Without Peter Fernandez's contribution, it's unlikely that "Speed Racer" ever would have made it over the starting line outside of Japan.
Back in the late 1960s, Fernandez wrote the English scripts for the original "Speed Racer" anime. He also directed the English-language cast in their performances. And the voice of teenage "demon on wheels" Speed Racer himself was Fernandez's own.
The pitch and tone of that voice are immediately recognizable as he recalls, "My only instructions for 'Speed Racer' were to 'Americanize' the Japanese version. I was given free rein to come up with the script. The translations I got were very sparse, so I had to make up a lot of the dialogue."