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Sentient Vehicle
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Sentient Vehicle (trope)
Just don't question how this could possibly work in any other universe, and you'll have a fun time.

Ever since their invention, people have always been enamored with vehicles. So just like animals, they've been anthropomorphized. There are sentient and sapient cars, buses, trucks, RVs (motorhomes), trams, ATVs, trains (steam-powered, diesel-powered, monorail, or light rail), train wagons, airplanes, helicopters, boats, ships, spaceships, etc. Name any vehicle, someone has probably made a character that's one of it. Some of them maintain a Masquerade, some do not, and some live in a world of their own without humans.

This trope does not cover vehicles that happen to have AIs when those AIs are treated as separate entities that are not integrated into the vehicle itself. Also, with the exception of Living Ships, they have to be inorganic (in other words, not a "living" being). May be justified if the vehicle has a true robot form and/or has its own AI.

Things under the heading "Other" include farm vehicles, construction vehicles, bicycles, tricycles, motorcycles, ATVs, and golf carts.

Subtrope of Animate Inanimate Object. Often overlaps with Automated Automobiles and Magic Bus. Supertrope of Living Ship, Sapient Ship, and Sapient Tank. For the villainous version, see Accursed Automobile.

See also Sapient Steed and Uplifted Animal.

Examples:

Automobiles (Cars, Buses, RVs, and Trucks, etc.):

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 

    Anime & Manga 
  • The anime Auto Boy - Carl from Mobile Land is set in a world of sentient cars, with the protagonist being a red sports car named (at least in the English dub) "Carl".
  • In the series Bumpety Boo, a sentient car that hatched from an egg accompanies Ken in Bumpety's search for his mother.
  • Doki Doki! PreCure: Purple Buggy from the movie.
  • In the fourth Doraemon movie Doraemon: Nobita and the Castle of the Undersea Devil, one serves as the The Team's underwater exploration vehicle. It acts as somewhat of a Deadpan Snarker and Jerkass to most of the boys, although it acts nice to Shizuka, partly because she is nice to it. In the climax, despite being stuffed into Doraemon's 4-D Pocket, it hears Shizuka crying and bursts out, performing a Heroic Sacrifice and taking down the Big Bad.
  • The Asurada series of cars in Future GPX Cyber Formula are race cars that can talk and it can help the driver as well as grow with them. Justified since it has an AI supercomputer built into it as a highly-advanced navigation system.
  • About half the cast of Pipopapo Patrol-kun is composed of living vehicles, with the main character being a patrol car named Patru.
  • The Devil Z in Wangan Midnight is a subversion of the trope. It may look like a regular classic sports car, but it can drive so fast it claimed the life of the original Akio Asakura and seriously wounded the current Akio. The current Akio treats the car as if it were alive and sentient, due to the numerous accidents it caused.

    Asian Animation 
  • Cars from the Iranian cartoon ماجراهای بین راهی (Adventures Along the Way; lit. Adventures in the Middle of the Road) are depicted with eyes in their headlights, although they're more stylistic than anything else.
  • In the Motu Patlu (2012) episode "Magical Book", Motu, Patlu, and their friends are sucked into a magic book which details how their hometown of Furfuri Nagar was once populated by sentient cars and trucks rather than humans. They end up helping a female car named Baby to save her sister from being bullied by several cars and trucks.
  • The Iranian All-CGI Cartoon No Overtaking is set in a world inhabited by sentient cars.
  • In Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Happy Formula, the characters drive their own cars. The cars are at least a little sentient since they know what's going on around them and they often look ahead or look at who's driving them.
  • Robocar Poli: The team is a bunch of sentient vehicles, with the main team being a policecar, an ambulance, a fire engine, and a helicopter, led by a human.
  • Super Wings takes place in a world where sapient vehicles, humans, and animals co-exist, and some, such as the eponymous Super Wings, are Transforming Mecha.
  • Tayo the Little Bus, a popular South Korean kids' show available in English on Hulu, is based entirely on talking vehicles and aircraft and their interactions with humans.
  • The cars (and other vehicles) in Trungtung.

