When a person walks the abandoned grounds of North Wilkesboro Speedway in 2017, he or she hears three sounds that infiltrate an eerie silence: crickets, faint tire noise from nearby Route 421 and, every 30 seconds or so, the fittingly terrifying-yet-tranquil shriek of an old scoring tower topper spinning in the light breeze. The northwestern North Carolina earth can be seen consuming what’s left of a cracked racetrack. The facility is maintained only by the watchful eye of a gatekeeper. It's otherwise neglected and left to erode.
Such a creepy scene led Disney-Pixar to define North Wilkesboro Speedway as the perfect ghost track. That, in addition to its historical relevance, is why the 0.625-mile oval became the inspiration for Thomasville Speedway in "Cars 3."
The parallel was perfect. Without North Wilkesboro Speedway, NASCAR’s roots either look drastically different or cease to exist. Without Thomasville Speedway, Lightning McQueen has no historical gold to mine during his quest for redemption.
PHOTOS: North Wilkesboro Speedway in ruin
"We knew (the Charlotte area) was kind of the cradle of NASCAR, and we needed to go there," Jay Ward, creative director for "Cars 3," told Sporting News when asked about Pixar’s search for a model track. “We were specifically interested in ghost tracks. Doc (Hudson, a movie character) had passed away after the first 'Cars,' and McQueen kind of loses his mojo in this film and he's trying to retrace the steps of Doc to get his groove back.
"My whole thing was I really want to know where Doc came from, where he raced at, where he got his start."
Pixar wanted Thomasville Speedway to be a track that hadn’t been used in years but remained intact, “kind of maintained, kind of not.” The idea: Doc would be the last big racer to have left the track, which would be left untouched until McQueen's arrival.
That’s exactly the kind of track Ward and seven others from Pixar found when they visited Wilkes County during their search.
"We were looking for a track that was functional in NASCAR, was used for a long time and then just stopped,” Ward explained. “It didn’t get turned into a parking lot or a swap meet. It’s just as it was, and the weeds kind of grew up around it.
"There’s a lot of tracks kind of like that, but North Wilkesboro, it’s so interesting because it literally is like stopped in time. The weird thing about North Wilkesboro is it’s kind of all still there.”
(SN Photo/Cody Hughes)
The short version of North Wilkesboro Speedway's story goes as such (SB Nation's Jeremy Markovich penned a well-done long version in 2015):
In a place that was deemed by a journalist “the Moonshine Capital of America" in the '40s and early '50s, bootlegging was prominent. The bootleggers who hauled product needed fast cars to escape cops. Egos naturally became a factor, and the bootleggers argued over who had the quickest automobiles.
Enoch Staley, whose brother Gwyn owned one of those fast cars, decided in 1946 to build a dirt track on which the bootleggers could race and settle their claims of speed.
Staley knew a man named Bill France who happened to be a race promoter. When France agreed to organize and promote the first race at Staley’s track in 1947, neither man knew what kind of gold they were striking. The ensuing crowd was spectacular.
After the successful race in North Wilkesboro, France organized a meeting with fellow promoters to discuss the idea of more sanctioned races at other tracks. They agreed to meet again months later in Daytona, Fla., where they formed the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, better known as NASCAR.
(SN Photo/Cody Hughes)
Pixar in "Cars 3" did not gloss over the presence of moonshine in the tale of North Wilkesboro Speedway and, in turn, the sport.
"We kind of kept crossing over those paths," Ward said, "If you’re paying homage to the roots of the sport, to Junior Johnson or all these early racers, you have to kind of say, 'Well, they had two jobs, they raced by day and they were bootlegging by night.'
"We wanted to make sure that was part of it, how these guys cut their teeth becoming great racers, having 100 gallons of product in the back of a car and running from the cops."
So the writers worked in their moonshine reference during what Ward calls "the 'Midnight Run' sequence" in the movie.
