At one point he was going to be a traveling circus… there was one great gag that ran for a while at the beach sequence where they’re disguised as a movie crew that’s on a shoot so if McQueen is seen in the world, he’s an actor playing Lightning McQueen and Guido is the Italian director.
There was a running theme that they were on this kind of spirit quest.
McQueen would have to kind of lay low and not be seen in the public eye so Mack was going to have to be disguised and we ran through this whole series of gags where Mack was going to be disguised throughout the whole film as they’re driving around the countryside as a lumberjack or military transport or as a shipping container.