Route 66 inspired the setting and road-trip spirit of Pixar’s Cars.
The historic U.S. Route 66 runs from Chicago to Santa Monica and became famous as a major cross-country road. Pixar artists and filmmakers researched the route and its roadside communities while developing the film’s visual world.
Radiator Springs is fictional, but its decline reflects the effect that faster highways and changing travel patterns had on small roadside towns. The film’s characters and businesses represent a community that once depended on travelers stopping along the route.
Route 66 is often called the Mother Road, a nickname popularized by John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath. Cars does not place Radiator Springs at one literal real-world address; instead, it combines Route 66 influences into a fictional location.