Cars 2 - Great Auto Personalities--and a Musical Joke

It's not hard for me to imagine cars as characters--I've followed and identified them since I was a kid. Each make and model has a very distinct personality.

The Pixar geniuses have tapped into this again with Cars 2. Pixar always starts with a good story and adds the technical brilliance on top--as in Toy Story and others.

Cars 2 has an international feel, with British spy intrigue taking Lightning McQueen, Mater the rusty towtruck and others to foreign racetracks.

So much to tell, and I'm not going to even hint at the story or conclusion, but I have a few favorite aspects.

For one, the bad guys are "lemon cars," which, in this case, includes American Motors Gremlins and Pacers as well as Yugos. And while the mastermind of the bad stuff is kept a mystery until the end, the identified lead henchman is a Zundapp--a 1950's German microcar--complete with monacle!

One of my favorite scenes is in Italy, where a bunch of tiny, cute 500's -- old and brand new -- do a stage number together (see photo above). It's either a great tribute to the newly introduced 500 or some nifty product placement.

Musically, the sound track plays a little joke, because it features "You Might Say" by .... the Cars! It's covered very nicely by Weezer in this case, but it's the name of the group, not the subject, that's related to the movie.