Cars: The Route 66 Behind Radiator Springs

Early in Cars, Lightning McQueen, travelling to a tiebreaker race in Los Angeles in his transport truck Mack, ends up stranded in Radiator Springs, where his first friend is Mater, a rusty blue tow truck. Pixar found that face in a real 1951 International Harvester L-170 boom truck in Galena, Kansas, a town that grew up around lead mining. The truck still sits at 119 N. Main St., outside the Cars on the Route diner and souvenir store, in a restored Kan-O-Tex service station.

Visitor guidance: At 119 N. Main St.; the store sells Route 66 souvenirs and the truck stands outside.

Sally Carrera, the sky-blue 2002 Porsche who dreams of reviving Radiator Springs, was modelled on Dawn Welch, the proprietor of the Rock Café in Stroud, Oklahoma, and a long-time promoter of the old highway. When the first Pixar crews came through in 2001, the café's neon flickered and died; the town was still repairing damage from a 1999 tornado. The stone building opened in 1939 and was restored after a 2008 fire.

Visitor guidance: On Route 66 in Stroud, Oklahoma; the stone café is the landmark to look for.

Ramone, the lowrider who repaints himself in every sequence, runs Radiator Springs' body shop. Pixar copied the shop from the U-Drop Inn, the 1936 Art Deco gas station and café at Shamrock, Texas, with two flared towers, glazed tile and neon. The real building was restored and now holds Shamrock's museum, visitor centre and chamber of commerce; the café side reopened under new ownership in February 2025. It still stands at the old crossing of Route 66 and U.S. 83.

Visitor guidance: At the Route 66 and U.S. 83 crossing in Shamrock; the restored towers face the road.

Cars turns Cadillac Ranch into a mountain formation: the Cadillac Range, a ridge of tail-finned cars, and the credits acknowledge the artists who built it. The real ranch, in Amarillo, Texas, was created in 1974 by the Ant Farm collective — ten Cadillacs from 1949 to 1963, buried nose-first and leaning at the angle of the pyramids of Giza. Visitors are encouraged to spray-paint them; the cars lost their original colours long ago. It stands in a cow pasture beside Interstate 40, visible from the highway.

Visitor guidance: West of Amarillo beside Interstate 40; enter through the unlocked gate from the frontage road.

Sally's Cozy Cone Motel, a row of traffic-cone cabins under neon, is Radiator Springs' most distinctive address. Its model is Wigwam Village #6 in Holbrook, Arizona, where Chester E. Lewis built fifteen concrete tipis on Route 66 in 1950. The motel closed in 1974 when Interstate 40 bypassed the town — the same story that emptied Radiator Springs — and his family reopened it two years later. The wigwams, the vintage cars in the parking area and the original hickory furniture are still there.

Visitor guidance: At 811 West Hopi Drive in Holbrook; it is a working motel, so book ahead if you want to sleep in a wigwam.

Radiator Springs is loosely based on Seligman, Arizona. While researching Route 66, John Lasseter met the town barber Angel Delgadillo, who told him how traffic vanished the day Interstate 40 opened; the film turns that into Sally's flashback, with the highway erased from the map. Seligman was on Route 66 from 1926 until the bypass in 1978, and its residents later won the old road a historic designation. Route 66 was removed from the U.S. highway system in 1985; the Snow Cap Drive-In, built by Juan Delgadillo in 1953, is still in town.

Location precision: Radiator Springs is a composite of several Route 66 towns; the pin marks Seligman, named as its loose model.

Visitor guidance: On the longest uninterrupted stretch of historic Route 66; start on the old main street.