Woody. Buzz Lightyear. Jessie. Three beloved animated characters, three hand-built Porsche 911s, and one charity auction that is going to raise an extraordinary amount of money. The covers come off on June 8 in Los Angeles.
There is a question that gets asked of every great brand collaboration: is this actually any good, or is it just a logo on something expensive? Porsche has an established answer to this. In 2022, working with Pixar on a one-off 911 inspired by Sally Carrera from the film Cars, the result was genuinely extraordinary — a custom-painted, hand-built car with details faithful enough to the character that it felt less like merchandise and more like art. It sold at auction for $3.6 million. Now Porsche has come back to the Pixar universe, and this time it has brought three cars.
Porsche, Disney and Pixar have confirmed three one-off 911s built through Porsche’s Sonderwunsch programme, meaning literally “special wish,” each inspired by one of Toy Story’s three central characters. Woody, Buzz Lightyear and Jessie have each been translated into an individually hand-crafted 911, with each car designed to express the personality, visual language and emotional identity of its character through paint, materials, trim details and body style. The covers come off on June 8, 2026 at the Toy Story 5 world premiere red carpet in Los Angeles.
The details on each car are still under wraps — deliberately so, because Porsche knows exactly how to play a teaser. What the single released image does show is three covered cars sitting in a dramatically lit reveal space. Two of the silhouettes suggest standard 911 bodies. The third is not standard at all. It features a prominent rear wing and a more aggressive front end, and the most convincing theory currently circulating is that Buzz Lightyear — Space Ranger, famous for believing he could fly — has been given something in the region of a 911 GT3 RS or Manthey-spec car. This is either the most on-brand automotive decision in history or confirmation that someone at Porsche has a very good sense of humour. Possibly both.
Carscoops’ reading of the third covered car adds that the Jessie 911 may be a Targa body style, a detail that is almost too clever: Jessie’s claustrophobia is a significant plot point in the Toy Story series, and an open-top 911 as a literal expression of that character trait is exactly the kind of thinking that separates a real collaboration from a marketing exercise. Woody, on current speculation, will take the standard 911 Coupe with a cowboy-themed specification.
THE SONDERWUNSCH PROGRAMME
Each car begins life on Porsche’s standard production line in Zuffenhausen before being individually hand-crafted into its final form. The Sonderwunsch programme exists specifically for commissions of this kind — one-off or small-series builds where the brief is not a specification sheet but a story. Pixar production designer Bob Pauley, who was directly involved throughout, described the brief as interpreting each character through materials, colour and form rather than through literal movie imagery. The goal was for the cars to feel like the characters, not look like the toys. That distinction, for anyone who has seen what lazy brand collaborations look like, matters enormously.
Porsche CEO Timo Resch drew a direct parallel between the emotional weight of a first toy and the emotional weight of a first Porsche, which is the kind of corporate quote that should be insufferable but lands because it is actually true. The 911 has been making people feel things for over sixty years. Toy Story has been making people feel things for thirty. The Venn diagram of people who care deeply about both is, it turns out, very large and very willing to spend money at auction.
THE CHARITY AUCTION
None of these cars will be going to a showroom or a private order book. Following their red carpet debut on 8 June, all three will be sold together as a single lot, with proceeds split between three non-profit organisations focused on helping children and underserved communities. The three specific organisations have not yet been named.
The benchmark for what these cars might raise is useful and clarifying. The Sally Special — a single one-off 911, inspired by a single Pixar character, from a single film — achieved $3.6 million at auction in 2022. Three cars, tied to one of the most culturally significant animated franchises in cinema history, with a higher-profile launch platform and four years of additional collector appetite since the Sally car set the standard, could comfortably be expected to exceed that figure by a meaningful margin. Some auction analysts have suggested the trio could reach eight figures if the right buyers are in the room. Whether they do or not, the money goes somewhere worth going.
THE PORSCHE X PIXAR HERITAGE
The relationship between Porsche and Pixar goes back further than most people realise, and it is not an invented one. The character of Sally Carrera in the original Cars film was built from the ground up as a Porsche 911. Not inspired by one, not vaguely reminiscent of one — actually a 911, with Porsche’s full involvement in the character design. That is a deeper integration than most car manufacturers ever achieve with any film franchise, and it gave the 2022 Sally Special a genuine emotional legitimacy that would not have been possible otherwise.
The Toy Story collaboration does not have that same foundational link — no character in Toy Story has ever been a Porsche — but what it does have is something arguably more powerful: universality. Toy Story is not a film about cars. It is a film about the things you love and what happens to them as the world changes around you. Porsche, a brand whose core audience spends considerable time worrying about exactly that question in relation to their cars, is in a more natural dialogue with that theme than almost any other manufacturer could be.
REVMAG VERDICT
Porsche has done this before and done it brilliantly. The Sally Special was not a stunt — it was a genuinely beautiful car that happened to be inspired by an animated character, and the $3.6 million it raised proved that the right collaboration can be more than the sum of its parts. Three cars, three characters, thirty years of Toy Story, sixty years of the 911, and a charity auction that will almost certainly set records. The covers come off on June 8 in Los Angeles. We will be watching very closely. So will the internet.