Type a name, pick a style, download a PNG. That is the whole thing, and it takes about ten seconds.

Eight Cars text styles: the chrome crest badge, red letters with Lightning McQueen eyes and lightning bolts, white chrome capitals on tyre tracks, checkered-flag letters on red, orange racing capitals, white italics with racing stripes on black, gold letters on a red sunburst, and yellow chrome capitals

They all come from the same Cars font generator, with a different style picked from the list. Nothing to install, no account, and every style above is free.

About the Cars font

Cars is a 2006 Pixar film, a comedy set in a world where the cars are the people. Its title is not typed, it is built: a chrome wordmark set inside a crest badge, closer to the ornament bolted on the hood of a fifties sedan than to a film poster.

The lettering itself is very close to Magneto Bold, drawn by Leslie Cabarga and released by Font Bureau in 1995. Microsoft's own typography page describes it as recalling "the chrome-strip lettering laid along the rounded shapes of refrigerator doors and automobile trunks in the forties and fifties", which is exactly the era the film is quoting.

Here is the part every download page leaves out. Magneto is a commercial font, and the usual advice is to go and buy it. But Microsoft lists it among the fonts it ships, file Magnetob.ttf, and states that it is available within Office applications. If you have Microsoft Office on your machine, you very likely already have Magneto Bold installed, and you have had it all along.

How to make Cars text

Step 1. Type the name

Open the generator and replace the sample text with yours. The badge is built around the word, so a first name is what it is for: the crest fills itself in as you type.

Step 2. Pick a style

The style on the target page is the badge: chrome script, red enamel, silver crest. The list also holds the racing side of the film, checkered flags, tyre tracks, racing stripes, and the letters with Lightning McQueen's eyes on them. The Style tab lets you change the fill, the outline and the shadow in either.

Step 3. Pick the shape

The same name in three mock-ups: a printed invitation card, a round cake topper on a two-tier cake, and a wide party banner hanging from a cord

Set the shape before you export and nothing gets cropped afterwards. A 16:9 for an invitation, a square for a cake topper or a profile picture, a wide strip for a banner over the table. The three mock-ups above are what those shapes become once they are in place.

Step 4. Download

The badge shown twice: first on a dark checkerboard standing for a transparent background, then as a die-cut sticker with a dark red border on a cream surface

In the Download tab, take the transparent PNG if the badge is going onto something else: your own photo, coloured card, a slide, a cutting machine. This is the option most people miss, and it is the one that matters for a party, because the crest keeps its shape instead of arriving inside a white rectangle.

How many letters fit inside the crest

A five-letter name sitting comfortably inside the crest, and a seven-letter name whose first and last letters run past the badge

We measured it, because it decides which style you should pick. The crest comfortably holds five letters. At six the first and last letters touch the silver edge. At seven they are outside it, as above.

And unlike every other style, making the text smaller does not help: the badge scales with the word, so the proportion never changes. For a longer name the answer is not a setting, it is another style. The racing capitals in the same list take any length, because they have no frame to escape from.

The badge, or the McQueen letters

The same word twice: first inside the chrome crest badge, then as red letters with eyes, a smile and a lightning bolt on each one

The badge is the film's own logo shape: the chrome script on red enamel inside the silver crest. It is what people picture when they say "the Cars logo", and it is the one to use for a name on an invitation.

The McQueen letters are the other half of what people search for: each letter is a little red car, with the eyes in the windscreen and the 95 lightning bolt on the side. It reads as the character rather than the film, and it works better on a banner than shrunk into a profile picture.

Both are in the same list, so you can try a name in one, then in the other, without leaving the page.

Which font to install, if you want one

A card listing three lines: the title lettering, very close to Magneto Bold by Leslie Cabarga; that Magneto ships with Microsoft Office; and Alfa Slab One on Google Fonts as the open licence option

Magneto Bold is the identified match, and the first place to look for it is your own machine: it comes with Microsoft Office. Open the font menu in Word and type the name. If it is there, you are done, and you did not buy anything.

If it is not, Magneto is sold by Font Bureau and its resellers. It is a genuine commercial licence, so the copies floating around free font sites are not legitimate.

