The Movie Paint Scheme Chronicle, 2004
Well, I thought nine movies across 15 schemes was a lot for 2003.
Turns out that 2004 outdoes it with 16 schemes (but still nine movies).
This continues our early-to-mid-2000s trend of a boatload of new releases getting their moment in the spotlight with a NASCAR scheme (or two, or three, or four), and the last of a past release showing up (at least for a while).
This almost timed out well with the 20th anniversary re-release of Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith, but 2005’s article will be next week instead (by the time this publishes, I’ll have already gone to a showing of the movie).
As for ’04, it’s funny to me how much movie sponsorships seemed to specifically favor the Labonte brothers. A bunch of movies on prominent teams’ cars, like Hendrick Motorsports? Makes sense.
But just specifically those drivers seemed interesting to me.
The Passion of the Christ
We kicked off the 2004 season with the most irreverent, out-of-nowhere, bizarre movie sponsorship to ever hit the track: Mel Gibson’s controversial film The Passion of the Christ graced the hood (and roof, at least the sky design) of Bobby Labonte‘s Daytona 500 car.
Labonte started 13th and finished 11th.
There’s got to be a fun, wild story behind how this came together (presuming Joe Gibbs was behind it), especially because it’s not a full-car sponsorship yet has two of the most prominent panels of the car!
At least we don’t have a bloodied-up Jim Caviezel with the Crown of Thorns on the car. No, blood still features on a car in the same season. But in a much different context and just a few weeks later.
The Punisher
The aforementioned blood shows up on one of my personal favorites, purely because they somehow got away with this design on Brendan Gaughan‘s scheme for Bristol Motor Speedway in the spring of 2004:
Simple, but the background of red and black with the pop of the No. 77 and the Kodak logos works so well.
In just his sixth Cup start ever, Gaughan was running 11th with 19 to go, but spun in traffic and took damage. I remember reading a thing in NASCAR Illustrated about “The One that Got Away” with Gaughan, where he talked about the ’04 Food City 500 and talked along the lines of thinking he had the car to win it. He did salvage a 20th-place finish.
NASCAR: The IMAX Experience
This one ran before and after the Gaughan car (in early March and early May), with the No. 30 of Johnny Sauter taking on some underwhelming-at-best promotion of the first NASCAR documentary to hit the big screen.
The car entered at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Auto Club Speedway in March and May, respectively. Sauter started 30th or worse and finished lower than 20th in each.
NASCAR: The IMAX Experience is the first film I remember seeing in a theater (shoutout the domed screen at the Science Museum in Richmond, Va.).
Not the most showy scheme, but that documentary certainly put things more on the map.
Shrek 2
Across a two-week span, Joe Gibbs Racing had the wide, green features of Shrek across its Nos. 20 and 18 cars at Charlotte Motor Speedway. First, Tony Stewart had a more swamp-slime-themed car in the All-Star Race, where he started fifth and finished third.
A week later, Labonte’s No. 18 had the big-ass face of Shrek on the hood in the Coca-Cola 600. I think Stewart’s car looked slightly better, as nauseating as the orange-and-green color combo was. Stewart also outperformed his teammate, as Labonte finished 13th but did qualify ninth.
More importantly, McFarlane made this absolutely bizarre set of Labonte and a firesuit-clad Shrek that I still can’t believe exists. (They also made one of Stewart and Donkey, but that one isn’t as visually disturbing).
Spider-Man 2
Thank god for “BROskeeWowWow” because I’d otherwise have no real photo of this car to link to in this article.
Terry Labonte ran a car for Spider-Man 2 at the summer race at Daytona in 2004, starting 10th and finishing eighth. I don’t have a ton to say about this one, other than that it’s good to see the trend of promoting the Raimi movies continuing and that it’s also kind of an underwhelming car.
I do love the creativity of having it look like Spidey is crouching on the hood of the car, but the rest of the design is so muted that there’s not much to write home about.
