Decades before Disney·Pixar’s Cars showed audiences about life for a vehicle of the road, there was Susie the Little Blue Coupe, which drove into theaters on this day in 1952. For some people, it’s quite easy to fall in love with a car. Such is the case when a passerby spots Susie, and particularly when she flirts with the potential buyer, batting her eyelashes. Her life hums along as the years passed by until, as narrator Sterling Holloway explains, “Susie’s mileage rolled up and she began to show her age. Her color was fading and she developed carburetor trouble.” After troubled life in her later years, a young man purchases Susie from the junkyard. Susie just needed some love, and he worked on her until she felt 50,000 miles younger and emerged as a healthy new sports car. Although the movie Cars was released more than half a decade after Susie, Susie’s large windshield eyes helped steer the design of Lightning McQueen and the inhabitants of Radiator Springs in the same direction.