For an open licence, the honest pick is Alfa Slab One on Google Fonts, drawn by JM Solé in 2012 under the SIL Open Font License. Be clear about what it does and does not give you: it is a slab serif, so it matches the weight and the confidence, not the swash. It is what several other generators quietly use.

None of these gives you the crest. The badge is a shape, not a font, which is why the generator draws it around your text instead of asking you to find it.

What people actually make with it

Birthday parties first, by a wide margin: the invitation, the banner over the table, the cake topper, the name on the bedroom door, the number on a homemade race track. Then classroom door signs, YouTube thumbnails for toy car videos, and the odd printed T-shirt for a family party. Almost all of that goes better with a transparent PNG than with an installed font, because what people recognise is the crest and the chrome, and a font file gives you the letter shapes and nothing else.

How to make Cars text in Canva

Canva does not have Magneto and it does not have the crest. It does have Alfa Slab One, so you can get a heavy slab title without leaving Canva, then add an outline and a shadow from the effects panel. For the badge itself, make it here as a transparent PNG and upload it: it drops straight into a Canva invitation and keeps its shape.

The text effects app for Canva carries thousands of styles, but not the brand ones: Canva does not accept third-party logos inside its apps, so uploading the PNG is the way in for this one.

How to make Cars text in Photoshop

Check your font menu for Magneto first. If it is there, type the name and build the chrome with layer styles:

  1. Gradient overlay on the letters, light grey to white to mid grey, running vertically. Chrome is a gradient with a hard step in the middle, not a smooth one.
  2. Stroke, position outside, thin, dark grey, so the letters keep an edge against the red.
  3. Drop shadow, small and tight, then a red rounded shape behind for the enamel field.

The crest and the two silver spikes are drawn shapes. If you want them, tracing them from an exported PNG is faster than building them from scratch.

How to make Cars text in Word

Magneto is likely already in your font list, which makes Word an unusually good option here. Type the name, set it in Magneto, then use text effects for the outline and a soft shadow. You will get the lettering but not the badge, so for an invitation you are still better off dropping an exported PNG onto the page.

On a phone

On iOS and Android, most apps cannot install and use a font. The generator runs in a mobile browser, which is where most party invitations get made anyway: make the PNG on the phone, save it to the photos, and add it in whatever app you were using.

Is the Cars font free

The generator is, and so is every style shown above. Magneto Bold is a commercial font, but it is bundled with Microsoft Office, so a great many people already have it legitimately. Alfa Slab One is free under an open licence for personal and commercial work.

There is a second question underneath, and it gets mixed up with the first one constantly: a font licence is not a trademark licence. Cars belongs to Disney and Pixar, and the crest is part of that identity. A name on your kid's birthday banner is the kind of use nobody has ever objected to. Selling merchandise that trades on the film is another matter, and no font licence covers that for you.

Open TextStudio, type a name, and see the badge fill itself in.

More fonts and styles to try

If you came for a film or toy font, these cover the same ground:

Questions people ask

What font is used in the Cars logo? The lettering is very close to Magneto Bold, drawn by Leslie Cabarga for Font Bureau in 1995. The crest around it is a drawn shape, not part of any font.

Is the Cars font free? Magneto is commercial, but it ships with Microsoft Office, so check your font menu before buying anything. Alfa Slab One on Google Fonts is free and open licensed, and gives the weight without the swash.

How do I get the blank Cars logo? That is what the generator is: the crest with your own text in it. Type the name and download it, with a transparent background if you are putting it on something.

What is the Lightning McQueen font? People mean one of two things: the film's title lettering, or the style where each letter is a little red car with eyes and a lightning bolt. Both are in the list.

Why does my name stick out of the badge? The crest holds about five letters. At seven it overflows, and making the text smaller does not help because the badge scales with it. Use one of the racing styles instead, they have no frame.

How do I make a Cars birthday banner? Type the name, choose the wide shape, download the transparent PNG, and print it on the coloured paper you are using.

Can I use the Cars style on something I sell? Font licences and trademarks are two different things. Cars belongs to Disney and Pixar, so even a permissive font licence does not cover merchandise that trades on the film.