Our five favourite cartoon cars of all time

The same goes for animated cars - unlike our daily drives they seem indestructible and in terms of design, can suit any shape the art director desires. Everybody’s probably got a favourite cartoon car from their distant (or possibly more recent) childhoods, here are five of ours.

Anyone doubting cars could have a soul and personality (well, the good ones anyway) could do worse than watching Pixar’s highly entertaining animated movie Cars, released in 2006. Star of the show was Monty “Lightning” McQueen, a somewhat obnoxious and highly competitive stock car who turns out to have a heart of gold. Vaguely resembling a Chevy Corvette, but said by his artistic creators to be somewhere between that and a Ford GT40, Monty owes his surname to Pixar animator Glenn McQueen, who died in 2002. More trivia? Lightning McQueen’s race number is 95, the release year of Toy Story, and while Pixar’s animators wanted him to look and act like a race car they also used the body language of athletes like Muhammad Ali for extra pizzazz. McQueen’s voice was done by actor Owen Wilson.

Okay, there was a live-action Speed Racer movie done in 2008 but if you can cast your mind back to 1967 (easy does it, old timers) the original Japanese anime cartoon series was where it all started. Title of the cartoon, and its catchy theme song, was young racing driver Speed Racer who drove a white car called Mach 5 with an open cockpit design reminiscent of classic Le Mans racers of the era. Mach 5 was fast but its special tricks included rotary saws sprouting from the front (perfect for racing through wooded areas), in-built jacks used to jump pesky objects on the road and Frogger Mode, used when driving underwater. In Japan, Mach 5 was known as ‘Mahha-go’, with ‘go’ conveniently meaning both ‘five’ in Japanese and of course, what we all yell at our favourite race car in English.

Conventional physics fortunately doesn’t apply in cartoon land, which is probably why portly, middle-aged caveman Fred Flintstone managed to pedal his agricultural and very heavy-looking family car at what looked like substantial cruising speeds. The Flintmobile (which it was never actually referred to in the Hanna-Barbera series from the 1960s) appeared to be constructed of tree branches with a rawhide tarpaulin roof and two enormous stone rollers instead of wheels. Speaking of physics, an article in the Scientific American estimated the Flintmobile to weigh 865kg (including a fairly kindly 95kg for Fred) and that if he could get it to 40km/h by foot power alone, would likely lose those feet by applying them to the road surface as friction brakes. Fortunately, all turns out okay if you yodel “yabba-dabba-do!”.

Someone at the 1960s animation factory Hanna-Barbera really loved cars and from 1968 brought it all together in the Wacky Races series. It was never really explained why two dozen or so disparate characters in some 11 bizarre vehicles were racing each other (twice per episode) but the results were pretty hilarious. Perhaps the most famous car, the Mean Machine, was driven by the evil Dick Dastardly but of course it never actually won despite being big, purple and rocket powered. The chequered flag often went to Peter Perfect (no, not Peter Brock) driving his Turbo Terrific, or Penelope Pitstop in her Compact Pussycat. Special mention goes to Dastardly’s co-driver Muttley, a shaggy dog with the signature asthmatic chortle.

In 1969 four teenagers and their Great Dane dog first appeared on American television and of course, they were the members of Mystery Inc. and the dog was Scooby Do. Every week they solved a bizarre mystery appearance of ghosts or monsters, usually turning out to be some time-wasting criminal who bemoaned the “meddling kids” who ruined his plot. Transport for Fred, Velma, Daphne, Shaggy and Scooby was The Mystery Machine, which kind of resembled a North American Ford Transit of the day, and if so would have had a 4.3-litre V8 under the hood. But the look was more important with its sky-blue and lime-green paintwork, adorned with hippy-style graphics and flowers. The van was used for carrying equipment to detect the paranormal, a meeting table, or bench seating depending on the episode (or more likely, director’s whim).

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