Pole Position (TV series)

Pole Position is a Japanese-American animated series produced by DIC Enterprises and MK Company.
The name was licensed from Namco, capitalizing on the video game series "Pole Position". The game and the show have nothing else in common, other than Wheels being red as in "Pole Position" and Roadie being blue as in "Pole Position II".
Production.
This show was produced by DIC Audiovisuel's American branch DIC Enterprises in association with Japanese studio MK Company. The animation services were provided by Artmic, Mushi Production, and K.K. DIC Asia. The character designs were provided by Filipino cartoonist Jesse Santos, and the mechanical designs were provided by Artmic's co-founder Shinji Aramaki.
Broadcast.
"Pole Position" ran for 13 episodes on CBS in 1984 as part of its Saturday morning children's programming line-up. The show had reruns for a few months in 1986, followed by a run on The Family Channel (now Freeform) from the late 1980s through the early 1990s. It was shown in the United Kingdom during the 1980s at first on Saturday Superstore in 1986 and in the CBBC strand, and was repeated in the early 1990s on Saturday mornings as part of "Going Live" on BBC1.
Plot.
The show features the Darretts, a family of stunt-driving crime fighters, who investigated and thwarted wrongdoing while operating under the front of a traveling show known as the "Pole Position Stunt Show", which was sponsored by the United States government in order to give cover for their investigative activity and provide maintenance for the high-demand vehicles. The Darretts had two adult children and a third child who was much younger in age. A road accident ended the life of the parents, and the father's younger brother, known as Uncle Zack, took charge of the stunt show. He said that now that the patriarch and his wife were dead, it was incumbent upon the two adult children, Tess and Dan, to continue their parents' dangerous and proud work.
The vehicles feature numerous hidden gadgets like water skis and hover jets. The vehicles' computers themselves are portable and can be removed from the dashboards and carried around using handles—thus they are often referred to as "the modules". The modules are characters appearing as talking computer-drawn faces displayed on video screens.
DVD release.
Brightspark Productions released a 4-disc box set containing all 13 complete episodes of the series on DVD in the UK on April 21, 2008.
Mill Creek Entertainment released 10 of the 13 episodes of the series in a combo pack with 10 episodes of "C.O.P.S." and 10 episodes of "Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors" on January 10, 2012. Later in October 16, Mill Creek released "TV Toons To Go", a 10-disc compilation of various cartoons owned by Cookie Jar, now by DHX Media, and the 10th disc of that set contains the remaining 3 episodes of "Pole Position" that weren't included on the combo pack DVD set.