The Reason Motorcycles Don’t Exist In The Pixar ‘Cars’ Universe
Disney and Pixar’sCarsfilms raise many questions: Where did all the humans go? What brought all those cars to life? Why do they keep making these movies? There are plenty oftheoriesfor some of these queries, but there’s one question that’s has long gone unanswered: why are there no motorcycles in this universe of sentient vehicles? It seems we now have the answer. Are you ready to learn the shocking truth about theCarsuniverse motorcycles?
The reason motorcycles don’t exist in theCarsuniverse is because the God of Cars who lives in Cars Heaven and created the cars forbids them. Okay, that’s not the reason at all, but that would be pretty wild. Theactualreason is tame but amusing, and makes a certain sort of sense.Carscreative directorJay Wardlays it out for you here (viaCinema Blend):
“[I]n Cars 2, we really tried to put in little Vespa scooters for the Italy scenes. The problem is the eyes and the mouth. A motorcycle has one eye. It has a headlight, not headlights. So that’s difficult. Where do you put the eyes when they don’t have a windshield? … And then the mouth is somewhere south of the headlight? It really is difficult to bring a motorcycle to life as a character. With the shape of a car, it’s like the head of a horse, or the head of a dog. It has a long snout, you may put the eyes back in the windshield, and it works very well to emote.”
There you have it – motorcycles would look too horrifying, like Cubist paintings come to life, if they existed in theCarsworld. That said, if they want to makeCars 4and set it on an Island of Misfit Cars, full of weird, misshapen vehicles and motorcycles, I will gladly buy a ticket for that.
Editor’s Note:Though motorcycles may not exist in the Cars universe, keep an eye out in one of the crowd shots of the Cotter Pin bar in Cars 3 during the final race, because you’ll notice a pair of bicycle handles mounted on the wall as if they’re deer antlers. We’re not sure if that means the cars of Cars are hunting vehicles that don’t have engines, but it’s certainly some food for thought.
It’s worth noting that while the extremely talented folks at Pixar have been unable to crack this nut, explosion connoisseurMichael Bayfigured it out forTransformers: The Last Knightwith the character ofSqueeks, an Autobot that’s also a Vespa scooter and kind of looks like another Pixar character, Wall-E.
A post shared by Michael Bay (@michaelbay)on Jul 10, 2025 at 1:47pm PDT
Obviously, the only solution to this mess is to have aTransformers/Carscrossover, which will probably be big and loud but also make a lot of money. If this happens, I want a cut.
The motorcycle-freeCars 3will be released on digitalOctober 24and Blu-rayNovember 7, 2017.
