Pixar Fan Theory Finally Explains Most Bizarre Cars Problem
You can't expect too much clarity when it comes to a fictional world inhabited by living cars, but still.
No matter how much you love Pixar's Cars, you have to admit that we know next to nothing about how new cars get into this world and whether they even grow up.
It would be easy to just say, "No, these cars are born adults," because there is no way natural birth is a thing in the world inhabited by vehicles. However, we do see cars in the movies that are younger than others – which naturally raises a lot of questions about how they grow old (if they do).
However, a Reddit fan theory offers an explanation that makes sense.
"All cars are manufactured as kids at first," Redditor karakayatfl suggests. "The model of the child car depends on the region or the parents. When they are ready to go to college or skip college and get a job, their engine is transferred to another body which they want and deserve."
According to this theory, Lightning McQueen could not have received his "racer" body until after he started attending racing school.
However, even though the theory is reasonable, there is another question: if there is a way to put an engine into any kind of body, why do cars die at all? From the story of Hudson Hornet, we know that cars age: that was the reason he had to retire from racing. When a car dies, is it because its engine is no longer "transferable"? Does that make the engine the soul of the car?
Cars is perhaps one of the most puzzling Pixar movies because the universe implies that there are people somewhere. Vehicles still have things that were originally designed for humans, like door handles. As for reproduction, here's what the creators said.
"We try not to go there. We just try not to go there. There's a surreal level of disbelief that you're having to jump already coming into the world where there are talking cars. We think we know what cars are in our world, and they serve a completely different purpose in the Cars world," story supervisor Scott Morse explained to Slash Film.
So when it comes to Cars, there is no point in trying to wrap one's head around the logic and realism of the movie. It is a world filled with talking cars. Deal with it, we guess.