No, not the kind of event where ‘the fastest car wins’. I mean ‘race’ as in ethnicity. I wondered about this aloud in the Discussion thread, and when I was toying around with my ‘24/Cars’ crossover and various fanfiction plotlines in development, this topic frequently pops to mind when I’m deciding my characters’ brand and model. I figured we could use a separate thread to discuss about the possibilities.
This is sort of a companion thread to the ‘Cars gender’ thread.
Do you reckon the cars in the Cars world have a concept of race or ethnicity? I mentioned before that Cars (and possibly Cars 2) is one of the more multicultural films of the Pixar canon. Which raises the question of how can you ‘tell’ a car’s race and nationality, especially when they don’t have distinguishing facial features or hair/skin tone like humans?
It might seem obvious at first to listen to his/her voice. Some, like Luigi, have regional accents or dialects that might reveal their origin. Ramone uses slang like “holmes” and “man”, which tells the audience he’s Latino.
You can also observe their behaviour and mannerisms. Flo shakes her body side-to-side and is very boisterous, reminscent of her background as a Motown showgirl. Strangely, although she is ‘coded’ as African-American, she is technically not an ‘African’ car so much as a car often used by African-Americans. Same with Ramone, who is not a "Mexican’ car per se, but a lowrider, commonly associated with Hispanic and Black culture.
A car’s appearance or paintwork could be another possible indicator. Wingo, who has Japanese characters on his side, always came off as Asian to me. Lightning has blue eyes, so unless he’s wearing contacts (which also raises another interesting question about car eyewear), he’s most likely Caucasian.
And of course, the biggest sign is their car models. Sally is presumably a Caucasian, probably Germanic in origin. The Miatas could possibly be Japanese-American fangirls.
These are just my observations and inferences. With Cars 2, we should have more clues as to whether this is a hard-and-fast concept that the creators have intrinsically and purposefully included, or whether it is more malleable.
This also raises more conundrums, as I mentioned in the other thread. What about captive or parallel imports? Would a Ford Falcon be an Australian or American (It is manufactured Down Under, but sold in the U.S.)? How about a Humvee (which is now owned by China)? The Toyota Corolla is the most common car brand in Singapore, but there’s no ‘Singaporean’-manufactured car. How would a Singaporean be represented in the Cars world? Would a trio of Holden, Vauxhall and Opel Astras be long-lost Australian, British, and American relatives respectively?
Carla, the Brazilian competitor in Cars 2, is representative of the design of Interlagos race cars in Brazil. But she is not innately a Brazilian car model (Pixar has yet to confirm her brand and marquee).
So far Pixar has been pretty consistent in its depiction of car culture, with some creative license (Oh wow, two puns in one sentence…). What are your opinions? 
