Pixar is a digital movie company that created the first ever digital movie: Toy Story. Since then they have produced numerous movies and there are several other studios producing digital films as well. With the success of Pixar, it’s hard to imagine that they were only a few days away from never producing any films because of General Motors. 

What does a major automobile manufacture have to with a digital movie company? Before Pixar started making movies, they were a computer hardware company. Autoblog has the inside scoop behind this story. General Motors was within one week of buying Pixar back in 1985, but backed out of the deal for unknown reasons. GM’s intent was to use Pixar’s computer technology to aid in designing cars. The original deal was made to pay George Lucas $15 million and an additional $15 million for Pixar. 

“We’d made a promising match with General Motors, only to be left at the altar,” said Catmull who wrote a book about Pixar. Everybody at Pixar wanted the deal to go through, but General Motors back out at the last second. While this is great for the fans of Toy Story, Monsters Inc, CARS, and other Pixar movies, imagine what could have happened with General Motors? The 1980’s was a dark age for auto manufactures and design, this technology could have brought out really neat cars a lot quicker. 

When the deal fell through is when Apple Computer’s Steve Jobs came in and purchased the company. Luckily Jobs had the foresight to grab Pixar and make the movies a reality.