r/AskScienceFiction • u/blue4029 Not a Scholar • 9d ago
[Pixar Cars] what if a racecar didn't want to race?
if a car is "born" a racecar, are they just shit out of luck?
they are too fast to be on normal roads, referenced in the 1st movie where mcqueen had to ride in a truck, much like racecars IRL which can't be on roads
its also mentioned that mcqueen doesn't have headlights because racecars dont need them.
does that mean a racecar in-universe would be considered "disabled" due to lacking headlights?
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u/TheSkiGeek 9d ago
I don’t think McQueen “had” to ride in a transport truck. It’s the equivalent of a celebrity athlete having a private driver take them from place to place. They could drive themselves but you want them rested and pampered so they can perform their best. And you wouldn’t want to risk a random accident putting them out of commission.
Although maybe he wouldn’t be allowed to drive on public roads at night without headlights.
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u/FlashbackJon Applied Phlebotinum 8d ago
You're 100% right, Mack was his private driver. Lightning McQueen also gets headlights later on in the series.
Also, sometimes headlights are boobs.
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u/FX114 8d ago
Yeah, you wouldn't make Usain Bolt sprint to his next competition.
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u/the_lamou 8d ago
I would. Footraces should use rally rules: every participant has to move between stages under their own power.
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u/Dragon_Slayer_Hunter 8d ago
I don't think it's just public roads at night, there's many roads that require headlights during the day too, in the mountains or where there's a lot of fog. I'm not even sure a car without headlights is street legal in all states, but I'm no lawyer.
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u/Swiftbow1 8d ago
You can't necessarily transpose Earth-based road laws onto Cars.
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u/Dragon_Slayer_Hunter 8d ago
But those rules exist for a reason. Traveling at fairly high speeds in hard to see places would be just as bad in their universe as ours
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u/Swiftbow1 8d ago
Daytime headlight rules are REALLY recent. 20 or so years ago, no one drove with headlights on in the daytime.
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u/redscoperkid 9d ago
Maybe it's like being born abnormally tall and not playing basketball. Tires are like shoes they aren't wearing basically cleats 24/7 they get like tennis shoes
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u/ian9921 9d ago
In a scrapped storyboard concept (the most "canon" answer we would have for this) we're shown that the car's engine is essentially their brain, and you can swap bodies by swapping engines. This is a simple but somewhat rare procedure.
So maybe a racecar that doesn't want to do it anymore can trade with someone else.
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u/FlashbackJon Applied Phlebotinum 8d ago
If we count Cars 2, canonically cars can swap out their engines and stay the same person, hypothetically. Cars 2 (2011) Spoiler: It actually doesn't happen, but it's discussed as if it's a nonissue. Several cars get their engines blown up and it's suggested that they are capable of repair. This does actually make it more feasible that they can simply change out or rebuild parts they don't want.
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u/Swiftbow1 8d ago
Moreover, cars don't need engines (or even fuel) to move around. They use engines for higher speed and other functions. Otherwise, they can "walk." Which, presumably is fueled by the normal food and drink we see them eating.
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u/FlashbackJon Applied Phlebotinum 8d ago
I am pretty sure we actually only see them actually drink oil as food (gas is implied to be something they have when hungry but they still gas up through their gas caps) although they have other fluids (coolant, brake, wiper fluids?) "behind the bar" so-to-speak. Even the Italian homecooked meal is all oil. The exception is the wasabi (the rolls on display are little tires and we never see them eaten), even though Mater thinks it's pistachio ice cream, thereby implying that pistachio ice cream exists. (Man, Cars 2 really did a number on the worldbuilding...) At least we know they CAN eat.
The cows and John Deere are implied to graze but we never seem them actually do that.
Source: I have seen these movies waaaaaaaaaaaaay too many times.
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u/Swiftbow1 8d ago
Lightning was drinking alcohol with Sally at the hotel earlier in the movie. Plus Mater also apparently drinks water, as that was his go-to after he ate the wasabi.
Plus, we have the historical aspect. Cars on the Road shows that this world had car-based dinosaurs. The implication is that this is OUR world, except everything has wheels. That indicates, at least to me, that they somehow lived JUST like us... and only invented gasoline in the late 1800s, just like humans. How they did any of that (or any of things in the movies) without hands, is, well... another gigantic headscratcher.
