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In some works, there are sentient and sapient cars, buses, trucks, RVs (motorhomes), ATVs, trains (steam-powered, diesel-powered, or light rail), train cars, airplanes, helicopters, boats, ships, spaceships, etc. Some of them maintain a Masquerade, some do not, and some live in a world of their own without humans.
This trope does not cover vehicles that happen to have AIs when those AIs are treated as separate entities that are not integrated into the vehicle itself. Also, with the exception of Living Ships, they have to be inorganic (in other words, not a "living" being).
Things under the heading "Other" include farm vehicles, construction vehicles, motorcycles, ATVs, and golf carts.
Subtrope of Animate Inanimate Object. Often overlaps with Automated Automobiles and Magic Bus. Supertrope of Sapient Ship and Living Ship. See also Sapient Steed.
Examples:
Automobiles (Cars, Buses, RVs, and Trucks, etc.):
Advertising
- The Chevron Cars are Chevron Corporation's clay-animated stop-motion talking cars that feature in television commercials crafted by Aardman Animations. Modern commercials retain the art style set by Aardman, but do it in CGI.
Comic Books
Film
Literature
- In the first book in Diane Duane's young adult Young Wizards series, So You Want To Be A Wizard, the two protagonists enter an alternate Manhattan that is populated by sentient cars that spend most of their time trying to kill each other.
- Christine
- The train Sei follows in Palimpsest.
Live-Action TV
- The Twilight Zone
- TOS episode "You Drive". After a man kills a boy in a hit and run accident, his car develops a mind of its own and forces him to confess to the crime.
- Episode "A Thing About Machines", where a man is tormented by the machines in his home, among them a car which ends up chasing him into a swimming pool where he drowns.
- Sabrina the Teenage Witch had an episode that dealt with this trope: Sabrina purchased a car from the Other Realm and it turned out to have a mind of its own. Hilarity ensued as the car pestered Sabrina about the way she treated it.
- Wizards of Waverly Place basically imitated the Sabrina example (as it so often does) with a cab that Alex reanimated.
- Somewhat subverted in My Mother The Car, as it's Mother's spirit that animates the old Porter, but from her speech she might as well really be the car.
- K.I.T.T. in Knight Rider.
- Carranger / Power Rangers Turbo had a pair of sentient flying cars from outer space.
- The cast of the preschool series The Big Garage.*
Which also features a talking gas pump.
- In Supernatural's pilot episode the ghost possesses the Impala and uses it to chase down the Winchesters and force them off the bridge.
Video Games
- Some Shin Megami Tensei games have Oboroguruma, which are ghost/demon cars that talk.
- When Choro Q series steps into the RPG Wide Open Sandbox genre, every car in it is this.
- Seek and Destroy features sentient tanks! What makes it funny is the fact that, despite being, well, tanks, the still manage to use a number of human mannerisms, for example, one tank, upon discovering his mooks failed to stop the main character, literally jumps up and down in anger. There's also the appearance of tank priests. It brings to question what sort of religion they follow. Oh, and then there's the final boss, the Tank Emperor, with his Three forms ranging from a massive land cruiser, a bulbous Spider Tank, and finally, a blob of gears, wires, and pure energy.
- Putt-Putt
Western Animation
- Roary The Racing Car
- Ricardo the racecar in Doc Mc Stuffins.
- C.A.R. from The Replacements.
- C.A.R.R. from Stroker and Hoop. Obvious parody of K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider, even though K.I.T.T. is an AI installed into a car.note And even though "K.A.R.R." was the name of an evil clone of K.I.T.T. from the actual series.
- Some of the vehicle characters in Bob the Builder
- Some of the road vehicles from Thomas the Tank Engine, such as Bertie the bus.
- Walt Disney's Susie the Little Blue Coupe.
- Chugaboom from The Perils of Penelope Pitstop
- Speed Buggy
- Wheelie And The Chopper Bunch — pretty much the entire cast.
- Mickey Mouse has a sentient car in the short "Mickey's Rival". And a sentient taxicab in another, much earlier short "Traffic Troubles".
- There was an episode of Kim Possible where an inventor had created a self-driving car with a female personality.
- Noddy's car, Car from Noddy.
- "Kitty", in Code Monkeys, is K.I.T.T. After K.I.T.T. made the decision to become a rapist after being jilted by Michael.
