The Great Plan (Part 1)

 is the first episode of Speed Racer. It first aired in Japan on April 02, 1967 on Fuji TV.

Plot
After winning a practice race, Speed Racer is offered a driver position on the factory racing team owned by the company who employs his father, Pops Racer. Speed declines the offer because Pops is opposed to him becoming a professional driver. Meanwhile, Pops resigns his engineering job with the factory after an argument with chief engineer Mr. Van Ruffle during a board meeting where the board rejects his plans for improving the Mach 5. While Speed drives Pops home, a gang of thugs on racing bikes snatch Pop's briefcase with the plans. Speed jumps from bike to bike trying to get the plans back but fails. He spots Trixie overhead in the helicopter and radios her to pursue the thug with the plans. She buzzes him, forcing him to drop the briefcase and crash off the edge of the mountain road. Speed recovers the briefcase.

That night at the Racer home Pops plans what he is going to do now that he has no job. He decides to remodel the Mach 5 himself, but doesn't know how he'll come up with the money he'll need. Later at Van Ruffle's house the thugs explain how they failed to get the plans. Ace Deucey crashes the meeting and makes a deal with Van Ruffle to steal the plans for $5,000.

The next day Speed visits Sparky to let him know he is selling the Mach 5 to help raise the money Pops needs to build the new engine. Sparky suggests that Speed should enter the Sword Mountain Race for a $5,000 prize, and Speed decides to enter the race. Meanwhile Ace pays a visit to Pops at the Racer home. Ace pulls a gun and starts searching for the plans but doesn't find them. Speed arrives and interrupts him. Deucey leaves vowing to come back for the plans. Deucey didn't find the plans because Pops has hidden the plans on a spare windshield using invisible ink.

Taking out the Mach 5 for a road test, a dirty racer named Skull Duggery rams the car, causing Speed to throw a wheel and crash. Back at the garage, the car is repaired, but they need a new windshield. Spritle Racer and Chim Chim walk in with Pops' windshield. Ace finds out that the plans are on the windshield and goes after the Mach 5. He and his gang start to wipe out the other cars in the race. They catch up to Speed and try to run him off the road. Speed guesses where the plans are hidden and avoids getting his tires shredded by Ace's gang by hitting the auto jack button. The Mach 5 is propelled over the guardrail and down an embankment.

Regional Differences
The English dub's title card for the episode has a yellow and red checkerboard background, and shows the English title for the episode. When the show was re-aired in 1993 with a new logo and new logo animation, the text for the episode titles and end credits was updated as well.

The original Japanese version does not show the episode's title until a few minutes in, when the screen pauses, then the episode title is shown, and the episode resumes. Since the English version only shows the episode title at the very beginning, whenever the screen pauses, the episode's title isn't shown.

Cast

 * Peter Fernandez: Speed Racer, Racer X
 * Jack Grimes: Sparky, Chim Chim
 * Jack Curtis: Pops Racer, Inspector Detector
 * Corinne Orr: Trixie, Spritle Racer, Mom Racer

Characters
Note: All characters are listed in order of their first appearances in the episode. The time they appear is the time from the Japanese dub..

Episode
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