Os Carrinhos em: A Grande Corrida, known in English as The Little Cars in the Great Race, is a Brazilian low-budget Direct to Video All-CGI Cartoon by none other than Vídeo Brinquedo. It was released in 2006 to coincide with none other than Cars, and while the concept is directly derived, the plot is otherwise pretty different. A car named Cruise (Tony in the dubbed versions of the first movie), dreams of becoming a racer, but for now he is stuck on his job at Mr. V8's company with his best friend, Kombo, while also having a crush on a female car, Cris, V8's niece. Cruise is looking forward to the upcoming Great Race, supporting his idol, the Champ, Rodopolis' consecutive race car champion. However, Wrangler, a rival race car, has evil plans in desesperation of winning the Great Race himself.
The film spawned seven sequels, which all consisted of various segments stitched together. There was also a musical, as well as a PC videogame developed by a single-person company. It is considered Video Brinquedo's closest thing to a Cash-Cow Franchise.
See also A Car's Life: Sparky's Big Adventure another Cars rip-off.
This film provides examples of:
- Always Second Best: Wrangler's main motivation. He wants to take the title away from the Champ and is envious for him being better than him, leading him to cheat by ruining the Champ's oil and preventing him from competing in the first place.
- Art Evolution: Starting with the second movie, the characters have somewhat more expressive and less limited movements, and the colors are more vibrant. The animation in general is much improved from the first movie while still being low-budget.
- Artistic License – Physics: During the Great Race, Wrangler is apparently able to spit a piece of gum several hundred feet from afar despite him being behind Cruise at the time and they were both going full speed down the track. Cruise is also somehow briefly stopped by that gum.
- Big Bad: Wrangler is the antagonist in most of these movies.
- The Big Race: Or really, the GREAT Race.
- Cast of Expies:
- Kombo is an obvious rip-off of Tow Mater, having a very similar design and being the protagonist's best friend and the film's comic relief.
- Cris can be seen as a rip-off of Sally Carrera, having a similar simple design and being the protagonist's Love Interest.
- Wrangler can be seen as a rip-off of Chick Hicks, being Always Second Best to the race's top racer (in this case, the Champ) and envying him, prompting him to cheat in the climatic race to make him lose. However, unlike Hicks, Wrangler cheats by preventing the Champ from competing in the first place by ruining his oil and sickening him.
- On that note, the Champ is an obvious rip-off of Strip "The King" Weathers, being the greatest racer out of the others as well as being the protagonist's idol, not to mention, after the protagonist helps him in the climatic race, offers him a place in his company.
- Chekhov's Gun: Earlier in the movie, when Wrangler arrogantly leaves his "autograph" on two letters from Cruise meant for Cris, Kombo then picks the papers up and saves them. In the ending, when Wrangler incriminates Cruise that he was responsible for the Champ's oil scandal, Kombo proves Wrangler to be the one truly responsible when pulling out the latter's autograph, which shows the same footprint Wrangler accidentally left when ruining the Champ's oil the night before.
- Compilation Movie: The sequels consist of compilations of various shorts. In fact, nowadays it's easier to find the individual shorts than the conjucted movies.
- Dark Is Evil: Wrangler's primary color is black.
- Dream Intro: The film opens with Cruise's dream of being a racer and almost winning, only to be woke up by Kombo.
- Everybody Calls Him "Barkeep": The five-time Great Race champion is called only 'Champion' or 'Champ' throughout the whole movie. Lampshaded by the antagonist, who insists "That's not his name!"'
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Wrangler leaves nails on the race track, causing another player to spin out of the race without control. Towards the race's conclusion, Wrangler specifically loses when passing by his own nail and losing control, allowing Cruise to win.
- Inconsistent Dub:
- The characters in the English dub of the first film were given localized names. After that, they simply stuck with the original Brazilian names.
- The infamous Latin American dub has Cruise referred to first with his localized name of "Tony", but at one point during the climax, Cris is heard calling him Cruise.
- The Mockbuster: A rip-off of Cars.
- Palette Swap: Occurs multiple times throughout the movie.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: When returning in the third movie, Wrangler poses a poor mustache to disguise himself.
- Returning Big Bad: Wrangler returns in the third movie after being absent in the second one.
