Disney/Pixar's 2006 animated film "Cars" had the working title of "Route 66", and describes the decline of a once-booming Radiator Springs, nearly a ghost town once its mother road, US 66, was bypassed by Interstate 40. Disney/Pixar's creative director John Lasseter, inspired by what he saw during a cross-country road trip with his family in 2000, contacted road historian Michael Wallis who led the creative team down the still-drivable parts of the route as research for the film. The fictional Radiator Springs is based on multiple real places visited on the five-state research trip through Peach Springs, Arizona, Baxter Springs, Kansas, and countless small towns along the way. The movie's success generated a resurgence of public interest in US 66.