Movie and TV Appearances
- In May 2011 he was chosen to say the most famous line in motorsports: "Gentlemen start your engines" for a race for the Sprint Cup series.
- In 2011, Richard Petty was featured in the show Modern HotrodZ. Petty's Garage now builds Custom cars for the general public, most of which are Limited Edition.
- He appeared as himself in the movie Swing Vote driving in his famous blue #43 car, and letting Bud drive his car to Air Force One to meet the President.
- Petty voiced Strip Weathers, also known as The King in the 2006 Disney/Pixar animated movie Cars. His car, the Road Runner Superbird with distinctive "Petty" blue tint and number #43, is also the model for the car used in the movie. The King's crash at the end of the movie was also a re-creation of Petty's real-life Daytona 500 accident in 1988 with the exception that it was not caused by a deliberate crash as in the movie. The bit which Lightning McQueen assists him to the finish line is based on the 1976 incident, albeit by the pit crew. Petty's wife Lynda plays The King's wife, a 1976 Chrysler Town & Country station wagon (based on Petty's family car), in the movie as well.
- Petty appeared in the 1990 Tom Cruise movie Days of Thunder.
- He appeared in the 1983 Burt Reynolds movie Stroker Ace.
- Petty appeared as himself in the 1972 movie 43: The Richard Petty Story (a Victory Lane Production, released by Video Gems, distributed by United American Video in 1986).
- In 1989, Richard Petty appeared as himself in the movie Speed Zone!, driving in his famous blue #43 car.
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Famous quotes containing the words movie and/or appearances:
“The television screen, so unlike the movie screen, sharply reduced human beings, revealed them as small, trivial, flat, in two banal dimensions, drained of color. Wasn’t there something reassuring about it!—that human beings were in fact merely images of a kind registered in one another’s eyes and brains, phenomena composed of microscopic flickering dots like atoms. They were atoms—nothing more. A quick switch of the dial and they disappeared and who could lament the loss?”
—Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)
“We often think ourselves inconsistent creatures, when we are the furthest from it, and all the variety of shapes and contradictory appearances we put on, are in truth but so many different attempts to gratify the same governing appetite.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)