It includes interviews with racers Al Unser, Jackie Oliver, Richard Petty, Stirling Moss, Mario Andretti, John Surtees, LeeRoy Yarbrough and others.

It also includes celebrity cameos by Kirk Douglas, Stephen Boyd, Dean Martin, Dick Smothers, Pancho Gonzales and more.

Though the film was aired on television in the United States, Newman suggested to Winters to add some footage and release it theatrically internationally.

Newman continues the segment with the history of the automobile, comparing modern cars with those from the early days, and he points to the subsequent generation that had the bug to drive.

Famous attendees included Wilt Chamberlain, Pete Conrad, Hugh Downs, Ken Venturi, Dean Martin, Dick Smothers, Pancho Gonzales, Arte Johnson, Kirk Douglas, Stephen Boyd, Glenn Ford, Gail Fisher, Chuck Connors, Don DeFore and Chad Everett.

[2] One of the arguments that helped to convince Newman to take part in the project, was explaining that it "wouldn't be just shots of cars zooming around the tracks.

[8] The race tracks locations used were in California, Ohio, North Carolina, Indiana, Florida, Canada, Mexico, Austria, Germany, and Italy.

[citation needed] Ben Gross of the Daily News said that the documentary "provided action plus human interest", and that it delivered, presenting the "excitement, glamor, glowing exhilaration and dark despondency" of the race car world.

He felt that the most interesting aspects were related to the human elements, such as "the personal lives, the hopes, the triumphs, and disappointment of the pro drivers".

She noticed the use of slow motion to show the franticness of changing a tire mid-race, and the way they edited the shots of cars crashing to look like a ballet.

[10] In his syndicated review published in The Miami Herald, Jack Anderson, who didn't like the sport of car racing, expressed a better understanding of it.

[14] Tom Hopkins of Dayton Daily News opined that the show started slowly, and that the segment about the losing racer was hokey, but that it moved very well afterwards.

[15] Jerry Greene of Florida Today said that the portrait of the racer who keeps losing was the strongest part of the film, and that it came too early and took away from the rest that was still first-rate.

[16] Dwight Newton of the San Francisco Examiner said that Once Upon a Wheel is "compiled with old film clips, latter day outtakes, fascinating new material and excellent background music".

[17] Rick Dubrow, in his review published in The Windsor Star, found Once Upon a Wheel to be entertaining, and said that director "Winters always manage to lot of handsome visual image on the home screen".

[18] The soundtrack includes songs by Cher, Kenny Rogers and The First Edition, The Association, Arlo Guthrie, Fresh Air, Wilson Pickett, Neil Young, and James Taylor.