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PSA: Headscratchers is a place to try and find In-Universe explanations. Try to avoid natter, going too off-topic and/or first person language. If a bullet has something you feel is incorrect, just fix it.

For Headscratchers specific to the first film, see here.


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    Drifting 
  • In Mater's Tall Tales the cars drift with their wheels pointed in the wrong direction. What gives?
    • It's Mater. Even if he knows how to drift he probably doesn't think about it as he's doing it, and he's making it up anyway.
  • Speaking of drifting, how does Lightning, a talented if rookie racer, not already know how to drift? Counter steering is Racing 101. Heck, it's arguably Driving 101.

    Gas supplies 
  • Where does the fuel come from? Where did the talking cars come from anyway? If the cars lack manual dexterity and require simplified interfaces to perform most tasks (pumping gas, opening doors, playing video games, etc.) then who built some of the more finely crafted items like trophies or the gas pumps themselves?
    • Fanon speculates sapient cars and humans coexisted, and the latter were either wiped out or died out.
      • Maybe cars are still imprisoning the humans, and using them as slaves.
      • Then why doesn't Sally have one of them get rid of her Embarrassing Tattoo? It's easy to remove a vinyl decal from a car, after all.
      • Because she's really not embarrassed by it and is just acting that way?
      • Also, it's not a decal: it's pinstriping, which is painted on and top-coated. Removing pinstriping is quite a bit harder.
      • And why would anyone pretend to be embarrassed?

    Cows 
  • What do they breed the cows for? They can't possibly eat them. Can they?
    • Where do you think the gas and oil comes from?
    • In the unreleased "Mater's Tall Tales" short "Backwards to the Forwards", Mater ends up time-travelling to the prehistoric past, where he encounters stone wheels and a few dinosaurs. It's not canonical, but there you go.

    Electronics 
  • If vehicles evolved, then why not electronics (as a type of "organism") and thus robotic assembly lines (to build non-electronic and non-sentient machinery like the road paver)?

    Service stations 
  • The movies show both gas stations and diners for cars. What's the difference?
    • Motor oil, chassis lube and antifreeze?
    • Maybe gas stations are the car equivalent of a really cheap fast-food place? Except without the cheap part, judging by today's gas prices.
    • On the other hand, why is everyone freaked out of Fillmore naturist drinks? Is that gas without led, or drugs?
      • It's probably the Cars' universe equivalent of Tofu. It sustains as well as normal gas but most don't prefer it.
      • The gas is liquid, so its a DRINK, like coffee or something, and the food is, well food.

    Bessie 
  • Is she a corpse or something?
    • The convention seems to be that if you can't move under your own power, you're not sentient. Hence Mac's trailer doesn't have a mind of its own, nor do the train's cars other than the engine.
      • How do you account for the tractors, then?
      • They can move under their own power, what's the problem?
    • An alternate scene in the first film has Lightning put into a construction machine rather than pulling Bessie after they move his engine over during the night. The rule seems to be that your engine is where your brain is, therefore no engine=no brain. See the entry further down for more details.

    Plant harvesting 
  • In a world of sapient vehicles that don't really use "organic" oil, why would they harvest plants? Is it just gardening on a massive scale or do they have an unseen trade agreement with a planet that has a lot of fossil fuel and poor soil?
    • Biofuel?
      • Most Likely, as there are cars in real life that run on biofuel, so it's only fitting that there would be the same in the cars world.

    Car gender 
  • What's the difference between a male and a female car?
    • Two ball bearings and a stick shift?
    • The eyes. Male cars have Flat lightning bolt-shaped eyelids, while females have curved ones with a thick black outline. The only exception is a minor Piston Cup racer in the first film, who is female, yet has male eyes and a "Mustache Grille", which is also a trait exclusive to males.

    Engine brains 
  • If the engine is the brain, what happens to those cars with the engine in the trunk, like VW Beetle? Do they have their faces in the rear? Do they get mocked by the other cars?
    • Beetles serve in the movie as literal bugs, but Sally is a Porsche 911 so she must have her engine in the back and she seems perfectly normal. Besides, according to the car anatomy in the movie, front-engine vehicles would have their brains in their noses, which I don't think is really less weird than having brain in your butt.

    Hooks and wrenches 
  • Just how exactly can they handle things like books and wrenches with those huge tires of theirs?
    • Pimped-Out Car, with cool arm-like things to manipulate everything? That, or human slaves.
    • They show Luigi using his windshield wipers like arms a few times. And others times they're shown lifting things with their tires, so they may be more adhesive than real world ones.

    F/V Northwestern 
  • So the F/V Northwestern catches crabs. What would vehicles want with crabs, which are probably also vehicles?
    • Perhaps the "crabs" are actually mobile pieces of ore.
    • Or dinky little deep-sea ROVs, which the cars break down for components. Heck, maybe that's where they get those little grippers so many of them use as prosthetic hands.

