u/Flayver

During the scene where McQueen gets lost, a lot of them are cabover trucks (the flat-front ones), especially compared to what you would normally see on American highways. From what I understand, by around 2005 most long-haul trucks in the U.S. were already conventional (long-nose) designs, and cabovers were much less common. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, seeing cabovers on U.S. highways, especially for long-haul routes, was pretty rare.

So I was wondering: was this just a stylistic choice by Pixar to make the characters more expressive, or is there some other reason for it? Maybe they wanted a more “global” look, inspired by European trucks?

Curious if anyone here knows more about this.