Cars (2006) on Netflix
G20061h 57mAdventureAnimationComedy
Hotshot rookie racecar Lightning McQueen is tied for the Piston Cup with Chick Hicks and retiring champion Strip Weathers. Stranded in Radiator Springs, he must repave the road he wrecked.
- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb7.3/10549,404 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes75%
Trailer
Plot summary
The Piston Cup season ends with rookie Lightning McQueen tied on points with Chick Hicks and retiring champion Strip Weathers, so a tiebreaker race in California will decide the title. Hungry to leave his Rust-eze sponsorship for Dinoco, Lightning has raced to the top alone and his pit crew walks out on him. Traveling overnight in his transport truck Mack, he is separated from the rig and ends up in Radiator Springs, Arizona, a rundown town on Route 66, where he tears up the main road. The town judge, Doc Hudson, who dislikes racecars, sentences him to repave it, and the residents want no part of his attitude. He rushes the job, determined to leave.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Cars (2006)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film was originally titled Route 66 before being renamed Cars to avoid confusion with the 1960s TV series, and Lightning McQueen's number was changed from 57, a nod to director John Lasseter's birth year, to 95, marking the year Pixar released Toy Story.
- Cars was the final Pixar film worked on by co-writer and voice actor Joe Ranft, who died in a car crash a year before its release; it was the second film dedicated to his memory, after Corpse Bride.
- After taking his own cross-country road trip, John Lasseter contacted Route 66 historian Michael Wallis, who then led eleven Pixar animators on two research road trips down the highway in rented white Cadillacs.
- Critics have noted that Cars' story of a hotshot who learns small-town values after being sentenced to community service closely mirrors the 1991 Michael J. Fox comedy Doc Hollywood, with some alleging Pixar's writers plagiarized that film's script.
- Production designer Bob Pauley says John Lasseter insisted from the project's start on placing the cars' eyes in the windshield rather than the headlights, to separate them from the standard cartoon approach.
- Cars gave Paul Newman his last non-documentary film role, coming before his retirement in 2007 and his death in 2008.