    Comic Books 
  • The RapeVan from Hack/Slash: Trailers 2.
  • In Spider-Verse, amongst the weirder AU Spiders is a sentient Spider-Mobile from a universe of living cars.
  • In Tales to Astonish from Marvel Comics, Trull the Inhuman is an alien who dies in a crash-landing and whose ghost possesses a steam shovel. He later makes appearances in Ghost Rider and Damage Control.
  • Suske en Wiske: Vitamitje, their car, has a face and a personality of its own, but it can't talk.
  • Wacky Raceland, DC's post-apocalyptic reboot of the Wacky Races, has the racers' cars issued with A.I.s that are as surly and sour as their crews: all hard, grizzled veterans of the wasteland. In one issue they are parked outside a bush pub where their crews are drinking, and... indulging in less healthy chemical stimulations (willingly or not), while talking smack and dealing with wasteland critters. An eight-legged mutant lizard jumps up and urinates on the Mean Machine, which fries it alive.
    Mean Machine: I've got to put up with a driver who gets me trashed in every single race and a biomechanical dog who wipes his wormy tailpipe on my seats on a daily basis. I sure as hell don't have to take crap from an eight-legged lizard.
    Convert-O-Car: Technically, that was urine.
    A drunk vomits on the Mean Machine
    Mean Machine: Hey!
    The other cars point and laugh
  • W.I.T.C.H.: Late into the series, a sentient car named Bugg shows up for one issue before disappearing forever.

    Eastern European Animation 
  • The little red dump truck from Soviet cartoon Homush xo'tikcha. He can even dance ballet, somehow.

    Fan Works 
  • "Nor Hell a Fury" is a crossover between Christine and Supernatural which establishes that Christine is the latest manifestation of a supernatural entity identified as a "hell-stead"; the first recorded manifestation of such a being was a horse that returned as a ghost after the death of its original owner. Dean, Sam, and Dennis's subsequent research confirms that there have been other examples of possessed vehicles, including a helicopter, a train and a boat, all of which essentially stopped once they could no longer be of use. To defeat Christine, the three perform a ritual that essentially turns the Winchesters' Impala into a "good" counterpart to Christine, allowing the car to drive and repair itself until it has destroyed its enemy.
  • Vickies Pet Zoo: One breed designed for both dogs and cats is a living car.

    Films — Animation 

    Films — Live-Action 

    Jokes 
  • A man was lost in the wilderness at night and trying to get back to civilization. As he was walking along the road, he saw a car rolling along and tried flagging it down. After it stopped, he climbed inside and tried to thank the driver...only to see there was no driver. Then the car started to roll along the road again with the man in the passenger seat. The car later came to a turn and the man was afraid they would go right off. Then a hand reached through the window and turned the steering wheel to make the turn. After some time of the car rolling along and the mysterious hand turning the wheel to make the turns, they came upon a town. As they passed a diner, the man jumped out and ran inside. He told his story to the other patrons who either dismissed him as crazy or thought there was some truth to his tale. Then two tired looking men walked into the diner and sat at a table. One of them looked at the man and said "Hey, that's the guy who got into the car while we were pushing it!"

    Literature 
  • The Railway Series includes several sentient road vehicles, such as Bertie the Bus, Terence the Tractor, Trevor the Traction Engine, George the Steamroller, and Caroline the Car.
    • Belinda the Beetle, by the same author, is about a sentient Volkswagen Beetle; while she can't actually drive herself, she has enough control over her other mechanisms to render some Amusing Injuries, and a lot of general annoyance, on a crook who attempts to steal her.
  • The titular vehicle of Creeper's Jeep.
  • Young Wizards:
  • Christine and Trucks, both being particularly horrifying examples of this trope.
  • Dr. Tomato & The Beetle: Dr. Tomato's new VW Beetle is able to speak, and has Black Dot Pupils in place of his headlights.
  • Mr. Weasley's Ford Anglia becomes this in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. After crashing into the Whomping Willow, the car ejects Harry and Ron and takes off into the Forbidden Forest, where it goes native and putters around the woods all year. It later saves Harry and Ron from being eaten by Aragog's clan of acromantulas.
  • Demon Road has the protagonist being driven across the USA by a man named Milo, aboard a 1970 Charger which is always spotless in the morning, though he is never seen to wash it, has incredible fuel economy for classic American muscle, is always spoken about like it's alive, regenerates damage from a Car Fu incident again being absolutely pristine by morning, and begins to devour and slowly digest an undead serial killer who is placed into the boot, which actually deforms to engulf him. Milo is eventually revealed to be an urban legend known as the Highway Ghost, and the Charger is his daemonic symbiote car.
  • Bumpity, the old-fashioned automobile from the Mr. Whiskers series of readers.
  • In Void City, when Eric invests some of his vampiric essence into his classic Ford Mustang, turning it into a Soul Jar called a momento mori, it gains a measure of life and intelligence of its own. It is able to drive itself independently, and fuel itself by consuming the flesh and blood of creatures it drives over.
  • Red Dwarf: In the second book, Better Than Life, when explaining how the creation of Genetically Engineered Life Forms transitioned from super-athletes to consumer products, the first example given is living cars, with bony exteriors and flesh interiors, that drove themselves and ran on "carfood" made from pig offal. Like all the other GELFs, they were essentially modified humans who were treated as slaves; when the GELF rebellion started, a VW Beetle is stated to have been involved in the first uprising.
  • Ghost Roads: Gary Daniels has his soul bound to a custom-built car, then has the car destroyed when he dies, so he can be with Rose again as the car's ghost.
  • The classic 1951 sci-fi The Quest for Saint Aquin by Anthony Boucher has an artificially-intelligent 'robass', who spends a lot of time arguing with the priest it's conveying over the necessity of the eponymous quest.

