Following our sighting of the Pacers and Gremlins in the Cars 2 trailer the other day, we heard from Ross Guistino of Rohnert Park, California, who informed us that it was his friend Nolan Dehner's 1976 Pacer, Ross's own 1973 Gremlin, and his other friend Richard DeCroff's 1976 pacer DL that served as the models for the apparently villainous cars in the upcoming movie. We asked how that came about, and Ross replied with this story that he wrote for the NorCal AMC Club's August 2010 newsletter:

"In March 2009, Nolan was contacted by Bert Berry, an Art Director at Pixar Studios in Emeryville. Bert was interested in photographing some 70s-era cars for a film that was in development— Cars 2. In particular, Bert and his colleagues needed close-ups of paint and chrome, and the many interesting angles of our cars. And he was especially interested in Nolan's Pacer. In Nolan's reply, he casually mentioned that he was a member of the famous NorCal AMC Auto Group and had access to other AMC cars including Gremlins and Hornets. Bert was excited about the possibility of seeing a Gremlin and so I took a day off of work to meet the Pixar folks at Nolan's house in Windsor. Richard brought his Pacer as well so that we could give the gentlemen a good representation of paint and chrome to choose from.

On March 19, 2009, Bert, Jack Chang and Andrew Schmidt pulled up with amazement in their eyes and cameras in their hands. The photo shoot started immediately with Nolan's almost pristine and all original Pacer. All around the car they went, bending and kneeling and getting every possible angle they could get. They even asked if there was a way that they could jack up the car so that they can get pictures of the undercarriage. So the always prepared Nolan pulled out his car ramps and drove the Pacer forward so that it was now at a good angle for viewing."

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