@brick_r said:
"Mater: "Hey Lightnin', check out my 'Tommy Guns'..."
Lightning: "Well...if they're Tommy's Guns, what are you doin with them...":)

Confessional: Never hated "Cars 2: Electric Subaru" (couldn't resist:)); in fact I'd say it was 'Par' with the first movie. Kinda wished they kept with that formula with '3', which I avoided ('3's trailer made me say a haaaaard NOPE!!!!): Lightning in a B-story related to the A-story, with that being a different 'Radiator Springs' citizen being the focus... "

I personally think that all the Cars movies kind of suck, they are some of Pixar's worst, so it didn't really matter to me that Lightning took a step back in the third one.

I actually had this one as a kid. The random spy gear and monitors were surprisingly fun

When I made my first MOC of Holley, I had to make her dark-purple because there just weren't many parts available in magenta. But the cool thing is that demonstrated how much variety of dark-purple parts had been introduced at that point.

@Isabella_and_Lego_Liker said:
" @Mr__Thrawn said:
"Why is Holley Shiftwell counted as a Minifigure in the database but not the venerable Tow Mater?"

Or even better, just call it 2 cars for this one?"

Two Cars, Tennessee. They've got a *really* booming arts and crafts scene.

Love how they used a lance for a mast. Seems old-timey.

Yee-haaa! Double Tommy gun wielding Mater... Let's give this bad boy to little kids hands to play. Then again, I'm glad that we got rid of that awful war machine Osprey set...

@Mr__Thrawn said:
"Why is Holley Shiftwell counted as a Minifigure in the database but not the venerable Tow Mater?"

Yeah, that kind of got my goat, too. And apparently some goats also count as minifigs, while others don't!

@Mr__Thrawn said:
"Why is Holley Shiftwell counted as a Minifigure in the database but not the venerable Tow Mater?"

How weird. I wouldn't call either of these minfigs, personally. Be like saying those Marvel mech sets were two minfigs because the mech itself counts as one

Dad gum!

How I imagined the scene going before seeing the film:
Holly (male in this version): Oh, I’m a stupid car! I’m guarding this secret lab!
(drives offscreen, Mater speeds in and “beating up” and screaming sounds play before he drives onscreen with the Tommy Guns)
Mater: I got sum guns!

@Brickalili said:
" @Mr__Thrawn said:
"Why is Holley Shiftwell counted as a Minifigure in the database but not the venerable Tow Mater?"

How weird. I wouldn't call either of these minfigs, personally. Be like saying those Marvel mech sets were two minfigs because the mech itself counts as one"

It is because of bricklink catalogue administrators. There was an argument some time ago about what is a minifigure, as they were including Star Wars droids but not non-minifigures from other licenses. They were also including Friends and other mini-dolls even though they are not strictly minifigures. So there was a reassigning of lots of brick-built characters as minifigures, including many of the cars, and also other stuff like wardrobes and cups from Beauty and the Beast, Rick from Unikitty!, and many others. But the job was not completed, so while many of the Tow Maters did get assigned as minifigures, this one was missed out.

There are similar issues with named animals vs minifigures. It was decided that Unikitty variants are all minifigures whereas other named characters such as Scooby-Doo, Santa's Little Helper, Smaug, etc are animals rather than minifigures.

At one stage they even catalogued the Beauty and the Beast furniture as minifigures when there were no stickers applied. So they had a plain, faceless wardrobe and clock as minifigures. This has since been reversed. It is what happens when someone gets a good idea to change things based on interpretation of rules rather than common sense.

Sorry to open this can of worms... but how do they operate the gear? Voice recognition? Bend up and use their tires? Hidden robot arms?

Never seen these movies and it's a question I haven't asked myself since 2012 when I first saw these sets.

Oh my word. This is one of the earliest LEGO sets that I can remember owning. I vividly recall my uncle visiting from another country and giving me this set over dinner at a restaurant, and I was so excited to build it. I wasn't even into LEGO at the time, being like 4 or 5, but my uncle knew I enjoyed the Cars movies so he bought this set for me.

So many memories, man

@Binnekamp said:
"Sorry to open this can of worms... but how do they operate the gear? Voice recognition? Bend up and use their tires? Hidden robot arms?

Never seen these movies and it's a question I haven't asked myself since 2012 when I first saw these sets."