- The characters of Jim Henson's Construction Site
 .
- Friz Freleng's 1936 cartoon ''Streamlined Greta Green''.
- Tex Avery's MGM cartoon "One Cab's Family".
- The Ghostbuggy from Filmations Ghostbusters.
- The Magic School Bus
- Auto B Good
- The cartoon version of Beetlejuice had the Dragster Of Doom (or "Doomie") for short. A sentient car created through mad science. Oh, and he's also a werecar, transforming into a monsterous version of himself whenever he's in pain or to chase dogs.
- Tonka's Chuck and Friends
- The UmiCar from Team Umizoomi
- The toon cars and trains in Bonkers, most notably Ma Parker, the toon tow truck from "Calling All Cars" The episode does answer the question of what is behind the eyes in the windshield of windshield eye cars; it's a cabin complete with a steering wheel, seats, and seatbelts.
Spacecraft (Rockets, Spaceships, etc.):
Literature
Live-Action TV
Western Animation
- In the Futurama episode "Love and Rocket," the Planet Express Ship gets a new AI, which quickly falls in love with Bender.
- Captain Roger the space shuttle from the DVD-exclusive Cars Toon "Moon Mater".
- Rocket from Little Einsteins
Trains, Monorails, Trolleys, Steetcars, and Train Cars:
Anime and Manga
- Digimon Frontier had the digital world populated by machine digimon called Trailmon, who were basically sentient trains who carried their passengers to certain locations. Many of the trailmon had different looks, voices, and personalities, some even resembling mechanized animals, a kettle, and even Frankenstein.
- Digimon Tamers also had the machine digimon Locomon, which traveled on conventional dual metal rails, unlike the single metal rail used by the Trailmon of later works in the franchise.
- Anpanman has both SL-Man and Poppo-chan. SL-man is a regular steam locomotive, while Poppo-chan is a baby train, about the size of ones that you'd find on a child's ride.
Animated Films
Literature
Live-Action TV
- Mister Rogers' Neighborhood had a model trolley that seemed to be able to converse with Mr. Rogers, as well as with the inhabitants of the Neighborhood of Make-Believe.
Theatre
Western Animation
Airplanes, Helicopters, and Other Aircraft:
Animated Films
- Pedro the airplane from Saludos Amigos
- Cars:
- Rotor Turbosky, Kathy Copter, and Ron Hover the helicopters
- Al Oft, the blimp
- Barney Stormin, the biplane and the four fighter jets.
- Siddeley, the fighter jet from the sequel.
- Props McGee, Captain Munier, the Falcon Hawks, and Judge Davis from the ''Cars Toons''.
- The entire Spin-Off film Planes.
Video Games
- Windy Plane, the first boss of Ninja Baseball Bat Man. It's an anthropomorphic prop plane that stands on its tail and punches the player with its front wheels, no less.
Western Animation
Boats, Ships, Submarines and other Seacraft:
Animated Films
Western Animation
- Dive Olly Dive
- Captain and Bulstrode from Thomas the Tank Engine.
- Several anthropomorphic boats can be seen in the Cars Toons "Tokyo Mater", "Moon Mater" and "Mater, Private Eye" and Cars 2 has got Crabby the fishing boat and Tony Trihull the combat ship.
- TUGS.
- Theodore Tugboat.
- Tugger, Russel Crow's boat from an episode of South Park.
- Bucky on Jake and the Never Land Pirates seems to have limited sentience, in that he will obey commands and sometimes act independently. He can't talk, though, and is mostly just used as a way to get from place to place.
Other:
Anime and Manga
Animated Films
- In Cars, there are tractors that act like cows and a combine that acts like a bull.
- In one of the Maters Tall Tales shorts, there were bulldozers that acted like bulls.
- A tie-in storybook based on this series called Mater Saves Christmas showed Santa Car (a vehicle resembling a Dusenberg) being pulled by snowmobiles that acted like reindeer. Bessie, on the other hand, despite also being a bulldozer herself, is for some reason, not anthropomorphosized. The sequel featured a giant dump truck near the beginning that presumably acted like a bison. Another one of Mater's stories features "The Banshee", a monstrous earth-mover.
Video Games
- The upcoming game LocoCycle has you play a sentient female motorcycle assassin, brought to you by the same people that made Splosion Man.
Western Animation
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