsports’ two Dodges for the race at Kansas Speedway. And Bill Elliott and Jeremy Mayfield kicked ass.
The Mayfield scheme can be seen at this diecast link. Personally a slightly bigger fan of that one, with the greenish flames, but both drivers did well in the Banquet 400 Presented by ConAgra Foods at Kansas Speedway.
Elliott started eighth and finished second; Mayfield started 16th and finished third. It was a Dodge 1-2-3, with Ryan Newman winning, but how cool would it have been to have a movie scheme 1-2 for the win via teammates?
Scary Movie 3
That same race actually had one other film car, but one that had a far more forgettable run (started 29th, finished 34th).
Scary Movie 3 showed up on the hood of Sterling Marlin‘s Coors Light car, which also featured the, according to Google, Klimaszewski Twins. Diane and Elaine Klimaszewski were apparently the ad campaign faces of Coors for a couple years and showed up in a bunch of movies and TV shows, including Scary Movie 3.
Looney Tunes: Back in Action
NOW we can get to the first ever movie scheme to go to victory lane, and no, I’m not talking about Jeff Gordon‘s scheme for Looney Tunes: Back in Action. It was Kevin Harvick in the Craftsman Truck Series, two days before the Cup Series’ third-to-last race of 2003 and in the trucks’ penultimate event.
The movie, which graced one truck and three Cup cars, was directed by Joe Dante, he of Gremlins, The Howling and 1/4 of the Twilight Zone movie helming. I interviewed the director in 2023 at Richmond’s Nightmare Weekend:
It wasn’t the first movie of his to be featured on NASCAR schemes, either; that was Small Soldiers in 1998. But Harvick was the first to get a movie livery to the promised land.
Harvick won in this truck on Halloween night, 2003. Hoping Dante comes back to Richmond soon so I can order this and get him to sign it — I guarantee he’d look at me with a comical question mark above his head at first. But the details on the side skirts and the front bumper are so cool.
Apparently Gordon was in the movie, but Jeff’s car largely looked the same aside from a couple small characters and movie logo branding. Brian Vickers and Steve Park, however, had these:
I lean towards Vickers as my favorite of the three Cup cars, but we love a good multi-car movie branding. Back at it next week!
Adam Cheek joined Frontstretch as a contributing writer in January 2019. A 2020 graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University, he covered sports there and later spent a year and a half as a sports host on 910 the Fan in Richmond, VA. He's freelanced for Richmond Magazine and the Richmond Times-Dispatch and also hosts the Adam Cheek's Sports Week podcast. Adam has followed racing since the age of three, inheriting the passion from his grandfather, who raced in amateur events up and down the East Coast in the 1950s.