    Live-Action TV 

    Music Videos 
  • A VHS release of Animated Music Videos for Woody Guthrie songs included one for "Ridin' In My Car" that depicted an anthropomorphic red convertible leaving a farm to go to a city populated by similar vehicles; he ends up accidentally getting into a police chase, jumping off a raised drawbridge over a tugboat and ocean liner, and narrowly avoiding a monstrous garbage truck.

    Pinballs 

    Podcasts 
  • Cassandra from The CryptoNaturalist is a RV that came to life for unknown reasons (implied to have something to do with experiments in self-driving cars); she's Bigger on the Inside, serves as the narrator's home/mode of transportation, and even gets to narrate a few episodes herself.

    Radio 

    Toys 
  • All the vehicles in the Tamagotchi franchise - not just the cars and trucks and buses, but the planes and boats too - have faces and are at least sentient enough to perform actions on their own (the car in Eiga Tamagotchi: Himitsu no Otodoke Dai Sakusen! clearly tries, of its own volition, to outrun the vehicle after the Tama-Friends' special delivery to the Gotchi King).
  • Matchbox has had a few toylines about anthro vehicles, namely Hero City in 2004 and Big Rig Buddies in 2010, both of which also had tie-in cartoons.
  • Tomoncar (Toy-Monster-Car, as they clearly state in the theme song) from South Korea mixes this with Living Toys.
  • Transformers in general. This is with the exception of those that don’t have a vehicle-mode as their Alt-modes.

    Video Games 
  • Bendy in Nightmare Run has a boss that’s a taxi named Gaskette.
  • Look Outside: A majority of hostile encounters at the underground parking is grotesque sentient cars. Played for Horror as these are peppered with a great dose of Body Horror, with exposed organs. Police vehicles, the squad car and SWAT truck, are also a case of Fusion Dance, with vehicles fusing with their drivers. SWAT Truck even has a small SWAT squad acting as it's combative tongues. The Hellride boss takes it a step further, as it is a Time-Limit Boss that you have to defeat in a set number of turns before he takes you and your companions into Hell.
  • Some Shin Megami Tensei games have Oboroguruma, which are ghost/demon cars that talk.
  • All the cars from the Wheely Flash game series, with the protagonis Wheely being a generic red car.
  • When Choro Q series steps into the RPG Wide-Open Sandbox genre, every car in it is this.
  • Seek and Destroy features sentient tanks! What makes it funny is the fact that, despite being, well, tanks, the still manage to use a number of human mannerisms, for example, one tank, upon discovering his mooks failed to stop the main character, literally jumps up and down in anger. There's also the appearance of tank priests. It brings to question what sort of religion they follow. Oh, and then there's the final boss, the Tank Emperor, with his Three forms ranging from a massive land cruiser, a bulbous Spider Tank, and finally, a blob of gears, wires, and pure energy.
  • In the Putt-Putt series, the title character and all his vehicle friends are alive, with eyes plastered on the front of their hoods.
  • All the playable vehicles in Stunt Race FX are alive, complete with eyes that look around.
  • One type of Heartless in Kingdom Hearts II, found in Timeless River, takes the form of a convertible car that attempts to run down Sora and his companions.
  • Pokémon Scarlet and Violet introduces Varoom and Revavroom, who are essentially sentient car engines. Team Star have managed to convert five Revavroom into "Starmobiles" that are massive trucks capable of combat.
  • In Sonic Drift and Sonic Drift 2, Amy Rose rides in a living car called the Breeze.
  • Spectrobes: Beyond the Portals: Torga is a Spectrobe which resembles a living toy car with two wheels. It evolves into the hot rod-like Torgazar, while its final form, Torgallup, is a living monster truck with bull-like features.
  • Beast Busters has a very weird example where one of the bosses is a jeep shooting missiles at us. Shooting at it reveals that it's actually a monster disguised itself as a car for some inexplicable reason, with fleshy insides under the metal covering and paws doubling as car tires. It even returns at the end of the stage, reduced to a mangled half-metal half-flesh carcass.
  • Sushi Ben: Played for Laughs with Minami's "vehicles" which are just her army of Salaryman in the shape of a bike and a helicopter. It looks so absurd and over-the-top that the game has an ad to highlight it.
  • In Skylanders: SuperChargers, the Dragon Hunter's vehicle, the Scale Biter, is unlike the other vehicles in the game alive and isn’t willing to let its owner drive it unless he tricks it into lowering its guard by playing fetch.