It’s easily the worst of the four Spider-Man cars promoting the original trilogy — a shame, since Spider-Man 2 is one of the best superhero films ever made — though the bar was already set pretty high with the Robby Gordon No. 31 in 2002.
Shark Tale
Cross-series for the first time in 2004, Shark Tale showed up in Busch and Cup Series races late in the season.
Kasey Kahne ran the blue No. 38 three times in the late summer and early fall, at Michigan International Speedway (started 10th, finished fifth), Auto Club Speedway (third / fourth) and Kansas Speedway (second / 13th) in the Busch Series.
Decent scheme, but oddly success-avoidant — Kahne made two starts in between the second and third races he ran in this car, and won pole both times. Just couldn’t in the Shark Tale car, I guess.
At Talladega Superspeedway that fall, Ward Burton took on the mantle of promoting the movie via his No. 0 NetZero car in the Cup Series.
Kahne’s car definitely pops more, but I’m a sucker for a really cool shark mouth design (see old warplanes or paint schemes like Bubba Wallace’s Warthog livery). Burton did nab a top-10 effort with a 10th-place finish.
Shark Tale is also probably the closest Martin Scorsese has ever gotten to being associated with NASCAR.
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Where else but Kansas Speedway would schemes commemorating the landmark 1939 film run? The Wizard of Oz celebrated its 65th anniversary in 2004, though it appears that nothing specific was being promoted via these schemes.
A special box set didn’t drop until the following year, so it might’ve been subliminal promotion for that? The Internet, for once, yields no answers.
The only place I could find the schemes all (mostly) together was this tweet of Jeff Gordon‘s, Elliott Sadler‘s and Scott Riggs‘ cars recreated in iRacing.
My favorite, though, was Gaughan’s. This continues Gaughan’s trend of top-tier movie schemes that year. Gordon’s was fine, a decently-repurposed version of his normal DuPont scheme; Sadler’s a pretty neat take on the yellow-brick-road concept; and Riggs’ an adequate feature of the Tin Man.
But Gaughan’s had film strips with actual stills from the movie, all while retaining the Kodak branding, which was pretty sick.
Sadler came out the victor of the four cars, finishing fourth. Gaughan came home 10th, while Gordon finished 13th and Riggs 26th.
The Spongebob Squarepants Movie
A week after Kansas, our second cross-series promotion came in the form of The SpongeBob Squarepants Movie. In the Busch Series, Hendrick Motorsports fielded the Nos. 5 and 48 for Kyle Busch and Jimmie Johnson, respectively.
Of note, too, that’s three straight weeks (Talladega – Kansas – Charlotte) of movie cars hitting the track in the Cup Series.
Johnson, understandably, got our title character of ‘Bob on the hood. Busch was relegated to Patrick Star gracing his nose, but I’d argue that his scheme is better — I’m a big fan of when movie cars actually sort of set a scene, and we get the sandy landscape of Bikini Bottom around the skirts of Busch’s car.
Both cars ran at Charlotte Motor Speedway that fall. Johnson did better, starting 20th, but finishing third while Busch timed 18th and ended up fifth.
Less than 24 hours later, Casey Mears had the main event version of the SpongeBob cars, with his Cup scheme carrying the primary branding for the movie on his hood.
Mears qualified extremely well with a third-place effort, but ended up finishing 20th when the checkered flag waved.
Fantastic scheme, though.
The Incredibles
That’s two for Terry and two for Bobby in ’04. Labontes had a big year with movie schemes.
In the third-to-last Cup event of the season, Labonte had The Incredibles grace an all-black version of his No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet.
Not the most involved of schemes, but we do get all the main characters of one of the best (and probably my favorite, besides Cars) Pixar film ever made on the flanks and hood of Labonte’s No. 5.
Kind of underwhelming, just like Terry’s Spider-Man 2 car, and it wasn’t great on-track either — starting 31st and finishing 32nd at Phoenix Raceway.
Seven drivers from this list will show up again next week, when we talk about 2005’s movie cars (including another winning scheme).
Follow @adamncheek
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.
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