Porsche Built a Tribute to Sally Carrera. We Built the Real One

Porsche’s Sally Special is a one-off. A 2022 911 Carrera GTS with special paint, gorgeous retro-wheels and a tramp stamp pinstripe on her tail. A tribute to the animated character Sally Carrera from the 2006 Pixar film Cars. The Sally Special is the automotive embodiment of life imitating art. She’ll be auctioned off this week to someone up in Monterey. Two charities will get some money. Awesome.

Except we did it first. I led the fabrication and paint crew at E.P. Industries in Southern California that in 2005, working with Pixar, constructed the first and only full-size Sally Carrera. That’s our Sally next to the Sally Special in Porsche’s promotional photos. She still looks great.

The idea to create real life-size versions of the Cars characters to promote the movie in 2006 was pure genius. And it required a genius to make it happen. That genius is car customizer, madcap inventor and my boss, Eddie Paul. The E.P. in E.P. Industries.

Eddie passed away in 2016 but not before he and his crew created some of the most memorable vehicles for movies and television. When Paramount needed period-correct cars built for the filming of Grease in 1978, Eddie got the call. The oversize Grease job and others like it earned Eddie the reputation as Hollywood’s secret whose shop that could build anything. The Grease script called for 48 vehicles to be located, modified, painted and delivered with a ridiculously tight two-week deadline. This included the “Greased Lightning” Ford (the one with the clear hood and massive tail fins) driven by John Travolta and the Scorpions’ black flamed Merc.

Then called “Customs by Eddie Paul” was already Hollywood’s go-to shop for everything related to custom cars, stunts and special effects. When the Pixar crew decided to bring the Carscharacters to life, it was Eddie who, once again, got the call. The animated Sally Carrera was “built” by the super talented crew at Pixar Animation Studios. But, they know pixels and rendering and amazing story telling. We knew welding, bending, fabricating and painting. A full-size, running Sally Carrera couldn’t simply be 3D printed in 2005. Maybe not even now.

My automotive career began at Customs by Eddie Paul in late 1979. I was barely out of high school when Eddie hired me as a shop helper. I started out with nothing more than an interest in cars and a sincere desire to learn. It wasn’t long before I was shaping metal like an old pro and applying shimmering coats of candies and pearls in the rickety outdoor spray booth. This was my first stint with Eddie. These were the wild years for us. We customized cars by day and partied at night; we rode choppers and hung out with local one-percenters in their secret club house for fun.

If you watched TV in the ‘80s, you saw cars built by Customs by Eddie Paul. Our work could be seen every night on shows like the original Dukes of Hazzard TV series, BJ and the Bear, Simon and Simon, Mork and Mindy, Fantasy Island and CHiPs. After Grease, a steady flow of movie work kept rolling in. Vehicles for ET the Extraterrestrial, Streets of Fire, Against All Odds, Cobra, the original Gone in 60 Seconds, Mask, Heart Like a Wheel, The Best of Times and Ice Pirates, all were built by Eddie and his crew. It was a heady time to be part of that crew. And we knew our craft.

The job of building Sally Carrera, Lightning McQueen and Tow Mater for Pixar happened in 2005, more than 25 years after the Grease job. I had taken a 10-year break from building cars to pursue my other passion: writing and photography. Eddie’s business continued to grow while I was working on staff at Car Craft, Petersen’s Drag Racing and Sport Compact Car magazines. But Eddie and I always stayed in touch.

Shortly after parting ways with the car magazines, I got a call from Eddie to come back to work for him. He was still in El Segundo but I was astonished by what Customs by Eddie Paul had evolved into. It was E.P. Industries now, a thriving manufacturing business with full CNC machining and R&D capabilities. Eddie was busy inventing things like pumps and tools and engines and mechanical sharks; he needed somebody to handle the automotive end.