    Web Animation 
  • CRiTORA has a few of these, ranging from your standard cars and trucks (namely, Honk Beepnbop and Tuck Trucker) to odder things like school busses (Candace Transportool) and camping vans (Fillmore Hilton).
  • The various characters of Raznar's Tanktoons are sentient World War II and Cold War-vintage tanks and other armored fighting vehicles. Notably, cannon barrels are often treated almost like elephant trunks, serving as a weird combination of nose, hand, and gun.

    Web Original 
  • One dream in Nightmare Beings had a milk truck with an old man's face on the front that shouted "YOU'RE REPEATING THE PUZZLE! YOU'VE BEEN REPEATING THE PUZZLE! YOU'RE REPEATING THE PUZZLE!"
  • Ravensblight is full of, and surrounded by, haunted things of every stripe. Buildings, vehicles, and even an abandoned fairground carousel have all popped up. Of particular note are the Phantom Semi, which may not have a being controlling it, we don't know; the same goes for Maxine, a black Plymouth Fury, though the town drunk swears old dead Selmer came back to get it; and the Haunted Car, a '37 Chevy that was bought new by a woman everyone perceived as being a witch and shunning technology, who was run off the road during the war years. The guy who ran her off was mysteriously "dealt with", with a plate from the Chevy being found nearby even though the car was last seen burning at the bottom of a cliff, though when towed away it kept regenerating itself in time to be sold to new owners, one of whom was robbed and left to die and whose attackers were run down by what appeared to be the car in question; he wanted it out of his life when he found it in his garage upon his release from hospital. The next owner raced it at night, and it is claimed it killed him; it was found ruined later, even though it hadn't a mark the previous night except for the broken windscreen from the incident, so it was towed out to a field and left there. Some say that if you pass that field at night you can still hear the first owners favourite song coming from the car. Is it doing these things itself, or is she still in there, somehow?
  • The SCP Foundation has some in custody or appearing in secured areas; one item is part of some dead-end streets where various vehicles appear, scream around in impossible directions, and disappear. Some cars are damaged in accidents and end up in Foundation custody; they can talk through their sound systems, and give every impression that they know they're cars, and hints of coming from a world where cars live without people.

