lightning-mcqueen

For the past five years, the absolute most popular post in The Garage has been a gallery of Cars movie cars that I took when they were on display at the NASCAR Speed Park on the outskirts of Toronto. We still receive regular requests from readers asking where they could see Lightning McQueen and friends in person. Finally, we have an answer for them: You will have to visit Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Orlando.

As part of the Lights. Motors. Action. Extreme Stunt Show at the park, Lightning McQueen and one of the villains of Cars 2, a sinister, black Gremlin, come out a put on a bit of a chase themselves. That’s right, these are drivers.

Check out our gallery of Lightning McQueen in action after the break.

Big things to come in 2012, like the Hyundai Veloster

2011 was an interesting year in The Garage, along with some changes in my own focus. As my attention turned more towards my duties at Autoblog Canada, Tom Williams and Jay Tomchuck stepped up their game with increased coverage of new cars and NASCAR respectively.

We had a major server move recently, which caused us to close the shop for close to a week and we apologize for that. The resulting behind the scenes changes are good though, as pages load much faster than they ever have.

To kick off 2012, we thought we’d have a look back through the stats to find out what content our readers loved the most this year. Here are our top 10 posts of 2011.

#10 Forgotten sport cars: Chevy Sprint Turbo. Tom’s Forgotten series has been a reader favorite since it started. In fact, there are no fewer than 4 of them in the top 10!

#9 VW’s new pickup…Amarok From occasional contributor John Heintzman.

#8 Forgotten Sporty Cars Part V: Mazda MX-3 Precidia

#7 Cody Coyote Replica for sale on ebay

#6 2011 Volkswagen Passat CC: drop dead sexy!

#5 NASCAR – David Ragan Plays NASCAR Survivor to Win at Daytona for Redemption. Them NASCAR peeps just love Jay’s view of the sport!

#4 Subaru and…The Pogues?

#3 Forgotten Sporty Cars Part XI: Honda del Sol

#2 Forgotten Sporty Cars Part II: Nissan Pulsar

#1. Lightning McQueen Found. From way back in April, 2006 our readers still love seeing the full size Lightning McQueen.

Looking back, it is hard to believe that I first started working on The Garage Blog close to 8 years ago and it has been at this domain for more than 7. Equally tough to believe is that Tom has been here for 4 years and Jay is approaching 2 years in The Garage. We’ve had a great time and we hope our readers have gotten just as much out of this thing as we have!

Cheers to more gearheaded goodness in 2012!

Lightning McQueen hangs out at Disney’s Hollywood Studios

Top posts in 2011