ANAHEIM, Calif. – Fans of Paul Newman are going to be pleased to hear the Oscar-winning actor’s soulful reprise as the voice of Doc Hudson in Pixar’s Cars 3.

The 2006 original was Newman’s last completed film and his character did not appear in Cars 2.

But the storyline for the threequel, which surrounds Owen Wilson’s aging Lightning McQueen passing the torch to a younger car, Cruz Ramirez (Cristela Alonzo), resurrected the father-son relationship between Doc and McQueen in Cars 1.

The writers wanted to revisit the relationship between McQueen and Doc and show that the former still had some lessons to learn from his mentor.

And luckily for Brian Fee, a Pixar storyboard artist who takes over directing duties from John Lasseter, there was nearly 30 hours of unused audio that Newman recorded when he was making the original.

“When they were making Cars 1, John Lasseter just left the mic on the whole time,” producer Kevin Reher told a group of international journalists at a recent press day. “He just kept it going and Mr. Newman would talk about racing. The Newman’s Own foundation was very generous about letting us use those extra lines that didn’t appear in the original movie.”

Cars 3 uses some of Newman’s monologue from the first film, with Doc goading McQueen in one scene saying, “That’s not racing.”

“We let someone else do the talking if we needed to make a story point,” Fee says.

Tom Magliozzi, who, with his brother and fellow Car Talk host Ray, plays one half of Lightning's sibling corporate sponsors, Rusty and Dusty, also makes an appearance by way of newly unearthed audio.

Newman died in 2008 at age 83 from lung cancer and Doc was written out of 2011’s Cars 2.

When talk turns to a Cars 4, which ends with McQueen ceding the spotlight to Ramirez, Reher isn’t sure where the franchise will go.

“It’s never that calculated,” he says. “If a director comes up with a great idea for a sequel to Ratatouille, we’d probably consider it. That’s happened with this. We asked, ‘Where would McQueen be 10 years after his career got started.”

Twitter: @markhdaniell

MDaniell@postmedia.com