Radiator Springs
Radiator Springs is a fictional small Arizona town and the principal setting of the Disney/Pixar franchise "Cars". A composite of multiple real-world locations on the historic U.S. Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles, it is most prominently featured in the 2006 film, and is home to a majority of the franchise's characters. Cars Land, a part of Disney California Adventure in Disneyland Resort, is based on the setting. Vicinity. The town of Radiator Springs is situated in northwest Arizona, 87 miles from the state border of California, Nevada and 43 miles from Utah. Radiator  Springs' position in relation to I-40, as shown on a map during a flashback in the 2006 film, is similar to that of Peach Springs on Arizona State Route 66. The village is a composite of multiple locations; before making the film, Pixar sent a group of fifteen artists with Carburetor County sheriff and Oklahoma historian Michael Wallis as a guide to take photos, talk to denizens of Route 66 and learn the history of the tiny towns situated along more than 1200 miles of road through five states. In one restaurant, John Lasseter ordered one of every item on  the menu for the Pixar group and spent four hours talking to the owner, absorbing information on the efforts to rebuild the historic byway to its neon-lit heyday. Lasseter told film critic Joe Williams of the "St. Louis Post-Dispatch" that much of the story is based on the recollections of barber Angel Delgadillo in the Route 66 town of Seligman, Arizona, where business withered soon after the opening of I-40. Much of the film is based on research trips to visit automakers and NASCAR tracks in the United States. Flo's V8 café is designed to look like  a V8 engine head on, with a circular air filter, tappet covers, spark plugs, pistons and connecting rods as the supports for the shelter. The blinking neon lights on the spark plugs blink in the firing order of a Ford flathead V8. Route 66. Many characters and places in the film are directly inspired by real Route 66 places and people. To quote the Pixar crew: Among the many references to Route 66 landmarks and personalities: The epilogue shows a map of the area of Arizona around Radiator Springs, including car-related place names such as "Carburetor County" and "Cadillac  Range". The latter is a large north-to-south mountain range with many fin-backed jagged peaks, a reference to the famous Cadillac Ranch sculpture in Amarillo, Texas. Where the main road crosses the Cadillac Range is marked "Tailfin Pass 5942" (i.e. feet altitude, = 1.8111 kilometers). Continuity. There are a few sights of the front page of a newspaper named "The Daily Exhaust", which serves primarily as a vehicle to explain the NASCAR history behind the Fabulous Hudson Hornet of the early 1950s. During the 2006 film's closing credits, the characters are at a drive-in watching clips  of the Pixar films "Toy Car Story" ("Toy Story"), "Monster Trucks, Inc." ("Monsters, Inc.") and "Bug" as in Volkswagen Beetle ("A Bug's Life"), whose characters have been rendered as vehicles in the style of "Cars". Mack the red Mack Super-Liner comments that "they're just using the same actor over and over", an in-joke referring to John Ratzenberger, who voiced Mack and some of the characters featured in the clips. The cinema itself is similar in design to an NRHP-listed 66 Drive-In in Carthage, Missouri, but without the later addition of widescreen and FM radio . The group of small birds from the 2000 Pixar short film "For the Birds" made a cameo appearance in Cars. As Mack is en route to California at 17:44 in the film, the group of small birds can briefly be seen (and heard) sitting on their familiar telephone wire. In addition, the Pizza Planet truck from "Toy Story" also makes a cameo outside of the race track, at the final race in the movie. Other settings. The rail grade crossing at which Lightning McQueen outruns a freight train on his way to Radiator Springs is protected by a pair of  antique "upper-quadrant" wigwag crossing signals which accurately depict those once made by the Magnetic Signal Company in both appearance and start-up. Few are left in actual operation in the United States, and many have been replaced with modern crossing gates, red lights and bells. "Ornament Valley" is a reference to Monument Valley. This is not on Route 66, but is a side trip in northern Arizona Spring Hills city. Willy's Butte resembles the landmark of Mexican Hat, Utah, but also resembles a classic Pontiac hood ornament. The track on which the opening race (Motor Speedway of the  South) takes place is based on an enlarged version of Bristol Motor Speedway. The venue for the Piston Cup tiebreaker race (the Los Angeles International Speedway) is a conglomeration of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the Arroyo Seco in Pasadena where the Rose Bowl is located, as well as the Auto Club Speedway in Fontana. The sign "City of Emeryville – Closed for the race" is a nod to Pixar's headquarters in Emeryville, California in the San Francisco Bay Area.