So why is he here, at a press event at Lowe's Motor Speedway near Charlotte, facing a hundred reporters who pepper him with questions about his movies, his politics, his racing, even his salad dressing?

Newman indulgently endures this in the service of Pixar's new computer-animated movie, "Cars," in which he provides the voice of Doc Hudson, a 1951 Hudson Hornet who imparts his wisdom to a hotshot race car.

"I did [this movie] mostly because I knew it would be good, because [John] Lasseter was working on it and Pixar [was doing it]," Newman said.

Other actors who lend their voices to the four-wheeled characters of "Cars" shared that sense of confidence in Pixar.

"When I first met Pixar, I felt like I found this creative oasis in a business I dreamed of since I was a little girl," said Bonnie Hunt, who voices Sally, a Porsche who makes her home in Radiator Springs, a sleepy town on Route 66. "There's just a lot of talent there, and a lot of respect for talent."

"John calls, I show up," said John Ratzenberger, a Pixar regular who in "Cars" plays a Mack truck - an homage to his father, a truck driver.

"Cars" tells the story of Lightning McQueen, a self-absorbed rookie stock car (voiced by Owen Wilson) who dreams of winning the Piston Cup and the coveted sponsorship deal that goes with it. McQueen lands in Radiator Springs, and learns from the automobiles there the importance of slowing down and enjoying life.

For director John Lasseter, "Cars" is a merger of his interests: Autos, animation and family.

Lasseter grew up in Los Angeles, "the car-culture capital," and his father was the parts manager for a Chevy dealership. He loved toy cars. "I was the exact right age when Hot Wheels came out in 1968," he said.

Making a movie about cars, Lasseter said, also fits Pixar's goal of finding topics that will work well in computer animation. "You've seen a lot of animated cars through the history of animation, but I thought we could really bring them alive - with the chrome bumpers, the metal-flake paint, the rubber tires, the glass, all that stuff - in a way that no one has ever seen it before."

The message of "Cars" was inspired by a road trip Lasseter took with his wife and five sons in a used motorhome in summer 2000, after nonstop work directing the two "Toy Story" movies and "A Bug's Life" in between.

"We put our feet in the Pacific Ocean, and we turned east," Lasseter said. "We had two months with no plans other than to get to the Atlantic, put our feet in the Atlantic and come back. . . . We got so close as a family, and we loved it. For the first time in my life, I started thinking about just the day I was living."

To make the characters come alive, Lasseter made a crucial decision early on: not to put their eyes in the headlights (like, for example, the animated cars in those Chevron commercials) but in the windshield.

"When you have eyes in the headlights, the face is entirely up in the grille, it leaves something of a question of what's in the cab of the car," said Doug Sweetland, one of the film's supervising animators. With the eyes in the windshield, he said, "the soul of the character is now inside the car."

Lasseter and his Pixar crew immersed themselves in two divergent car cultures. They visited a NASCAR race, and talked to racing legends like Richard Petty and Darrell Waltrip (both of whom provide voices in the film).

Petty complimented Lasseter's depiction of the racing world. "If you're a real racer, then you can go through a bunch of the stuff that happened in the movie that you would pick up on as being true stuff or something around truth," Petty said. One example is that Petty's character, The King, is a '70s-era Plymouth Superbird - a car developed especially for Petty.

The Pixar crew also took several research trips down historic Route 66, visiting roadside diners and shops through the Plains and the Southwest.

"Radiator Springs is kind of an amalgamation of all of the towns we went to and the people that we met," said Darla K. Anderson, the film's producer.

Route 66 expert Michael Wallis, an adviser to the film, said, "I gave them my highway, as a son of Route 66. And I must say they devoured it, in small nibbles and big chunks, and they savored it." (Wallis also voices the sheriff of Radiator Springs, and he and his wife Suzanne Fitzgerald wrote the companion book The Art of 'Cars'.)

Lasseter also encouraged his voice actors to contribute ideas.

Lightning McQueen's trademark sound effect, "Ka-Chow!," was ad-libbed by Owen Wilson. Hunt received an "additional screenplay material" credit. The comedian Larry the Cable Guy improvised many of his lines as Mater, Radiator Springs' trusty and rusty tow truck. ("I think I got a 'Git-R-Done' in there," the comic said.)

Lasseter picked Newman's brain about racing - he's been involved in the sport since making the 1969 movie "Winning" - and gave the actor a consultant's credit.

Newman "became one of my most valued racing consultants," Lasseter said. "The passion that he talked about racing and the sport was so inspiring that it actually really helped develop the character of Doc."

"I helped a little bit, I think, on some of the racing techniques," Newman said modestly.

Newman was impressed with Pixar's "extraordinary sense of detail, both in the creative end and the technical end. They don't get rushed, which I think is critical. They have the luxury of control, and they have the luxury of time."

Taking time is the message of "Cars," something Lasseter discovered on that family road trip.

"I decided that's what I want this story to be about, what I just learned - that the main character learns that the journey in life is the reward," he said.

Contact Sean P. Means at movies@sltrib.com or 801-257-8602. Send comments about this story to livingeditor@sltrib.com.