While the American Speed Festival celebrates American racing heritage with cars of different eras setting hot laps on the track, blasting noise and burning tires, there was something else gaining a lot of attention: The Transformers. The vehicles from the hit movie franchise drew eyeballs at the festival held last weekend, on Oct. 3 and 4 at M1 Concourse in Pontiac.
Robots in disguise
Transformers, from the company Hasbro, started as a toy robot that could convert into a vehicle. Over the years their popularity led to TV shows, then live-action films packed with groundbreaking CGI. The main character and leader of the Autobots is Optimus Prime who was voiced by the legendary voice actor Peter Cullen, who passed away in July.
There were three Transformers cars at
the event. An Optimus Prime semitruck, a Chevrolet Camaro modeled after Bumblebee and a Pontiac Solstice for Jazz. The semitruck is claimed to be one of the only fan-made Optimus Prime Trucks based on the vehicle from "Transformers: Age of Extinction." While the Autobots were on display, there were two employees dressed as Bumblebee and Optimus Prime taking pictures with fans in front of the vehicles.
Joe Fiduccia of Allentown, Pennsylvania, created the semitruck. On the official for his Optimus Prime truck brand optimusishere.com, he describes himself as "an ordinary dad who wanted to inspire his son that all dreams are possible with hard work, determination, and perseverance." Fiduccia and Optimus Prime travel all across the United States and Canada attending public, private and corporate events.
Race cars roll out
While the transformers were chatting with the humans, the race cars were on the track. There was a morning session followed by an hour-long lunch that was mostly used for repairing the vehicles. Then a second session in the afternoon.
The cars were grouped together by class and aiming to see which driver could set the fastest lap. Categories for vintage sports cars, NASCARS, exotics, modern sports cars, sprint cars and several other groups were doing hot laps. The most entertaining group was the drift cars, whose drivers didn't seem to care about lap times and just wanted to burn their tires off. One of the drifters needed his car sprayed with a fire extinguisher after his session due to a large amount of smoke coming from the trunk. Instead of getting away from a car that may have been on fire, he threw his hands in the air and the fans cheered him on.
Keenan Thompson is a car culture reporter for the Detroit Free Press. Contact Keenan at kthompson@freepress.com. Follow him on Instagram at @keenanautos. To sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Autobots roll out at the 2026 American Speed Festival