The cars in these movies (my favourite Disney/Pixar movies :D ) are anthropomorphic and they work sort of weirdly. Most of their axles and gears and stuff are connected, but they can stretch their wheels out like arms and legs and you can see mechanical things extending out and such.

There's a purple car named Ramone who owns a vehicle body shop, and he's a model of car that has hydraulic mechanics and stuff, so he can lift his entire body up with his wheels. It's a running gag that he lifts up from his rear wheels, to "flash" his posterior.

This brings back memories.

@Torrent_Studios:
Ramone changes his paint job several times over the course of the Cars films, but especially during the first one. The hydraulics is more about the West Coast lowrider culture in the US, since they really do kit them out like that (and drive with the car so low to the ground that a special skid plate will create sparks on the pavement…at least when cops aren’t in view), and give them really elaborate custom paintjobs. They did absolutely throw some adult humor in, though, with twins Mia and Tia literally flashing their headlights at McQueen at the racetrack in the first film.

@Binnekamp:
To add to what’s been said, in the scene that’s represented by this specific set, we see Holley use a computer. To do this, she drives up into this rack that positions one of her front tires on what is basically a physically impossible trackpad. With her body locked in position, she uses that one wheel to operate this trackpad by throttling forward and reverse for up/down, and steering for left/right. Now, how the trackpad surface can scroll in two different axes, nobody has attempted to explain.

As for all the gear attached to them, it’s like wearing a prosthetic hand, I’d guess. I mean, the car body is _their_ body, so they don’t have to manipulate the components any more than you have to operate controls to reach your hand out and pick up a glass to take a drink. You just do it because it’s part of your body. Someone who has had a hand amputated might get a prosthetic “hand” that’s actually a 2-piece hook that they can open by flexing their forearm muscle, and close by relaxing the same. I figure it works much the same way for Cars cars, where you can bolt on accessories, and it just becomes part of their body. Once they learn how to operate it, it’s just a conscious reflex. You choose to do Task A, and Accessory B responds to you basically envisioning the action taking place.

Just don’t ask me to explain how Celine Dephare can logically exist. Because the answer is she can’t.

awww I had this one as a kid

@PurpleDave said:
"Just don’t ask me to explain how Celine Dephare can logically exist. Because the answer is she can’t."

I just plugged that name into Google and spent at least thirty seconds staring at a picture of the character, knowing something about her looked Extremely Wrong but not quite able to place what it was.

@Andrusi:
Gaze longingly into her eyes, and she’ll whisper the answer to you. Or eat your soul.

I remember my brothers getting me this set for a birthday. I was enamored with the Cars universe at the time. Unfortunately, of the villains I had only Professor Z. Instead, I used tiny turbos and tiny turbo inspired MOCs for henchman.p

The other weird minifigs are the Duplo Bob the Biulder large molded trucks, such as ...

https://brickset.com/minifigs/btb001

@PhantomBricks:
When I made my minifig-scale Cars cars, I was buying the die-cast versions to use as reference material, and I was trying to use the official printed tiles for the mouths. At the time, this resulted in my only villains being Grem the Gremlin (with missile launcher) and Acer the Pacer (with safety goggles and oxyacetylene torch). That hasn’t changed, mostly because the only character I’ve added since making the initial batch in 2014 was Mater in 2018.

You fools! Rationalizing the world building of Cars is a path that leads only to madness and suffering!

@GBP_Chris said:
"You fools! Rationalizing the world building of Cars is a path that leads only to madness and suffering!"
The Volkswagen calls McQueen a fascist in the first one, this means fascism exists in the Cars world.

Also, a bit hypocritical for a Volkswagen to call other cars fascists.

@Andrusi:
Fifteen minutes before these comments get locked, so here you go. If you actually watch the obviously (or at least that specific scene), it's _REALLY_ obvious what's wrong with Dephare when her eyes light up. Her eyes are her headlights instead of her windshield. Now, don't get me wrong, that makes sense in some settings. Who Framed Roger Rabbit had a taxi whose eyes were headlights, but Benny is designed to actually convey passengers like a normal car. In the world of Cars, there are no people to ride in cars, so car interiors don't have a reason to exist. Behind the scenes material also explains that they tried the headlight eyes early on, but ended up deciding that it made sense for the windshield to be the eyes since that's where we see the world around our own cars.

So, the question then is what the heck the passenger compartment is for on Dephare? There aren't any people to ride inside, and based on most animal physiology we know, the passenger compartment is where a Cars car's brain should be located.