    Cars that die 
  • Exactly how does a car 'die'? Running out of gas prevents a car from traveling (at least at high speeds), but it's not equivalent to 'starvation' in that the car remains conscious and can still talk (ref. Lightning in the first film). Likewise, an engine breaking down doesn't mean the car dies either (ref. Mater towing the one crappy minor character car at least twice in the second film, and Rod saying that a broken engine block 'can be replaced'). Pile-ups and crashes in the races are treated as near-fatal incidents, although no car is actually shown dying because of damage accrued during a race. In the second movie the cars that do die are crushed into a cube (Leland), their engines explode (Rod), or they break into pieces (the car hitting the water after falling off the oil rig); yet it is also implied that cars can die of 'old age'.
    • A car dies when it gets broken beyond repair (or at leat when repair would require making an entirely new car). The one's crushed into a cube, that can't be repaired, the other's engine explodes that can't be repaired, and the one breaks into several pieces and the other pieces probably sunk to the bottom of the ocean, that can't be repaired.

    Getting shot at 
  • At one point, Lightning wonders why he's being shot at. How the Hell he even knows what a gun is if nobody in the world has fingers, much less why Lightning would first think "gun" and not "backfiring", which is what's actually happening?
    • Explained in Cars 2. Weapons are mounted as prosthetics, or built into them like the fighter planes in Planes.

    Kid cars 
  • Why don't they ever show any children (who would all probably be portrayed as little kiddie-cars) in this universe? Is it because they are all too young to drive?
    • A few children are seen occasionally. In the first (i think) race sequence of the first movie. she was sitting in the stands, with her parents and has a die cast. A picture of a car family is visible in the pub near the end of the second film.

    Auto erotica 
  • What happens if Sally and Lightning wanna have a baby?
    • There are mentions of various types of car or of engine parts being manufactured in the second movie, so it's likely that young cars are assembled in factories, then adopted out to couples that want to raise them.

    Wildlife 
  • If all animals here are vehicles, then what do all of the other animals besides cattle and insects look like as vehicles?
    • According to that insurance commercial, at least some of them (pets) look like toy cars, planes and trains. Some model-plane "pigeons" appear in the Paris scenes from the second film.

    Opaque windows 
  • All of the characters' windows are completely opaque, and there are no convertibles in this world (their roof are all down). What the heck is inside their windows?
    • The corpses of ancient drivers?
    • Concept art shows that cars have "innards" inside their windows.
    • Tim Batarseh created some fan art pieces that show their empty seats inside while their windows are opaque, although the minivan in the last one has transparent side windows.
    • The salescar from the second film which had headlight-eyes had an empty compartment behind her windshield, like a Real Life car. The angle wasn't right to tell if she had seats in there or not, though.

    Car food 
  • So, cars eat not only fuel, but also metal and "human" foods like fruits, vegetables, and meat. Where does their "meat" come from, if all animals are also vehicles? Are their meat products also made from metal?

    Stripping 
  • ''Tokyo Mater'' apparantly featured the automobile equivalent of nudity, where Kabuto will actually strip any car that challenges him to a race and loses of their modifications, and in the end Kabuto as a result of him losing his own race becomes naked himself. How the heck do you strip a car naked?
    • Strip off all the paint, maybe?

    Auto banks 
  • What do the cars use for money? And where do they keep it? Do they carry around some kind of physical currency in their trunks, thus explaining how Lightning was able to buy stuff from the residents of Radiator Springs in the first film?
  • Cashless society, with either NFCs or biometric recognition?

    The Mayor of Radiator Springs 
  • Who the heck is it? Is it Doc? He's dead now so not anymore. Sally? Mater? Lizzie?
    • Most likely Sally. As she was an attorney before becoming a resident of Radiator Springs, she seems involved enough in law and politics to qualify.
    • In the first movie, it's probable the town is so small and run-down and empty that there's not much of a need for an actual mayor, so Doc might've been the de facto leader there during the first film, since he is a judge. By the time he died, Radiator Springs had become more popular and may have had more people move there and open up businesses, thus opening up doors to many new candidates for the position.

    Motorcycles 
  • Are there any motorcycles in Cars universe?
    • None are seen or mentioned, but bicycle handlebars mounted as if they were antlers were seen in one shot, so maybe certain quadredped animals like horses, deer or large cats are motorcycles. There were plans to include a Vespa-style moped in the second film, but they were scrapped because it would look too creepy.

    History before the invention of cars 
Were there any sentient beings in the Car universe before the invention of cars themselves? If so, what were they powered by if anything?

     Creationism vs evolution 
  • Were the cars created by a higher being, or did they evolve naturally? I mean I know Mac mentioned the "Manufacturer" suggesting they had a deity. But what's the cars version of evolution? What are their ancestors? Because I know the dinosaurs exist in their universe. Non-mechanical dinosaurs.

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