After a week’s break to chat with the director of the Earnhardt docuseries, we return to our regularly-scheduled programming of NASCAR paint schemes.
The year 2007 had nine schemes representing eight movies across eight different drivers, with some overlap here and there. No wins this time around, though.
Spider-Man 3
The much-unfairly-maligned third installment in Sam Raimi’s trilogy (I promise it’s better than you remember), Spider-Man 3 completed the run of all three films featuring on NASCAR schemes — and Bobby Labonte completed the brotherly duo after Terry carried Spider-Man 2 on his car at Daytona in 2004.
Bobby, however, did not fare as well as his brother did.
At Talladega Superspeedway in April, Labonte finished 20th. The scheme, however, is nowhere near as underwhelming as Terry’s, with plenty of Spidey imagery and a nice combo of blue, black and red across the car. Would’ve been neat to see the triumvirate of villains from the film (hoverboard Green Goblin, Venom, Sandman) incorporated, though.
Shrek the Third
A week after ‘Dega, Tony Raines hit the track for Hall of Fame Racing in his first of two movie cars of the year — but the only full-car scheme for the No. 96.
Raines had one of his better runs of the season, starting 22nd and finishing 19th. I always liked those DLP cars that HOF ran on the regular, and even here the green No. 96 roof number stands out ridiculously well.
I also love the ginormous Shrek face on the hood. Scroll up to the article’s featured image for a jump scare. We need to warn Raines that big upside-down Shrek is behind him.
A couple weeks later, David Gilliland hit the track at the Nextel Open in a No. 38, also backed by the movie in partnership with M&Ms.
There’s no photo of Gilliland’s car I can use, but M&Ms did make the normally-round logo Shrek-head-shaped and someone tweeted out a photo of a sick jacket they have from it:
Gilliland started fourth in the Open, but his race lasted less than half a lap, after contact sent his No. 38 into the wall exiting turn 2.
You can see the car in the second row, about half a lap before it ended up in the wall.
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
Thanks to our wonderful partner Nigel Kinrade for grabbing a clutch photo of this scarcely-found car when Elliott Sadler ran it at Charlotte in 2007:
One of the more underrated schemes, but also one of the odder cars.
The most important things is that the central cast of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer — Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans and Michael Chiklis — visited Charlotte for the Coca-Cola 600. If you dig around enough, there are photos of them.
Thanks to Twitter, I found at least one of Alba hanging out with Jeff Gordon:
It’s genuinely cool that the cast of such a huge movie at the time — with one big name (Alba) and one household name (Chiklis) — showed up to the race itself. Evans had yet to be a superstar, as Captain America: The First Avenger was still four years away, but he was in Danny Boyle’s Sunshine (a highly underrated sci-fi flick) that same year.
Though neither of those Fantastic Four movies with that cast got the best reception, they’re touchstones in regards to being some of the last pre-Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero movies; Jessica Alba’s Sue Storm / Invisible Woman being one of the most iconic superhero characters of that era; and Chris Evans’ early career eventually leading him to a different Marvel role … one that made him far more money.
Oh yeah, the race. Sadler started third and finished a dismal 36th. Cool car, though. The surrounding fame is far more interesting than how his race went.
I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry
In an extremely cool paint scheme for a movie that hasn’t aged particularly well, Kasey Kahne had a flamed-out Dodge ride for Daytona in the summer of 2007.
Kahne landed himself a top 10 in the car, and I did like the way the car had yellow numbers on the doors, but a vibrant red No. 9 on the roof to make it stand out. Great-looking car. There’s some photos of a custom on WorthPoint here, and Nigel grabbed a photo where the Evernham Motorsports machine showed up in the bottom right:
The Simpsons Movie
Here’s one of the more underrated movie cars, and it so happened to grace the No. 00 of one of the most beloved underdogs of his era: David Reutimann. Always enjoyed watching him race.
The silver-rimmed Toyota hit Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 2007 to promote The Simpsons Movie, which I remember seeing sometime after it came out and thinking Homer singing “Spider-Pig” was the funniest thing ever at like age 9 (it’s still funny).
Reutimann had a weekend to forget in this car, starting 34th and finishing 38th, but the scheme looked awesome.
Somehow, the yellow-on-yellow flames work on the sides, and the black hood/roof/trunk works as a contrast. Plus, of course, Homer on the hood looking at the Burger King logo like it’s a donut.
Resurrecting the Champ
I don’t have a Twitter photo of this one, nor an embed, but this did run. Here’s a link to an article previewing Stanton Barrett driving it at Montreal in the Busch Series.
This is part of the host of movie cars Barrett has driven, some of them for his own movies: I talked to him a few years back about his dual careers going back decades in both NASCAR and Hollywood stunting.
It’s got a great cast: the movie stars Samuel L. Jackson, Josh Hartnett and Alan Alda, but I swear on my life I’d never heard of it before I stumbled across this scheme.
There’s really only a Trading Paints schematic of this car to go by, so feel free to refer to this link if you want to see what the car looks like.
Rush Hour 3
Welcome back to the list, Hall of Fame Racing! No photo for you this time, unfortunately. You can head over to Jayski here and scroll down a few images for several shots of the car, though.
In another strong run while helping promote a film, Raines started 17th and scored a 15th-place finish in this car. There’s a really low-hanging-fruit joke there about it being “rush hour” for Tony or something, but I’ll refrain.
Not a full-car scheme like Shrek the Third or Cars, though: Raines simply had the movie’s branding on the hood and decklid.
Meet the Robinsons
Another random Jason Leffler scheme has entered the chat, though 2007’s car for The Shaggy Dog was a full-car livery promoting the remake. I’m still digging around trying to find this car that had a small promotion for Meet the Robinsons on it. Will let y’all know when I do.
This article kind of ended on a down note, with three schemes you readers will have to click to external links for or wait on entirely, but as things get closer to modern-day I should be able to find images easier.
Next week, we’ll do 2008 — which will again feature Hall of Fame Racing not once, but twice.
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.