Cars was the first Pixar Cars movie to be nominated for an Academy Award.
The original Cars received an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature at the 79th Academy Awards. It competed against Happy Feet and Monster House, with Happy Feet winning the award. Cars also received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song for Randy Newman’s “Our Town.”
Cars 2 was not nominated for Best Animated Feature, although it received other award attention. Cars 3 was released more than a decade after the original and also did not become the first Cars film to receive that nomination.
The Academy Awards distinction is sometimes confused with the Golden Globe Awards, where Cars won Best Animated Feature Film. The Oscar nomination belongs to the 2006 original, not to either sequel or the Disneytoon Studios spin-off Planes.