    Web Videos 

    Western Animation 
  • Algernon, the Ambulance, from the old anti-drug pseudo-animated filmstrip of the same name.
  • Bimbo’s Auto
  • Bobbie The Bus
  • The protagonists of Busy Buses
  • Little Brrm and the others from Car-Toon Time with Little Brrm
  • Most of the Mechanicals from Cogs Hollow- namely, Dib the little truck, McTappets the breakdown lorry, Cranky the (regular) lorry, and Squirt the fire truck.
  • Engie Benjy: Dan the Van, Big Rig, and the self-evidently named Bus.
  • Finley The Fire Engine
  • Fire Engine Fred
  • Go Togo: Wheeler the bus.
  • Honk, Toot & Swo-Swoosh: Honk the car.
  • The monster trucks from the Hot Wheels Monster Trucks cartoon.
  • Jimbo and the Jet-Set had a few living ground vehicles, the most notable being Tommy Tow Truck.
  • Mojo from Mojo Swoptops; by default, she’s a pickup truck, but the show’s gimmick means she can “swop her top” to become everything from a race car to a helicopter.
  • Olly The Little White Van
  • Otto The Auto, the star of a series of short films intended to teach children traffic safety.
  • Pispas the van
  • Pumper Pups: Pumper the fire engine.
  • Roary the Racing Car
  • Shaq's Garage
  • The Tool Street Gang: A bus with a face that drives itself is seen during the intro sequence; presumably, if the show hadn’t been a One-Episode Wonder it would’ve been a recurring character.
  • Most of the cast in Welcome to Tonka Town are these.
  • Ricardo the racecar in Doc McStuffins.
  • C.A.R. from The Replacements.
  • C.A.R.R. from Stroker and Hoop. Obvious parody of K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider, even though K.I.T.T. is an AI installed into a car.note 
  • Squeek the taxi, the star of Bubble And Squeek
  • Some of the vehicle characters in Bob the Builder
  • Thomas & Friends: In addition to the characters introduced in The Railway Series, we have Elizabeth the Vintage Lorry, Flynn the fire engine, and Ace the race car.
  • Walt Disney's Susie the Little Blue Coupe.
  • Chugaboom from The Perils of Penelope Pitstop
  • Speed Buggy
  • Archie's Weird Mysteries had a Whole-Plot Reference to Christine, where a cursed pair of fuzzy dice brings Archie's car to life.
  • Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch — pretty much the entire cast.
  • Ditto with Meteor and the Mighty Monster Trucks.
  • Mickey Mouse has a sentient car in the short "Mickey's Rival" (as does his eponymous rival Mortimer). And a sentient taxicab in another, much earlier short "Traffic Troubles".
  • Mickey Mouse (2013) also gives Mickey a sentient car in "Shifting Gears". It being sentient becomes a problem when it straight-up refuses to take Mickey to the beach for seemingly no reason (actually because it hates having to sit, baking in the hot parking lot for hours while Mickey has fun in the sand).
  • In Season 2, episode 5 ("Car Trouble") of Kim Possible, an inventor named Dr. Freeman created a self-driving car with a female personality named SADI (Systemized Automotive Driving Intelligence), or Sadie.
  • Noddy's car, Revs, from NoddyToylandDetective.
  • "Kitty", in Code Monkeys, is K.I.T.T. After K.I.T.T. made the decision to become a rapist after being jilted by Michael.
  • Little Tikes Land: Cozy Coupe is at the intersection of this and Living Toys, being a walk-in toy car. In “Cozy’s Big Day”, he also meets a fire engine named Frankie Firechief and Haulin' the garbage truck.
  • Trash Truck
  • Turbo Teen is seen as this, but his closest friends know he's really a human merged with a car.
  • Friz Freleng's 1936 cartoon Streamlined Greta Green.
