How old is Lightning McQueen in the ‘Cars’ movies?

The Cars franchise just keeps paying dividends for Pixar, thanks to the way that it scratches that “vehicles with faces attached to the front of them” itch that excites kids, and gets serial killers pulled over.

The series features a deeply detailed, well thought-out world. Gas stations are the cars’ restaurants. Headlights are their swimsuit areas. Auto parts stores are, presumably, their unholy Frankensteinian dens of body horror madness. And, if the logic carries through, Motor Trend is their, I don’t know, men’s health magazine? The kind with pictures of guys who do crunches in their sleep, but in Motor Trend the guys are cars, and the abs are hood vents? The point is, it’s a publication that knows a thing or two about the physical well-being of motor vehicles, manned by people who you can trust to answer honestly about how old a car might be.

And sometimes-shoe Monty “Lightning” McQueen was in his 20s during Cars, his 30s during Cars 2, and was approaching the age of retirement from professional sports in his 40s during Cars 3. All of this goes a long way toward explaining why so much of Cars 3 was dedicated to scenes where McQueen drank red wine alone in his apartment and listened to The Smiths while he repeatedly reactivated and deactivated his Tinder profile. 

The Cars movies aren’t subtle about their allusions to the career trajectory of professional athletes; McQueen’s journey from hotshot young star to aging washout was designed with real-life people like Michael Jordan and Muhammad Ali in mind.

And I’ll tell you what else is crazy. You know Boo, the child from Monsters Inc.? She was 37. She had a gland thing, and she was pulling that con from Orphan when Sully found her. …At least, that’s what I from watching that movie in the recovery room after I got my wisdom teeth taken out. I suspect the same was true of Russell from Up, too.