FAQ

It's to prevent controversy regarding the presence of an alcohol trademark in a G-rated film. In place is the logo for the now defunct Dale Earnhardt Inc racing team.

No. The exterior design of that track is based on the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, and the track itself is closer in layout to the Auto Club Speedway in Fontana.

No. The track depicted in the movie appears to be an enlarged version of Bristol Motor Speedway, located in Bristol, Tennessee.

Although the town was based loosely on Amboy, California (a town on Route 66 that also saw a drastic decline after the grand opening of a section of I-40; additionally, there are also suggestions of Seligman, Arizona and Gallup, New Mexico), its landmarks are said to be based on buildings in other Route 66 towns. For example, Ramone's body-art business closely resembles the U-Drop Inn in Shamrock, Texas; the neon sign from Sarge's Army Surplus Store is a reference to a similar sign that advertised a now-defunct business in Galena, Kansas; The Cozy Cone Motel is similar to the Wigwam Village in Holbrook, Arizona; and cacti filling the landscape, as well as the red mountain backdrop, suggest that the town might be in Arizona or New Mexico. Seligman, Arizona has a white "S" in the nearby mountains just as Radiator Springs had "RS" in the film. The real "Fabulous Hudson Hornet" upon which Doc Hudson was based can be found at the Darlington Raceway museum in Darlington, South Carolina. The geological rock formations around the town seem to resemble automobiles in a few different ways. Specifically, the so-called Cadillac Range features hills resembling the up-ended cars of Cadillac Ranch near Amarillo, while other formations resemble the front-end grilles, wheel-wells and headlight arrays of non-distinct 1940s and '50s autos.

The animators decided to put the eyes up on the windshield, because that made the characters more expressive. This idea was largely influenced by the 1950s Disney cartoon Susie the Little Blue Coupe (1952), one of director John Lasseter's favorite cartoons.

No. The character was actually named after Glenn McQueen, a Pixar animator who died in 2002.

During the course of living in Radiator Springs, Lightning decides to join the community by getting Luigi to change his tires and having Ramone give him a metal flake red paint job. It can be assumed that Harv and Mack made his change back into his racing mode for the final race. However, no answer can be found for why his bumper stickers disappear after Lizzie puts them on him.

If you like Pixar's animation in Cars, you'll certainly want to see some of the other Pixar productions, including the sequel Cars 2 (2011), and perhaps Toy Story (1995), its sequels-Toy Story 2 (1999) and Toy Story 3 (2010)-and A Bug's Life (1998), Monsters, Inc. (2001), Finding Nemo (2003), The Incredibles (2004), Ratatouille (2007), WALL·E (2008), Up (2009), Brave (2012), and Finding Dory (2016). An exhaustive filmography of the studio can be found here.