According to John Lasseter, the director of Cars, the movie was inspired by a cross-country road trip he took with his family in 2000. Lasseter and co-director Joe Ranft had also wanted to make a movie with cars as characters as early as 1998. Lasseter also said that watching the 1997 documentary Divided Highways, which is about how highway expansion has affected life in the US, inspired the movie.