"We were trying to have that moment that takes you back in time,” Ward explained, “and imagine in the late '40s if you were hanging out with these guys what they would do for fun on the weekend."
Johnson, of course, is a Wilkesboro native who grew up in the liquor business and became a NASCAR Hall of Famer. He won four official Cup races as a driver at North Wilkesboro Speedway. He won 18 more at the track as a car owner, tied with Petty Enterprises for the most in track history.
Ward knew Johnson had to be a part of "Cars 3," so he was, as the character Junior Moon. (Yes, it’s a direct reference to Midnight Moon Moonshine, which is inspired by Johnson's family recipe.)
NASCAR raced at North Wilkesboro Speedway officially from 1949-96. After Staley died in 1995, Bruton Smith, the CEO of Speedway Motorsports, purchased 50 percent ownership of the track only so he could take one of its dates on the NASCAR schedule for a race at his new track in Texas. Bob Bahre purchased the other half and took the other date for his new track in New Hampshire.
The 1996 Tyson Holly Farms 400, won by Jeff Gordon, was the last NASCAR Cup Series race North Wilkesboro Speedway ever hosted.
(SN Photo/Cody Hughes)
Thomasville Speedway in “Cars 3” is not an exact replica of North Wilkesboro Speedway. It’s more of the “spirit,” Ward says. For example, Thomasville Speedway is a dirt track even though North Wilkesboro Speedway was paved in 1958.
"We actually played with Thomasville being paved like North Wilkesboro," Ward said. "But the problem we had was we wanted Cruz (Ramirez, a movie character) to have never raced on dirt. That’s also kind of the roots of NASCAR, the dirt tracks."
Providing further inspiration for Thomasville Speedway was Occoneechee Speedway, a dirt track that was located a couple hours east of Wilkesboro. Ward said Occoneechee, which closed in 1968, was “more inspiration for the real old days and kind of imagining in the rough-and-tumble days, what it was like, people getting bumped off the track."
The most prominent features taken from North Wilkesboro Speedway for “Cars 3” were architectural concepts, including the shading, painting and chipping of the track and facility. Ward says the chain-link fence that serves as a flag stand and the concrete edging at Thomasville Speedway were pulled directly from North Wilkesboro.
The town of Thomasville in the movie, though, is not a North Wilkesboro reproduction. It instead was inspired by Dawsonville, Ga., home of NASCAR Hall of Famer Bill Elliott. Smokey’s Garage, home to the character Smokey, is a replica of Smokey's "Best Damn Garage in Town" in Daytona, which was run by legendary mechanic Smokey Yunick.
"We literally looked at Smokey’s real garage in Florida," Ward said. "His shop burned down years ago, but we had photos of it. We simplified it, but the style of the roll-up doors and the funky architecture, that’s Smokey’s in our movie."
"Cars 3" also pays tribute to Wendell Scott (character River Scott), the only African-American to have ever won a NASCAR Cup Series race, and Louise Smith (character Louise Nash), known as "the first lady of racing.”
The fact that all those characters come together at Thomasville Speedway is a fitting tribute to a track that played such an important role in building NASCAR's foundation.
PHOTOS: Current state of North Wilkesboro Speedway
(SN Photo/Cody Hughes)
Speedway Motorsports owns North Wilkesboro Speedway today but has no plans for development or renovation. Multiple resurrection attempts over the last two decades have failed, but the track remains available for sale if somebody wants to try again.
"Cars 3," however, gives life to the dead venue. The ghost that is North Wilkesboro Speedway, even for just a few scenes in a G-rated Disney movie, awakens at the sound of McQueen’s engine after years of silence.
In real life, that silence remains overwhelming. But the stillness prompts nostalgia.
"It’s so bizarrely quiet that it has this feeling of sort of like being in a graveyard, or like a holy place in a weird way,” Ward said. "It feels like, ‘Wow, this is like being in the Roman Colosseum.’
"You know serious stuff went down here."