Route 66 is actually the real U.S. Route 66, as it caught the interest of John Lasseter and the production makers of the film. Not mentioned in the film, Route 66 is also known as "The Main Street of America".
Wiki describes Radiator Springs as, “Radiator Springs is a fictional town in the Cars series created as a composite of multiple real places on historic U.S. Route 66 from Kansas to Arizona. Gerrald is from a town like Radiator Springs.
The fictional movie town of Radiator Springs, faithfully replicated at Disney's Anaheim theme park, draws inspiration from a number of locations along a 1,000-mile stretch of Route 66 between Kingman, Ariz., and Tulsa, Okla.
The cartoon depiction of Radiator Springs and Carburetor County is based on a composite of multiple landmarks in multiple states, from Baxter Springs, Cherokee County, Kansas to Peach Springs, Arizona and a bit beyond.
Lightning McQueen and Sally are awed by a desert waterfall during their drive away from Radiator Springs; Cars fans who visit the Grand Canyon might recognize it as Havasu Falls, one of several located along Havasu Creek within Havasupai tribal lands.
All the Route 66 Places that Inspired Pixar "Cars"
Where is Route 66 in real life?
The highway winds from the shores of Lake Michigan across the agricultural fields of Illinois, to the rolling hills of the Missouri Ozarks, through the mining towns of Kansas, across Oklahoma where the woodlands of the East meet the open plains of the West, to the open ranch lands of Texas, the enchanted mesa lands of ...
Radiator Springs is a made up town, but it is a symbol of the many small towns you would find along the historic Route 66. Route 66 ran from Chicago to Los Angeles. Radiator Springs is just south of Disney Land, in Anaheim, California.
Route 66 technically doesn't exist anymore, it was decommissioned on June 26, 1985. But the original road ran from Chicago to Los Angeles and has been replaced for much of its route by I-40. You can still travel over much of what used to be Route 66 and there are a lot of towns that still celebrate the “Mother Road”.
Anticipation for Cars 4 is high, but Disney has not addressed any details for the movie. Producers have shown openness to expanding the franchise, with potential for a new lightning McQueen narrative. Story details remain a mystery, focusing on potential Cruz Ramirez involvement and moving away from McQueen.
Looming over Radiator Springs, they are a set of six mountains resembling the tailfins of classic Cadillac cars from 1957 to 1962, with Mount '57 being the tallest of the six peaks. They are inspired by the Cadillac Ranch, an art attraction along Route 66 in Amarillo, Texas.
They end up at the Wheel Well motel that has seen better days, but the duo restored the motel back to tip-top shape by the end of the film. This is similar to the Wagon Wheel Motel located in Cuba, Missouri, that was built in the 1930s.
Chick is a 1979 Shyster Cremlin, a fictional car based on and designed after a 1981 Buick Regal in NASCAR form. Chick is painted green, with the number 86 painted on his doors, and has yellow rims.
Monument Valley's unique rock formation resembling a Mexican sombrero is the inspiration for the fictional Willy's Butte location in Pixar's Cars (2006) & Cars 2 (2011), intended to resemble a classic Pontiac hood ornament.
While McQueen is not modeled directly after a specific make and model, the artists mixed and matched elements of the Chevrolet Corvette C6 and Corvette C1.
The Leaning Tower of Tires is based on the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy. According to the deleted Cars Toons episode Backwards to the Forwards, Luigi's Casa Della Tires used to be Lou's House of Tires. In Italian, "Casa Della Tires" means "House of Tires".
I can picture an easy day at the Wheel Well Motel that Sally takes Lightning to visit, though its glory days are over. The real motel that inspired this sweet gem in the film is the Wagon Wheel Motel in Cuba, Missouri. It's still up and running, so mosey on over and stay for a while.
It is implied that Doc died prior to the events of Cars 2, and he appears in flashback sequences in Cars 3. Doc is voiced by Paul Newman in Cars, Cars 3 (the latter via archive audio recordings) and Cars: the Video Game, and Corey Burton in all other media.
How Old is Lightning McQueen? In the original Cars movie, McQueen is in his early-to-mid twenties, and reaches the apex of his career in his late thirties in Cars 2 , before approaching obsolescence and retirement in his early forties through Cars 3 .
Route 66's popularity led to its downfall, with traffic swelling beyond its two-lane capacity. In 1956, legislation created the Interstate System, and over the course of three decades, five separate interstates bypassed segment after segment of Route 66.
Portions of the road have now been designated as National Scenic Byways or as “Historic Route 66” in several states including Arizona, New Mexico, Illinois, and Missouri. Vintage Shell gas station (left) built in 1926 on Route 66 in Mount Olive, Illinois (photo taken between 1980 and 2006).
Virtually all roads, including Route 66, were functionally obsolete because of narrow pavements and antiquated structural features that reduced carrying capacity. Emergency road building measures developed during wartime left bridges and culverts woefully inadequate for postwar needs.
The first film actually takes place in 2005 despite being released in 2006. This was vaguely explained in the first Cars video game. Basically, Lightning is a "custom-built 2006 race car", but in the real world cars are always labelled as the year after they were manufactured (ex.
In fact, a lot of the movie's story is based on the recollections of barber Angel Delgadillo of Seligman, AZ, where business withered soon after the opening of I-40. Since much of the movie is spent on Route 66, various towns in Arizona, and other parts of the U.S., were also used as inspiration.
Route 66 helped to facilitate the single greatest wartime manpower mobilization in the history of the nation. Between 1941 and 1945 the government invested approximately $70 billion in capital projects throughout California, a large portion of which were in the Los Angeles-San Diego area.
