Western Animation / Cars on the Road

"Let's make it a road trip!"

Cars on the Road is a short-form animated series spin-off of Cars created by Pixar for Disney+. It premiered on September 8, 2022 for "Disney+ Day". Steve Purcell (Sam & Max, Toy Story That Time Forgot) serves as showrunner and a director of several episodes, along with Brian Fee, director of Cars 3.

The plot of the series follows Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) and Mater (Larry the Cable Guy) as they travel across the country for the wedding of Mater's sister. Each episode presents their misadventures on the way to the big event.

Previews: Trailer

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Cars on the Road provides examples of:

• Afraid of Clowns: In "Show Time", Lightning McQueen dreads going to the circus due to his fear of clowns and does not enjoy their big show in the least. Mater suggests choosing McQueen to assist in the clowns' act as an "exposure therapy" thing, but thankfully for McQueen, they have Ivy join in instead.
• Artistic License – Paleontology: Lampshaded in the first episode. Mater's Imagine Spot features himself and Lightning as the setting's equivalent of cavemen, fleeing a Tyrannosaurus. Lightning points out how these two species lived in completely separate prehistoric eras.
• Bad "Bad Acting": In Episode 7, when Lightning gets cast in a B-movie for a minor cameo as the sheriff's deputy, he constantly flubs his one line ("Don't look at me.") in comical ways. Ironically, Mater does way better by comparison; he not only nails his part through his natural charisma and comic timing, but the film crew is so impressed that they keep giving him bigger roles in the movie.
• Big-Hearted Bigfoot: In Episode 4, while hunting for what is believed to be Bigfoot with a group of cryptid hunters, Lightning and Mater find out their quarry is actually a monster truck named Ivy who went into hermitage after she got sick of crushing cars as part of her performance routine.
• Brick Joke: A Cutaway Gag in Episode 1 shows Lightning and Mater getting lost in a maze of tires. The Stinger of the finale shows that Mato and Mateo went to the same place for their honeymoon.
  • Mater's "president speech" from "B-Movie" returns when he can't think of a way to end his wedding toast.
    Lightning: Nice speech, buddy. You know, I can't help but think I've heard it somewhere before.
• The Bus Came Back: The final episode has an appearance from Cruz as it's her cousin Mateo that Mater's sister is marrying.
• Call-Back: Just like in Cars 2, Mater gets some rocket engines adjusted onto him to make him go faster. This time, he goes a little too fast for his liking. Mater breaking the sound barrier and coming apart is a reference to the Mater's Tall Tales short, "Air Mater".
• Company Cross References:
  • The title card for Episode 2 resembles the logo for the The Haunted Mansion.
  • The production company for the movie in Episode 7 is Breaklight Pictures, a nod to Searchlight Pictures, which Disney also owns.
• Costume Evolution: At the start of the series (in the cold open of Episode 1, to be exact), Lightning wears his Florida 500 paint job from Cars 3 (having switched back from wearing his Doc Hudson-inspired paint job from the final scene of the aforementioned film). He switches to a more basic casual paint job (which removes all his Piston Cup sponsor stickers, simplifies his lightning bolt design and adds Radiator Cap Mountain onto his hood in place of the Rust-eze logo) when he and Mater go out on their road trip.
• Denser and Wackier: The previous Cars movies took place in a semi-realistic world that had its own internal logic, with the sapient cars being the only notable oddity. By comparison, this series features dinosaurs, ghosts and Bigfoot!
• Didn't See That Coming: As soon as Mater and Lightning arrive at the Mater's home, Lightning is shocked to find out his redneck friend is loaded. He even mentions he wasn't expecting this to be his home.
• Disney Acid Sequence: The "TRUCKS" song in Episode 6 features bizarre visuals such as trucks driving on rainbows, slotting into each other like nesting dolls, and lineart models.
• Eye Awaken: In "The Legend" when Lightning wakes up tied to the ceiling in Ivy's shack, his eyes are shown blinking open.
• Gilligan Cut: In "Lights Out" when preparing to go to bed, Mater is nervous while Lightning bets he will be sleeping like a rock all night. Cut to Mater sleeping soundly and Lightning beginning to freak out.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Ivy the Monster Truck joins Lightning and Mater at the end of the fourth episode only to leave at the end of the next, before appearing again two episodes after that.
• Hates the Job, Loves the Limelight: Subverted. Ivy loved to perform. She just didn't like that her performances involved jumping on cars.
