Cars is released June 9, 2006

Five years and still the popularity of Lightening McQueen and Tow Matter has not faded!

Cars is a 2006 American animated family film produced by Pixar and directed by both John Lasseter and Joe Ranft. It is the seventh Disney·Pixar feature film, and Pixar's final, independently-produced motion picture before its purchase by Disney. Set in a world populated entirely by anthropomorphic cars and other vehicles, it features voices by Owen Wilson, Paul Newman (in his final non-documentary feature), Bonnie Hunt, Cheech Marin, Jenifer Lewis, Tony Shalhoub, John Ratzenberger, George Carlin, Larry the Cable Guy and Michael Keaton as well as voice cameos by several celebrities including Jeremy Piven, Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear, Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Bob Costas, Darrell Waltrip, Jay Leno, Michael Schumacher, Tom and Ray Magliozzi from NPR's Car Talk, and Mario Andretti. The film is also the second Pixar—after A Bug's Life—to have an entirely non-human cast.

Cars premiered on May 26, 2006 at Lowe's Motor Speedway in Concord, North Carolina, and was released on June 9, 2006, to generally favorable reviews. It was nominated for two Academy Awards, including Best Animated Feature, and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film. It was released on DVD November 7, 2006 and on Blu-ray Disc in late 2007. Related merchandise, including scale models of several of the cars, broke records for retail sales of merchandise based on a Disney·Pixar film, with an estimated $5 billion in sales.

A sequel, Cars 2, is currently in production and set for release on June 24, 2011.

Also inspired by Cars is the new area in Disneyland Cars Land!  See my past BLOG for more information on this great area the little boys are going crazy about!