Piston Cup Productions

**Gael Carranza** (or most commonly referred to as **Piston Cup Productions** or **PCP**) is a YouTuber, most known for his videos based on and around Disney and Pixar properties, most notably Cars, and Toy Story. He is 18 years old and currently lives in McAllen, Texas.

## Gael Carranza

### Aliases

GaelPCP

Piston Cup Productions

### Occupation

YouTuberInstagrammer

Photographer

Collector

## Appearances

### Debut

November 2016 (Thomas videos- content has been claimed as lost media.)May 2017 (Cars videos)

### Origins

PCP was born on March 23, 2004. In 2006, his parents took him to see Cars in the cinema, but the sound of the race cars at the start of the film scared him. Eventually they went back in, finished watching the film, and the cinema. Around this time he originally began collecting Cars diecasts from Mattel. He also enjoyed watching Thomas and Friends. His brother also enjoyed Thomas and Cars. Around 2013, he grew out of Cars and donated and sold (mostly all) his Cars merchandise. He reconnected with Cars as the hype for Cars 3 began to grow. He used to make Thomas videos years before his Cars videos, under his real name, but he had deleted them all; filed now under as lost media.

### YouTube Career (2017-present)

Gael came up with the channel name sitting in his bedroom one day, just tossing around names in his head such as "Piston Cup Studios". Eventually, "Piston Cup Productions" came to mind and it clicked straight away. He had a wooden crate from Cars that said “Piston Cup Racing Series”, and that was how he came up with the channel name from what the crate said.

He uploaded his first Cars video on May 23, 2017, which was a review of the Disney Store Rust-eze Lightning McQueen diecast. His first 'viral' videos were his stop motion recreations from Cars that he would do out of boredom. They turned out to be huge hits with the public since no one at the time was making Cars-themed stop motion remakes. People quickly began to find his channel.

In November 2018, he released Racing Like a Fireball, the first of PCP Films, and the first in a trilogy. The film is 15 mins long. It is a race at Fireball Beach, featuring Lightning McQueen, Cruz Ramirez and other next-generation racers from the 2017 film. It is currently, the most-viewed video on the channel, sitting at over 6 million views. A sequel entitled Racing Like a Legend was announced in early 2019, but the Legend plot was scrapped. Instead, he created Racing Like a Drag Racer, which was his first feature-length project. The film released in mid-2019 and currently has over 360,000 views. The finale of the trilogy, titled Racing Like a Hero, released in Autumn 2020. It has over 600,000 views.

In 2019, PCP began to release videos related to Toy Story, starting with a review on Interactive Drop Down Woody and Buzz Lightyear, from Toy Story 4. Among those Toy Story videos was one of the funniest videos PCP has released. It was a review on the Bandai buildable Woody and Buzz kits. 2019 became a memorable year with plenty of videos.

Also in 2019, another series on his channel was released under the title: The Adventures of Lightning and Cruz. Before the release of Racing Like a Hero, it was a stand alone series, but PCP decided to attach it to the lore of Racing Like a Hero. This series marked the first appearance of PCP's brother on the channel, voicing and controlling Cruz. Near the end of the year, PCP decided to merge all of the lore he had created into one big universe, allowing characters from Racing Like a Fireball and Toy Story: Reality Check to cross over. He then catagorised them into one big series, calling it PCP Shorts. He has also released a few videos based on his childhood show Thomas and Friends.

2020 brought an even better year of videos, despite the COVID-19 pandemic. An example is the then-titled Toy Story: Reality Check series. PCP and some of his school friends would co- produce and voice the series, which revolved around the Toy Story characters in a Mexican setting. Bullseye was changed to Firulais for the series. The first episode was mostly in Spanish, but episodes following the first were mostly in English.

2021 was an even better year. Ranking in lots of new content formats and styles, this was the year of “trying new things”. Several videos were made revolving his shorts, along with travel videos in Texas, Mexico, and California. This year also marked the 15th anniversary of the first Cars film, so naturally, he went all out by releasing several videos in dedication to the franchise by taking a look at newly sealed products from 2006, all the way up to 2021. PCP also released a fourth movie called “Lightning's Madness”. The film’s plot was in development just a few months after his third film had been released. The plot of this movie was known by "his biggest fan" (ROBERTO MX1) when gael told him when they met in a disney store at a plaza mall in McAllen, texas months before the movie was released. This fourth film’s plot revolved around the 3 storylines colliding, resulting in one big conflict. The film was a celebration of 3 years of storytelling on his channel; marking a conclusive and heartwarming end to the long-lasting stories.

2022 started off on a rocky start for PCP. The viewers were lower than ever, his interest was fading away, and YouTube was reducing his pay by the thousands. He was close to losing hope, but he graduated high school and was able to focus full time on his channel during the summer. He reached his 5-Year Channel Anniversary, and continued his traveling vlogs. He even greenlit a third season of his PCP shorts (despite his series coming to an end after the fourth movie). The third season hasn’t been the same as the previous two. This new season composed of much shorter video length runtimes, but the charm of his characters was still there. It was a return to the roots of what made his first stories so great to begin with. He finally reached 100K subscribers on August 7, 2022 and received his silver play button a few weeks later on August 25th. A few days later, his channel was officially verified on YouTube on August 31. On December 17th of that same year he mat agin with "his biggest fan" (ROBERTO MX1) with Roberto giving him a custom marvel legends of himself (which has a review on his monthly unboxing called " new year, new haul - unboxing Winter Break Scores), and giving his brother a marvel legends hologram iron man.

### Impact

PCP's videos have spread to a wide number of people. The channel currently has over 100,000 subscribers and has over 60 million views. It is safe to say that his videos must be doing something right. Despite having the occasional cases of haters showing up every now and then, the channel keeps on pushing strong. Some other Cars YouTubers have even seen him as a threat to their own channels because of how rapidly he’s grown over the course from 2017-2022.

## Trivia

* PCP voices most of his characters, apart from Cruz Ramirez and some of the Toy Story characters.
* PCP is a big Marvel fan, as well as being a fan of Disney in general, Star Wars, and more.
* He drives a red 2019 Hyundai Elantra with custom painted red rims, Spider-man theming including LED lights, license plate trims, and occasionally sports a Lightning McQueen eyes sunshade on the windshield.
* He almost lost some of the props and camera equipment while filming for Racing Like a Hero on the beach of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico when a wave came in and took some of the cars he was using. Luckily, he got them back before they could be swept away by the waves.
* He was born in San Francisco, California. (2004)
* He has lived in McAllen from 2009-2023
* He attended high school at McAllen Memorial High School. (2018-2022)
* He has met 3 fans in real life until this very day
* He has a custom diecast of himself, made it by disney cars diecast club and by reza yousaf
* He has a custom marvel legends given by ROBERTO MX1 a very famous fan in his fandom