• Hero of Another Story: Cruz implies her summer's been just as eventful as Lightning and Mater's road trip. We don't get too much about it, but it apparently involved giving out free tires to the needy and her becoming qualified as a referee, family therapist, and wedding officiant.
• Hidden Depths:
  • The first episode reveals that Lightning is a fan of dinosaurs, while the fifth confirms he has coulrophobia, the fear of clowns.
  • Mater is shown to be a surprisingly good actor in "B-Movie", and even writes a surprisingly passionate speech that he partially reuses in the final episode.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In Episode 7, Lightning expresses his preference for practical effects, not "that fakey CGI stuff". Mater asks what CGI is, to which Lightning replies, "It's technical. It comes out of a computer somehow.”
• Mid-Development Genre Shift: In-Universe example. The movie in production throughout "B-Movie" starts out as a horror movie, but gradually unravels into a bouncy musical by the end.
• Musical Episode: The sixth episode, "Trucks", is basically a music video.
• Near-Death Experience: In "Salt Fever", Mater suffers a vicious crash when his newly-attached rockets come off while he's trying to set a speed record in the salt flats. This causes him to become a ghost and come face-to-face with the Speed Demon, the Cars universe's equivalent of The Grim Reaper, though he manages to outsmart her and return to his body before she can take him "the rest of the way".
• Rule of Three: In the first episode, Lightning complains to Mater about the last three places they stopped — the World's Largest Tire Maze where they got lost, the World's Largest Lugnut which only Mater was interested, and Carhenge which falls apart from just one touch.
• Parody of Evolution: In the background of the museum in Episode 1, there is chart showing car evolution. Apparently, cars started off life as submarines before gaining treads and eventually developing wheels.
• Remember the New Guy?: Mater has a sister, a fact that he had never brought up until now and quickly becomes the talk of Radiator Springs. Mater justifies this by saying he doesn't think about her much. Further cemented in the finale when they finally meet, as they turn out to be very competitive.
• Secondary Sexual Characteristics: Averted with the semi-trucks, which do not have any features (other than voice) to distinguish males from females.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: In "B-Movie", everything Lightning and Mater do for the movie is rendered completely pointless when it gets rewritten from a zombie movie to a musical the following day and they are promptly fired from production.
• Shout-Out:
  • In Episode 2, while exploring the hotel, Lightning encounters a pair of ghostly twin cars resembling the twins from The Shining. Shortly after, there is a recreation of the bloody elevator scene from the same film, only with anti-freeze in place of blood.
  • The aesthetic of the circus in Episode 5 closely resembles that of Cirque du Soleil.
  • Episode 8 is a giant shout out to Mad Max with its metal covered cars and wasteland atmosphere. More specifically, they have the drummers from Mad Max: Fury Road, and Mater and Lightning must fight to the death in the Thundercone.
    • Cap'n Long Leggy, a weaponized post-apocalyptic ice cream truck may be a reference to Sweet Tooth from Twisted Metal.
• Shown Their Work: In "Dino Park", Lightning and a paleontologist discuss how compact theropods survived the asteroid impact that wiped out the other dinocars, which is clearly a reference to birds being dinosaurs that survived the Cretaceous extinction event.
• Sibling Rivalry: Mater and his sister Mato are extremely overcompetitive with each other, which is why Mater generally doesn't see her too often. When they reunite during the final episode, they immediately start competing in various events with Cruz as the referee.
• Special Guest: In-Universe in "B-Movie". Lightning is cast as a sheriff's deputy in the zombie movie being filmed. Only he's a horrific actor whose scenes have to be shot multiple times.
• Spinosaurus Versus T. rex: Played with. In "Dino Park", Mater dreams where he and Lightning get chased by a Tyranamissiasaurus rex, which itself gets attacked by the much larger Spinocrankshaftorex. While the dinocars' names obviously reference Tyrannosaurus and Spinosaurus, both of them actually more closely resemble Ceratosaurus.
• Stylistic Suck: The dinosaur cars in Mater's dream in Episode 1 are animated at a lower frame rate to resemble Stop Motion animation.
• The Unreveal: We finally see a car's door open, but our only hint as to what's inside is Mater’s soul leaping back into his body through it.
• Wham Shot: The final episode has Lightning and Mater finally arrive to the wedding, which takes place at a giant mansion.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: "Show Time" has the duo (and Ivy) stop at a circus, where Lightning has to sit through an entire performance watching the clowns that make up most of the performers.

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