**UPDATE - Thanks to reader duck for the heads up we've posted the first image of the Blue Wrecker Car at the bottom of this post.**

Movie news can come from all sorts of places – blogs, press releases, a slip of the tongue during an interview...or in this case, a website for a local paper in Idaho.

The Times-News in Twin Lakes, Idaho website MagicValley.com is reporting that longtime actor Bill Fagerbakke (Coach) will be “voicing an animated [sic] Chevy Impala stock car equipped with machine guns” in Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon.

Fagerbakke is no stranger to voice-over work, as he has voiced Patrick the Starfish on the children’s show SpongeBob SquarePants for over ten years.

Earlier this summer the stock cars in question were seen darting around downtown Chicago and after some speculation among fanboy sites, the deadly firepower-imbued NASCAR replicas were confirmed by Michael Bay’s website Shoot for the Edit to be the group of Autobots known as the Wreckers.  The pictures showed three separate Impalas: Juan Pablo Montoya’s #42 Target car, Dale Earnhardt, Jr.’s #88 Amp Energy car and Jimmie Johnson’s #48 Lowe’s car.

The Wreckers on the set of Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Since all three vehicles on the set of Transformers: Dark of the Moon are “stock cars with machine guns” it’s virtually impossible to determine which new Autobot Fagerbakke will be voicing, but we can take a few educated guesses. Fagerbakke has voiced several Transformers characters in the animated series over the past few years – Bulkhead, Hotrod and Master Disaster. We know director Michael Bay isn’t overly concerned with keeping to the original Transformers canon (examples: the Twins, Jazz dying, Autobot heaven) so based on that it wouldn't be a stretch to think Fagerbakke could possibly resume one of his old roles.

Taking a look we can see that in the cartoon series, Bulkhead was a green S.W.A.T. van and Master Disaster didn’t look anything like a car - so that just leaves Hotrod. As you can see from the comparison picture below, Hotrod the toy looks very similar to the blue machine gun-endowed Chevy Impala from the movie.

A Wrecker on the set of Transformers 3 compared to the Autobot Hotshot

The one flaw in this logic is that Hotshot was never a member of the Wreckers, but since several of the robots in the Transformers movie franchise have changed for the sake of filmmaking (example: Megatron as a semi-truck, Ultra Magnus as a fire truck) then it’s conceivable that the blue Impala could indeed be Hotshot.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon Blue Lowe's Wrecker car toy and robot

Regardless, the important thing to remember is Shia LaBeouf and Michael Bay have both promised Transformers: Dark of the Moon will be better than the previous two films and the teaser trailer released a few weeks ago certainty makes it appear they are trying to hold true to their word.

Which Autobot do you think is being represented by the blue Chevy Impala? I’m going to call him Dauber.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon arrives in theaters July 1st, 2011.

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Source: Magic Valley