Cars Movie Trivia
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118 free Cars Movie trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
67 free Cars movie trivia questions with answers, including a full Cars 3 trivia section. Cars movie trivia for anyone who has watched Lightning McQueen limp into Radiator Springs more times than they can count. This quiz covers all three Pixar films: the road trip along Route 66 that inspired the first movie, why McQueen's number is 95 and not 57, the Hudson Hornet behind Doc, the NASCAR fan who gave Mater his name, the spy plot and the lemons of Cars 2, and Cruz Ramirez, Jackson Storm, Sterling, Smokey and the Florida 500 in Cars 3. It also covers the voice cast from Owen Wilson and Paul Newman to Michael Caine and Armie Hammer, the box office and the awards, the songs, the Planes spin-offs and Cars Land at Disney California Adventure. Questions run from easy ones any kid will get to genuinely tough production trivia, each labelled by difficulty. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and the primary sources it cites, and each explanation adds one more thing worth knowing.
30 of 118 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who voices Lightning McQueen in the Cars films?
Owen Wilson
Owen Wilson voices Lightning McQueen in all three films; the hero's surname is a tribute to Glenn McQueen, a Pixar animator who died in 2002, four years before the first film came out.
Q 02Why was Lightning McQueen's planned racing number 57 changed to 95?
To mark the year Toy Story was released
To mark the year Toy Story was released, 1995, Pixar switched the number to 95; the original 57 would have referred to director John Lasseter's birth year.
Q 03In which forgotten town does Lightning get stranded in the first Cars film?
Radiator Springs
Radiator Springs is the faded town, bypassed when Interstate 40 was built, where Lightning is sentenced to repave the main street he tore up.
Q 04Which championship trophy is Lightning chasing throughout the first Cars film?
The Piston Cup
The Piston Cup is the prize; the season ends in a dead heat between Lightning, Chick Hicks and The King, forcing a tiebreaker race at the Los Angeles International Speedway.
Q 05Which legendary actor voiced Doc Hudson in his last non-documentary film role?
Paul Newman
Paul Newman, himself a serious racing driver, voiced Doc Hudson; after his death in 2008 Doc was written out of Cars 2, then returned in Cars 3 through unused recordings.
Q 06Doc Hudson is a 1951 example of which car?
Hudson Hornet
Hudson Hornet: the real cars, driven by Herb Thomas and Marshall Teague, dominated early-1950s NASCAR because their low 'step-down' chassis handled better than rivals', the history Doc's character borrows.
Q 07What does Lightning find in Doc Hudson's garage?
Racing trophies
Racing trophies: Lightning finds three of them in Doc's garage, proof he was once a champion, but Doc refuses to talk about his past and dismisses them as 'a bunch of empty cups'.
Q 08Who voices Tow Mater in the Cars films?
Larry the Cable Guy
Larry the Cable Guy voices Mater; the truck takes its name and some of its character from Douglas 'Mater' Keever, a racing fan the Pixar crew met on a research trip.
Q 09What was the job of Douglas Keever, the NASCAR fan Mater is named after?
Construction boss
Construction boss Douglas 'Mater' Keever, a site superintendent from North Carolina, introduced himself as 'Mater, like tuh-mater without the tuh', a line that went straight into the film.
Q 10In Cars 2, why does Mater refuse to have his dents repaired?
They remind him of Lightning
They remind him of Lightning: Mater says he earned each dent alongside his best friend and calls them too valuable to fix; by the end, the agent who offered the repair is keeping a dent of her own.
Q 11Sally, the town attorney voiced by Bonnie Hunt, is what kind of car?
A 2002 Porsche 911
A 2002 Porsche 911 Carrera is Sally's model, a big-city lawyer who swapped Los Angeles for small-town life; in 2022 Porsche and Pixar built a real one-off 911 in her honour, the Sally Special.
Q 12What does Sally run in the first Cars film?
The Cozy Cone
The Cozy Cone Motel is Sally's business, each room a giant traffic cone; the idea riffs on the teepee-shaped rooms of America's real Wigwam Motels.
Q 13Who voices Chick Hicks, Lightning's cheating green rival in the first Cars film?
Michael Keaton
Q 21Pixar dedicated its 2006 racing film to co-director Joe Ranft, who died how during production?
In a car crash
In a car crash: Ranft was a passenger when the car left the coastal Highway 1 in August 2005, so he never saw the finished film, in which he voices Red the fire truck.
Q 22Where did Cars hold its premiere on May 26, 2006?