  • Tex Avery's MGM cartoon One Cab's Family.
  • The Ghostbuggy from Filmation's Ghostbusters.
  • The Magic School Bus
  • Auto B Good
  • The cartoon version of Beetlejuice had the Dragster Of Doom (or "Doomie") for short. A sentient car created through mad science. Oh, and he's also a werecar, transforming into a monstrous version of himself whenever he's in pain or to chase dogs.
  • Nelvana's The Adventures of Chuck & Friends stars sentient trucks.
  • Another Nelvana series, Trucktown (itself the Animated Adaptation of a series of kids' books), features a cast of sentient trucks.
  • The Hairy Bus (and his twin) from the Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode of the same name.
  • Eartha K.I.T.T. in Black Dynamite.
  • The UmiCar from Team Umizoomi
  • The toon cars and trains in Bonkers, most notably Ma Parker, the toon tow truck from "Calling All Cars" The episode does answer the question of what is behind the eyes in the windshield of windshield eye cars; it's a cabin complete with a steering wheel, seats, and seatbelts.
  • Two regular characters from Budgie the Little Helicopter are Dell, a baggage cart, and Smokey, a fire truck.
  • Blaze and the Monster Machines
  • The remote control toy car in "Drive My Car" from Beat Bugs, Deestructor (or "Dee" for short because he feels "Deestructor" sounds mean) is sentient and shouts to the Beat Bugs for help when he's driven nearly out of control by his kid. This often happens, and he's disturbed because he doesn't know who's controlling him.
  • The Garfield and Friends episode "Rolling Romance" features Abigail, a car that Jon buys for cheap at a used car lot and falls madly in love with him, as a parody of Christine. Garfield rids Abigail from Jon's life by finding a sentient airport PA system Abigail loves more.
  • The Futurama episode "The Honking" features "Project Satan", a were-car built from the parts of other evil cars. Its steering wheel came from Adolf Hitler's staff car, its left blinker from Charles Manson's Volkswagen and its windshield wipers from K.I.T.T..
  • In "Cutie Pie's Pizza Pies!" from Butterbean's Cafe, Cricket forms a bond with a pizza truck named Cutie Pie who clearly wants to be with her and actively resists Miss Marmalady.
  • There were two episodes in Regular Show that contained sentient vehicles characters.
    • The first time was in the episode "Ello Gov'nor" where Rigby tries to face his fears from a possessed British Taxi after seeing a British horror film called "Ello Gov'nor" (Which appears to be similar to the film The Car.)
    • The second time was in the episode "Out of Commission" when Mordecai and Rigby poured energy drinks on to an old golf cart's engine, resulting in it coming to life.
    Cart: Woah, is this what it's like to be conscious?
  • The race cars in Pole Position (1984) are controlled by AIs similar to K.I.T.T. Unlike K.I.T.T., the computers running the AIs can be removed from the cars and carried around seperately.
  • In the Garbage Pail Kids (Cartoon), the Garbage Pailers occasionally ride in a sentient car named Rustin' Justin.
  • The Wacky Adventures of Ronald McDonald establishes Ronald to have a sentient car named the McSplorer, who is shown to be quite a grouch.
  • Rock, Paper, Scissors: In an effort to win a car show, Rock gives their vehicle "The Susan" in the episode of the same name the ability to talk by teaching it how to say apple replacing its honking sound. It's averted at the end of the episode by reversing the method used after The Susan affirms just wanting to be a normal car again.

