Cars/Trivia

Cameos

 * During "Life is a Highway," the birds from For the Birds can be briefly seen sitting on a telephone wire.
 * Dinoco, The King's sponsor, is also the gas station Buzz Lightyear and Woody get stranded at in Toy Story.
 * The snowman from Knick Knack is seen in the snowglobe in Lizzie's Curios Shop.
 * A camper van (whose name is Syd VanDerkamper) who is watching the final race, is surrounded by flamingos which is a reference to Knick Knack.
 * The Pizza Planet delivery truck, which has shown up in every Pixar film except The Incredibles, appears before the final race, next to the Elvis camper in the left background behind Bob Cutlass. He also appears during the Life is a Highway sequence at a Dinoco station, reproducing how the truck appeared in Toy Story, at a Dinoco gas station. Due to being in the Cars world, the truck was called Todd.
 * During the end credits, car-stylised versions of Toy Story, A Bug's Life and Monsters, Inc. are seen playing at the Radiator Springs Drive-In Theatre.
 * A camper has an image of the Jackalope from Boundin' on his back.
 * Two trucks at the Top Down Truckstop have Mr. Incredible's trademark red-dotted lowercase "i" on their trailer.
 * Also, some of the trucks' trailers have either "TS" or "FN" written on them, a possible reference to Toy Story and Finding Nemo, respectively.
 * In the teaser trailer, many of the cars have the Toy Story 2 and A Bug's Life logos on them.
 * In both races, Bing Bong’s cart was seen in the infield seats.

Other trivia

 * The tires of Piston Cup racers are Lightyear tires, which alludes both to the tire manufacturer Goodyear and to Buzz Lightyear. They also bear the inscription "Section 4 Gamma Quadrant", the location where Buzz is seen in the video game in Toy Story 2.
 * Chick Hicks's number (86) is a reference to the year Pixar was founded. Lightning McQueen's number (95) is a reference to the year Toy Story was released in the theaters. McQueen's original number was (57), the year Pixar's CEO John Lasseter was born.
 * This was the second Pixar film to be released in the summer after Finding Nemo.
 * During the introductory race, there is a white car with the Apple, Inc. logo. Steve Jobs, who was in charge of Pixar, founded Pixar after George Lucas sold the graphics research production to him.
 * Cars is the second Pixar film to have a post-credits sequence. The first is Finding Nemo.
 * At the tie-breaking race at the Los Angeles International Speedway, while three fighter jets pass over the stadium, an aerial view of Pixar Animation Studios can be seen among the nearby buildings, although the real campus is located at Emeryville, near San Francisco, not at Los Angeles.
 * This is the first Pixar film since Toy Story 2 to be directed by John Lasseter.
 * Ornament Valley, near Radiator Springs, is shaped like car hoods. The mountain range surrounding Radiator Springs is called Cadillac Range. The mountains are shaped like quarter panels of 50's Cadillacs, in reference to Cadillac Ranch.
 * The neon lights on top of the canopy at Flo's V8 Cafe fire in the same pattern as a 1932 Ford V8 Flathead.
 * Pixar only made original films throughout the 2000s. There were 7 films made in total over that decade, and Cars is right in the middle of all those movies in chronological order.
 * On average, it took 17 hours to render each frame of the film. In addition, it was the first Pixar film to use ray-tracing to accurately create the reflections on the cars.
 * Cars was originally going to be called Route 66, which would make a lot of sense because of the location that the movie takes place in. The release title was chosen to avoid confusion with the 1960s TV series of the same name as the working title.
 * This is the first Pixar film that used the word "hell", when Lightning and Sally mention Radiator Springs as "Hillbilly Hell", followed by Ratatouille.
 * One of the cars in the first race, called Claude Scruggs is sponsored by "Leak Less". A bottle of "Leak Less" fuel is seen in WALL•E.
 * Cars is the seventh Disney·Pixar feature film, and the first film by Pixar released when it was bought by Disney.
 * This was the first & only Pixar film to be released during Disneyland's 50th Anniversary.
 * Cars was the second-to-last Pixar film to use the Walt Disney Pictures logo custom made for the studio since Toy Story, because Ratatouille was the last Pixar film to use the Walt Disney Pictures logo custom made for the studio.
 * This is the first Pixar film to be released in June.
 * This is the only Cars film to use the 1995-2007 Walt Disney Pictures logo.
 * Cars received a 75% "Certified Fresh" rating on the movie review website, Rotten Tomatoes.
 * Many famous people, particularly from the automobile racing world make a cameo appearance in Cars which include Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Mario Andretti, Michael Schumacher, Bob Costas, Darrell Waltrip and Jay Leno; references to Arnold Schwarzenegger and Elvis also appear, although it is not known if the former is voiced by himself.
 * This inspired Vídeo Brinquedo to make The Little Cars in the Great Race, a rip-off of this film.
 * In the scene where the race announcers are talking about the popularity of the race, it says that the whole town of Emeryville is closed for the race. Emeryville is the location of the Pixar Studios.
 * In Lightning's dream about being Lightning Storm, a car gets zapped and emits the Wilhelm scream. The Wilhelm scream is a sound effect used in many movies.
 * In the teaser trailer, there is a car sponsored by "Jumbo Pretzels". This is presumably the same company that was seen in A Bug's Life under the name "Jackson's Jumbo Pretzels."
 * This is the last Pixar film to have a full-screen format for its US home release.
 * One of the original story ideas for the film was about an electric car living in a gas-guzzling world.
 * This was Joe Ranft's final film, since he died in a car accident the year before its release, while the film was still in production.
 * This is last Pixar film, as well as the only Cars film, to be release on VHS (though rare), and the first to be release on Blu-ray.
 * The opening race at Motor Speedway of the South contained 60,000 seated cars and an additional 700 cars in the infield and aisles while, despite Darrell mentioning the attendance being nearly 200,000 cars, 100,000 cars were seated at Los Angeles International Speedway during the final race, plus an additional nearly 1,500 cars in the infield and aisles. Nearly 13,000 cars were entering Los Angeles International Speedway to find seats.[1]
 * Lightning McQueen has 14 different paint variants, ranging from subtly different amounts of dirt and dust to the completely new paint jobs near the end of the film.
 * This is the only Cars film to air in the 2000s.
 * There are a total of 21,566 lights in four different shots when Lightning McQueen and Mack first get on the road to California.
 * This is the last Pixar film in which the year of copyright is in Roman numerals.
 * Cars was originally going to be released on November 4, 2005 before being changed to June 9, 2006 on December 7, 2004.
 * This is the only Cars film to be promoted by McDonalds.
 * The line "Float like a Cadillac, sting like a Bemmer (BMW)", which Lightning says before his race with Doc at Wily's Butte, and which he and Doc reference during the race at Los Angeles, is a parody of "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee", which was made famous by the legendary boxer Mohammed Ali.