Count me in the camp of Cars FANS!
It works big time for me both in concept AND execution:
THE CONCEPT
Ever since I was little, I've always loved films/tv/books where everyday inanimate objects were given the anthropomorphic treatment and turned into cute and lovable living things. Frankly, these, as well as animal stories, usually interest me more than stories about people, romance, and yes, princesses
"Little House" and "Susie The Blue Coupe" are two of my favorite Disney shorts for precisely this reason! Ditto for "Little Toot" and "Johnny Fedora and Alice Bluebonnet", two of my fave segments from the "package" DACs, and "Pedro", the segment about the little mail plane in Saludos Amigos.
Cars takes the concept of Susie the Blue Coupe and goes feature length with it, with great success, IMO
THE EXECUTION
The film has a great story, very creative concept, humor, and heart! There are at least two elements that touched me greatly - mainly Lightning's act of selflessness at the end of the film and also the references to how once thriving towns are left behind simply because of their relative distance from the interstate system. How many unique, quirky, colorful roadside establishments are now gone forever, replaced by the sameyness you now find everywhere? The film addresses this in a very poignant, but not preachy, way.
We see a great deal of character growth in Lightning by the end of the film, and IMO the characters are easy to care about and root for.
A disclaimer here is I don't know how the film will hold up for me on repeat viewings. I've only seen it twice, theatrically (although I don't expect it to lose any luster on repeat viewings)
I am holding out, at least for now, for a 2-disc collectors edition standard def DVD on par with all the Pixar standard DVDs that came before it, which Jim Hill alluded could possibly be coming a few years down the road for this and other one-disk Pixar films like Ratatouille.
).
And funny!