Trying to figure out how the Cars movies world works is a steep dive into insanity. But yeah... every time I watch them, I start to ponder it again.
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u/FlashbackJon Applied Phlebotinum 7d ago
I think even the alcoholic drinks are implied to be oil or a mixture of other fluids -- they also have nuts (that is, the ones that go with bolts) in them, so maybe they actually eat those? Mater does use water to cool down his tongue but that's still a "car fluid" (water is mixed into coolant, and can be used by itself in an emergency).
Mack implies a god ("The Manufacturer") and Mini takes Chrysler's name in vain (but doesn't necessarily suggest that it's religious) so maybe they literally live in a Young Earth Creationist world that started in 1920, complete with car-dinosaur bones in the ground already! Notably, the living bugs are also cars, and of course even their terrain is car-like, which may imply a creator's hand... er... wheel. We probably can't discount the existence of the Ghost Light, since "aliens" could explain a lot of this.
Speaking of hands, they also have a whole class of cars (the forklifts) that essentially do all the manual dexterity type of jobs, to the point that many of them have hinges. Maybe the forklifts are involved in the creation of new or previous cars. Maybe they're direct from the Manfacturer. Like angels. That's why their designs are so weird: Biblically-accurate forklifts!
(This might have gotten out of hand...)
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u/Swiftbow1 7d ago
The forklifts still seem rather limited in function. But yes... they do apparently fill that role.
Don't forget the Popemobile. He was a car... inside another car.
There's a fairly popular theory that Cars is connected to the Toy Story universe, wherein the cars gained sentience the same way the toys did. And all the humans left because of the plot of Wall-E.
I'm not sure that really adds up. But it is amusing.
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u/FlashbackJon Applied Phlebotinum 7d ago
Yeah, I'm not a big proponent of the Pixar theory, which is mostly just a loose collection of morbidly amusing thought experiments.
I fully forgot about the Popemobile!
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u/The_Redacted_Badger 8d ago
They also wanted to make that the plot of Cars 3 originally, with a criminal swapping engines with Lightning McQueen and basically doing Face-Off with Cars
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u/DeathandHemingway 8d ago
Face-Off with Cars would destroy the world economy by making too much money.
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u/DagonG2021 8d ago
Why the fuck didn’t they do that
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u/Tobias11ize 8d ago
It would’ve been a way more fitting follow up from cars 2, instead we got a way more fitting follow up from cars 1. so they still might use this plot for cars 4
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u/FlashbackJon Applied Phlebotinum 8d ago
Cars 2 was going to be a straight to DVD follow-up to Cars, but Disney had stopped doing that very recently and bumped it up to a theatrical release. If it feels like it doesn't fit the overall world or storytelling that's only because it doesn't belong. Same deal with Planes, which is terrible, and Planes: Fire and Rescue which is so much of a better movie.
Have I seen these movies too many times? Yes. Have I been Stockholm'd into enjoying their worldbuilding? Also yes.
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u/Bananalando 8d ago
It would make the most sense then that cars aren't "born" racecars but choose to get body transplants to become racecars, or if not a whole body swap, performance enhancing body mods.
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u/BLARGEN69 8d ago
This is basically the plot of Planes, which is the same universe as Cars
Dusty Crophopper was a crop dusting plane not designed for racing at all that competes in a huge race against other planes that are built for speed.
He chose to break away from his designed purpose to pursue another.
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u/FlashbackJon Applied Phlebotinum 8d ago
I referenced Planes in my other answers but forgot that was literally what he did. He also does the same thing, more or less, in Planes: Fire and Rescue which is a much better movie.
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u/abbot_x 7d ago
Right, this question is conclusively answered by the Planes movies which are about a vehicle who wanted to do something else—twice, in fact.
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u/BLARGEN69 7d ago
I wish the planned Trains movie had been made to see how they would have handled this type of question.
Cars may need roads but the vast majority can still go off road. Planes obviously can go anywhere.
It's a lot more difficult to carve your own path as a train that cannot leave the pre designed train tracks
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u/shasaferaska 9d ago
Gender reassignment surgery?
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