Spacecraft (Rockets, Spaceships, etc.):

    Asian Animation 
  • The Galaxy Kids, with the exception of Cosmo.
  • Super Wings has a couple examples of living spacecraft- the Galaxy Wings (two transforming spaceplanes and a rover named Rover), Orbit the (transforming, but not affiliated with the Super Wings) satellite and his ninth-season doppelganger Sid, Vo the Mars rover... oh, and in the eighth season, living versions of the Voyager probes show up.

    Eastern European Animation 
  • Kosmix's Running Gag of putting faces on various objects extends to spacecraft seen in the series; usually, them being alive is a mere Funny Background Event, but some (like the racing Mars rovers, or Voyager One who just wants to go home) are actual characters.

    Literature 

    Live-Action TV 

    Theatre 
  • Matheratre's "planetarium musical" Voyagers has actors playing the Voyager probes, who narrate the history of their expedition after ending up on an unknown planet.

    Video Games 

    Web Animation 

    Web Original 
  • The main characters of 17776 are three space probes (namely Pioneer 9, Pioneer 10, and the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer [JUICE]) who gained sentience from exposure to human broadcasts.

    Western Animation 

Trains, Monorails, Trolleys, Streetcars, and Train Cars:

    Anime & Manga 
  • Digimon:
    • Digimon Frontier had the digital world populated by machine digimon called Trailmon, who were basically sentient trains who carried their passengers to certain locations. Many of the trailmon had different looks, voices, and personalities, some even resembling mechanized animals, a kettle, and even Frankenstein.
    • The second Digimon Tamers movie features Locomon, an intelligent locomotive whose desire to run was amplified by Parasimon until it became all-consuming. Parasimon compelled Locomon to run faster and faster until he tore a portal between worlds for Parasimon's buddies to invade through. Locomon evolves to GrandLocomon, a larger train with a much faster engine and a spiked wheel in front, in the process.
    • Digimon Next features Trailmon C-89, a unique Trailmon variant based on a bullet train. It can fight using its Super Mode, Trailmon Battle Form, though it is ultimately killed off by the tank-like Trailmon Battle Armament.
    • The Dust Zone of Digimon Fusion is home to several Trailmon and ruled over by a tyrannical GrandLocomon who bribes and threatens the local Digimon into stealing a Fusion Loader so that it can leave the Zone.
    • Digimon Xros Wars: The Young Hunters Who Leapt Through Time features another Locomon partnered to Kiichi Funabashi. Like his predecessor from the Tamers movie, he wants to run faster and his wish is granted by a Parasimon, this time supplied by Ren as a bribe to convince Locomon to join him. Unlike his predecessor, this Locomon can also fly, which he and Kiichi use to provide world tours to other kids.
    • Digimon Universe: App Monsters features Resshamon, a cycloptic train that runs completely out of control after being corrupted by a Viramon, taking an actual train full of passengers along with it. It keeps running after Gatchmon and Musimon manage to knock it out, with disaster only being narrowly averted when Musimon gets it to hit the brakes by calling the next stop.
  • Pucca: The locomotive from “The Choo Choo Trouble” is inexplicably alive.
  • Super Train Ganbari Dash
  • Yaemon the Locomotive (1963) and Yaemon the Locomotive (2009), (both adapted from the below-mentioned book).
  • Anpanman has both SL-Man and Poppo-chan. SL-man is a regular steam locomotive, while Poppo-chan is a baby train, about the size of ones that you'd find on a child's ride.

    Comic Strips 
  • Rail Riders magazine gave us Chuff, as well as his sometimes-rival Danny Diesel.

    Eastern Animation 
  • The locomotives from the Indonesian cartoon Keluarga Jengki.
  • The plucky little steam train from Zagreb Film’s Mali Vlak, although it’s face is oddly absent in some shots. The diesel train from the same short also has a face, but doesn’t seem to have a personality the way the steamer does.
  • Russian series Parovozik Tishka is set in a city populated by living locomotives and railcars.
  • Ten-part Czech cartoon series Pohádky o mašinkách stars living steam engines.
  • Robot Trains
  • Chinese cartoon Rubi and Yoyo has a sentient miniature steam locomotive named Dudu (or "Train" in the English dub).
  • One episode of the Indian cartoon series So Sorry, titled "Development Express", features a living steam train; the cartoon outright rips off several scenes from the below-mentioned Locomotion.
  • The nature-loving steam train from the Soyuzmultfilm work Train from Romashkova.
  • Czech stop-motion cartoon Vláček Kolejáček (dubbed in English as The Little Train) involves a little coal-hauling train tiring of his monotonous job and running away to see the world, only to end up stuck in a train junkyard.

    Films — Animation 

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Old No. 22, a retired cable car from Herbie Rides Again.
  • The company behind GeoTrax put out a DVD containing the twenty-minute My Day With Trains; while mostly composed of live-action footage of real trains, it also had brief interstitial segments starring a CGI-animated diesel locomotive by the name of Geo.
  • In a similar vein to My Day With Trains is the hour-long Amazing Trains, narrated by ChooChoo (yes, in CamelCase).
  • Terezka from the Czech film The Story of an Old Tram.
  • Wrongfully Accused: At one point, Ryan has to run from the locomotive of the Friggin’ Express, which is more than willing to jump off-track to continue chasing him through the woods and is even intelligent enough to hide from him behind a tree.