Lowe's Motor Speedway
Lowe's Motor Speedway in Concord, North Carolina, hosted the premiere on 26 May 2006, a racetrack screening for NASCAR country; the film opened nationwide on 9 June.
Q 23Cars was the last film Pixar made independently before which chairman sold the studio to Disney?
Steve Jobs
Michael Keaton voices Chick Hicks, the perennial runner-up whose long-awaited title turns sour: the crowd boos him for the dirty driving that won it.
Q 14Which NASCAR legend voices Strip 'The King' Weathers, a 1970 Plymouth Superbird?
Richard Petty
Richard Petty voices The King because the car is his own 1970 Superbird on screen, in the same shade of blue and with his racing number, 43; Petty's wife Lynda voices The King's wife.
Q 15Which comedian voiced Fillmore, the hippie Volkswagen bus, in the first Cars film?
George Carlin
George Carlin voiced Fillmore, the peace-loving VW bus, in the first film; after Carlin died in 2008, Lloyd Sherr took over the role from Cars 2 onwards.
Q 16The tyre shop in the first Cars film is famous for a stack of tyres shaped like which landmark?
The Leaning Tower of Pisa
The Leaning Tower of Pisa inspired the 'Leaning Tower of Tires' outside Luigi's shop; his forklift helper Guido, who speaks almost only Italian, gets his dream job changing Lightning's tyres in the big race.
Q 17Which Pixar regular voices Mack, Lightning's transporter truck?
John Ratzenberger
John Ratzenberger voices Mack, keeping up his run of a part in every Pixar feature up to then; the end credits joke about it, as Mack watches car versions of earlier Pixar films and notices the same voice in each.
Q 18Lizzie, the elderly Model T who runs the curio shop, is the widow of which car?
Stanley, the town's founder
Stanley, the town's founder, was Lizzie's husband; his statue stands in the middle of town, and Lizzie was voiced by Katherine Helmond, who voiced her through Cars 3 before her death in 2019.
Q 19Michael Wallis, the highway historian who guided Pixar's research road trips, voices which character in Cars?
Sheriff
Sheriff is voiced by Michael Wallis, whose tours for the Pixar crew paid off on screen: a rusty old tow truck they came across in Galena, Kansas, became the model for Mater.
Q 20What was the working title of Cars in 2001, dropped to avoid confusion with a 1960s TV series?
Route 66
Route 66 was the working title, dropped to avoid confusion with the 1960s TV series of the same name; Jorgen Klubien's earlier pitch, The Yellow Car, had been about an electric car in a gas-guzzling world.
Steve Jobs, Pixar's chairman and biggest shareholder, agreed the $7.4 billion all-stock sale in January 2006; it closed weeks before Cars opened and made him Disney's largest individual shareholder.
Q 24Cars lost the Best Animated Feature Oscar to which film?
Happy Feet
Happy Feet, George Miller's dancing-penguin musical, took the Best Animated Feature Oscar in February 2007; Cars did win the first Golden Globe ever given for an animated feature.
Q 25Which James Taylor ballad from Cars won a Grammy and was nominated for the Best Original Song Oscar?
Our Town
Our Town, sung by James Taylor over the montage of the town's decline, won the Grammy for best song written for a film and lost the Oscar to 'I Need to Wake Up' from An Inconvenient Truth.
Q 26Which country act recorded the version of 'Life Is a Highway' heard in Cars?
Rascal Flatts
Rascal Flatts recorded the cover for the film; Tom Cochrane had finished the 1991 original, a number one in Canada, to find something positive after a harrowing famine-relief trip to Africa.
Q 27Cars is often compared to which 1991 Michael J. Fox comedy about a hotshot stranded in a small town?
Doc Hollywood
Doc Hollywood has Fox's young city doctor wreck a judge's fence in a small South Carolina town and get sentenced to community service there, a resemblance several reviewers pointed out.
Q 28Which three-race international event does Lightning enter in Cars 2?
The World Grand Prix
The World Grand Prix is staged by a former oil tycoon to show off his new clean fuel, Allinol; Lightning signs up after a rival goads him on a TV talk show.
Q 29Which British actor voices the spy Finn McMissile in Cars 2?
Michael Caine
Michael Caine voices Finn McMissile, the British agent who opens the film by sneaking onto the villains' oil rig and, once spotted, escaping by faking his own death.
Q 30Which city hosts the first of the three international races in Cars 2?
Tokyo
Tokyo hosts the opening race; at the welcome party there an American agent slips a device full of secret intel onto Mater, which is why the British spies take the tow truck for their contact.