"Salt Fever" is the third episode of Pixar's Cars on the Road. It premiered on September 8, 2022 on Disney+.
Synopsis
When Mater is outfitted as a racer, he experiences record speeds and an out-of-chassis experience.
Plot
McQueen and Mater are driving through a salt flat desert when they realize they lost the road. McQueen challenges Mater to a friendly race through the salt flats when they are interrupted by a land speed vehicle that zooms past them. They find a camp of cars and land speed racers who are trying to break the record. While McQueen is cautious about the group, Mater meets an engineer named Noriyuki, who accepts him as a replacement for their previous tester who apparently exploded. Mater is outfitted with rocket engines to go faster, to his delight.
Mater launches into speed as McQueen races behind him to try and catch up. As Mater goes faster, the bolts on his upgrades come loose and Mater is launched forward. He suddenly finds himself outside his body and meets the Speed Demon who is prepared to take him to the afterlife. While he seems ready to go, he realizes that he cannot leave McQueen behind and returns to his body, via the driver's door. The Speed Demon decides to leave him alone. Mater manages to catch himself and is reunited with McQueen.
The land speeders all demand that Mater sign with them due to how fast he went and he and McQueen hastily escape them. Mater tells McQueen that he learned to never go above 700 mph.
Cast
- Larry the Cable Guy as Mater
- Owen Wilson as Lightning McQueen
- Kathy Holly as Speed Demon
- Masa Kanome as Noriyuki
Trivia
- The setting for the episode is most likely inspired by the salt flats in Bonneville, Utah.
- The Speed Demon is revealed to be the Cars universe version of the Grim Reaper.
- The Speed Demon is also female, making this episode the first piece of media to depict the Grim Reaper as female.
- The song that McQueen and Mater sing at the beginning of this episode is a parody of the children's song, The Skeleton Dance. This makes it the second Pixar production to parody that song, after the prologue of Monsters University.
- This episode is the very first time in the Cars franchise where the doors of any car is seen open (aside from Rotor Turbosky at the ending scene of the first Cars film and not counting Lightning in a deleted scene of that film). In this case, Mater opens the left door of his frozen self when flying and losing the rocket equipment.
Gallery
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