Cars has seen a recent resurgence in popularity, but not for the reasons you might expect. No, there isn’t a new sequel coming out, and no, there’s not a cosplayer who’s been arrested for doing something dirty to a Honda. Instead, what ignited this recent love for the 2006 Pixar film is a tweet asking a simple question: Is Lightning McQueen the GOAT?


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The premise may seem ridiculous, but as anyone on Sports Twitter can tell you, there’s nothing too ridiculous to get red in the face arguing about. Quickly, users on Twitter dug deep through Cars lore to figure out if anyone could best McQueen, spending hours ignoring their girlfriends/wives/wives’ girlfriends to chart out the stats of the Cars universe.


As with all internet memes, it was only a matter of time until the flesh-and-blood world started to take notice. In this case, it came in the form of a call from a “Danny in Wisconsin” to sports commentator Stephen A. Smith. “Where do you rank a guy like Lightning McQueen who has seven Piston Cups?” the caller asks. Unbeknownst to him, he’s just unleashed a beast with more power than Francesco Bernoulli.



“You’re talking about the movie Cars, right?” Smith confirms. Once the caller affirms that he is, in fact, talking about the children’s movie, Smith goes off. “I would tell you he wouldn’t be the GOAT. I mean, when you talk about Strip ‘The King’ Weathers and Lightning McQueen, they’re both tied with seven Piston Cups,” Smith argues. “How do you be the GOAT if you’ve got somebody that’s tied with you? Sorry, that ain’t gonna work.”



The argument continues for a little while, with Smith eventually deflecting and noting that the caller should care about either “adult” movies like Fast & Furious — or, I don’t know, the real world.


Danny begins to counter. “Stephen A, Cars is as real to little kids as—”


“You’re not a little kid!” Smith shouts, interrupting him. “You’re 21. You would have a point if you were 7 years old calling me. You’re 21 years old. What are you doing, wearing a diaper? Goodbye, man.”


You can criticize the methods, but the man’s got a point.