Goofs

When Lightning first goes to Radiator Springs and tears up the street, he is caught in the middle of the road on a electric wire between 2 poles. When that area is shown again there is no wire going across the road at any point.

After Luigi finishes talking to McQueen, Red comes up to clean the cacti from the crash on the race with Doc. When Sally says that he has "missed a spot on the hood", the last piece of cactus can be seen dropping at about a metre away from McQueen. The next shots are shown from a different perspective, and the cactus is gone.

When McQueen, Chick, and The King cross the finish line during the first race, McQueen can be seen, on close inspection, sticking out his tongue out and downward, curling it under considerably. When the race officials review the instant replay, his tongue is shown sticking nearly straight out and level.

In the opening race, both the "Re-Volting" and the white "Apple" car are #84.

After Mater tips two tractors, McQueen attempts to follow suit. When the camera pulls back to show all of the tractors tipping, the two Mater tipped initially are nowhere to be seen. Mater has not moved appreciably, so the tractors he tipped should have been on-screen right next to him.

Before the last race, when the airplane that writes "Piston Cup" flies toward the screen, the wrong aileron is in the downward position....in other words, it should be turning the opposite direction.

In the "outracing the night train" scene, McQueen is still hundreds of yards away from the crossing when the locomotive first looks horrified; without headlamps or other exterior lights of any kind, though, it is unlikely that McQueen would have been visible to the locomotive yet, since it was a pitch-dark night and McQueen was still so far off to the side of the track and therefore well out of the illumination "coverage" or "range" of the loco's "funnel cone of light" thrown by its powerful nose-mounted headlights.

A broken road cannot be repaved. The broken pieces have to be jack hammered up, then pave on the dirt.

The pile of leaves that McQueen passes through would not exist in real life because (1) the film is set is the summertime, when all the deciduous trees still have all their leaves, and (2) the tree under which the leaf pile is located has all its leaves attached.

The traffic light in the center of Radiator Springs only blinks amber. The signals in at least two (opposing) directions should blink red.

Lightning has a full re-spray just before he leaves Radiator Springs, including white sections with a yellow lightning bolt. But when we see him in the race, he's back in his old colors, and when he gets back to Radiator Springs he's in his new colors again. Evidently, cars change their paint job as readily as humans change clothes, which Ramone demonstrates repeatedly throughout the movie. McQueen's changes are consistent with the plot and the character - he likes his new paint job, but can't use it in a race, because it doesn't feature his sponsor's ads, in particular.

After Lightning chases down a truck and discovers it is not Mack, he wants to get back to the Interstate. At a first glance it may seem as if he turns and goes back the way he came (to the Interstate), but arrives to Radiator Springs. However, a closer look reveals that he makes a U-turn after turning right (to watch the truck leave), which means that eventually he went left on the T-junction (possibly becoming confused in the dark), instead of going back.

It is announced at the beginning of the Dinoco 400 that Chick Hicks has never managed to beat The King, even though he ties in points with him and McQueen in the season. Apparently, the announcers meant that Chick never won the Cup (which is true), and not that he never won an individual race. In fact, the announcers' exact words were: "And as always in the second place spot we find Chick Hicks." This can be interpreted either way.

In the second race, when Chick makes Lightning lose control, McQueen passes him in reverse. So McQueen's race position is now second. But a few moments later, we see the board at lap 190 and we see number 43 in the lead and the top part of number 86 (Chick's number) as position two. However, the position board is not updated until cars pass the start/finish line.

As the mini-van with the mattress passes Mack on the interstate, it has its left turn signal on, when in fact it goes right, toward the exit ramp. This appears to be intentional. The mini-van appears to have an implied "dopey" character - adding to the novelty that the little mini-van has somehow bested Mack in traveling.

In the courtroom there is a Latin motto over the doorway, that should read "Justitiae via strata veritate" (The way of justice is paved with truth). But the first word is misspelled as "Justitae."

In the second race, Chick Hicks shines his C in Lightning McQueens face. In the race, the C is shown as a C but because it is mirrored, the C would really be shining backwards on Lightning's car.

In the widescreen version, some of the end credits bleed through the left window of the screen.

The gas pump that Sally turns on to fill McQueen's tank is neither priced nor calibrated correctly --- this movie is supposed to take place in modern times, yet the pump's displayed per-gallon price is way less than half a buck, the way it would have been in the long-bygone era when that type of vintage pump would have been used; the "total sale" amount also does not increase proportionally (i.e., the total price is much less than it would be for that many gallons of gas at the stated price) as the gas in dispensed, either.

When Lightning is loaded onto Mack after the first race, they are using video to communicate back and forth. Lightning is trying to convince Mack to drive all night to get to California. Inside the trailer, Lightning's monitor shows all of Mack's face, yet when the camera view switches outside the trailer, there is no camera for Mack to have been looking into.

When Lightning McQueen wakes up in the impound yard, the boot is on the driver's side front tire. Mater hooks up to Lightning's rear to tow him in. He should have hooked to the front since one of front tires was incapacitated.

When Lightning McQueen is sentenced to pave the road as punishment, Sally says that he "has the horsepower" when in fact towing a trailer has much more to do with torque than horsepower, making a race car like McQueen unsuited to towing such a large object as Bessie.

At the last race the term Pit "Row" is a misnomer. It should be Pit "Road."

At the beginning of the films while the commentators are speaking there are long, colored arrows that separately point to Chick, Weathers, and McQueen. Weathers' and McQueen's arrows point downward center, but Chick's arrow points behind him.