    Literature 
  • Ajax and the other engines from Ajax Loquitur.
  • Homer and the Circus Train: Homer the caboose, as well as the Old Engine.
  • Ye Shengtao wrote a fairly popular Chinese story Huochetou de jingli (“The Experience of a Locomotive”) from the perspective of a steam locomotive that is intelligent but which cannot drive itself (something it occasionally resents); the engine’s train ends up transporting a group of students involved with a protest movement, heavily implied to be the December 9th Movement.
  • Chinese magazine story Huochetou ye tanhua (“Locomotives’ Night Talk”) has various old locomotives from all over China coming to life in a repair shop (after all the humans have left for the night, of course) and swapping stories of the different rail lines they worked on and places they’ve been to.
  • Little Blacknose, better known as the DeWitt Clinton locomotive.
  • The Little Engine That Could
  • Choo Choo (1937): The book stars a steam locomotive who decides to try going fast without her coaches dragging her down one day.
  • Blain the Mono from The Dark Tower.
  • Maybelle The Cable Car
  • The .007 from the Rudyard Kipling short story of the same name.
  • The train Sei follows in Palimpsest.
  • “Lok 1414” (“Engine 1414”), the protagonist of a German childrens’ book series which is probably most famous for the Audio Play adaptations it got.
  • The Talking Parcel has the train between Mythologia and the normal world. She’s named Madame Hortense.
  • The Railway Series by the Rev. W. Awdry is probably the Ur-Example, featuring several sentient steam, diesel and electric locomotives of different gauges, as well as passenger coaches and wagons, all based on real designs operating on British railways.
  • Raising Steam: Iron Girder the locomotive achieves sentience when so many people see her go until she basically becomes the goddess of all things steam-powered.
  • Sparky the trolley
  • Tootle
  • Hurray for the Dorchester!: The title character is a living steam locomotive who was brought to Canada to help the country begin to establish its railway system.
  • Taro & Jiro: The Sibling Locomotives: This book and its sequel feature a pair of JNR Class C11 tank engines named Taro (the older one) and Jiro (the younger one) who worked on the Nichu branchline in the Fukushima area.
  • Yaemon The Locomotive

    Live-Action TV 
  • Mister Rogers' Neighborhood had a model trolley that seemed to be able to converse with Mr. Rogers, as well as with the inhabitants of the Neighborhood of Make-Believe.
  • Run! Bikuru-kun!: Locomo the steam engine (who, oddly, doesn’t seem to be confined to only running on rails).
  • K-100, the titular protagonist from Run! K-100. They're best conceptualized as "Herbie as a steam locomotive".

    Theater 

    Video Games 
  • Cuphead: Aside from the fact that the entire Phantom Express owes the Devil its soul, the train engine itself attacks the heroes Cuphead and Mugman in the final phase.
  • Final Fantasy VI has the Phantom Train, a talking Afterlife Express.
    • One of the summons in Final Fantasy VIII is Doomtrain, a strange organic-looking train with a face.
  • Magenta Horizon - Neverending Harvest: Blücher, a demonic (but not evil), vaguely organic, steam locomotive. He serves as your main mode of transportation after you free his body from the parasite controlling him.
  • Steamer the locomotive from Mario Party 2. His ability to transport players around the board (and run them over) is the main gimmick of Western Land.
  • Super Conductors is a game about sentient locomotives that can transform into giant robots (although they're not AI; their sentience was induced by Steamhaven's local flavor of unobtanium, Chootonium).

    Web Animation 
  • CRiTORA: Sir Puffington the old steam engine; he’s also a bit of an Odd Name Out in the series, unless “sir” is his actual first hame.
  • Over The Hills: Half of the protagonists are the locomotives of The Penwyth Valley Railway. The most prominent one is Dai, but there's also Iain and Leslie.

    Webcomics 
  • The Beast from Girl Genius is a particularly malevolent Heterodyne built train and Brother Ulm ends with his consciousness transferred into a new experimental train in order to save his life after part of the Beast blows up in his face.

    Web Videos 
  • The British Railway Stories: The cast of the stories are the steam locomotives of Copley Hill sheds Allen, Stephen, Sir Ralph, Scott, Herbert, Nigel, Tavish, and later Gronk.
  • Crossed Lines: The cast are the locomotives of the Waterdown Railway, Steam and Diesel alike. The steam engines are Atlas, Zebedee, Ince Castle, Dawn, and Ramona. The Diesels are Cojack, Wurzel, Benjamin, and Boomer.
  • Locomotives of British Railways: The show is likely to have a rotating cast, but they are indeed of sentient locomotives working on British Rail. The cast of Series 1, "Brighton", are the steam engines at Brighton Station, consisting primarily of Johnny, Nicholas, Rafferty, and Sir Kay.

    Western Animation 
  • Cogs Hollow: Chuff the diesel locomotive.
  • The locomotives in the GeoTrax cartoon, although of them only Aero and Goggles are able to speak- the rest have to settle for being Intelligible Unintelligibles and communicating with their horns.
  • The lazy locomotive from the beginning of the 1936 industrial short film Get Going!.
  • Go Togo has the titular Togo (a subway train), as well as Stella the streetcar.
  • The locomotive in the Jerry On The Job short “The Mad Locomotive”, which has to be driven using a bucket of coal hanging from a fishing rod.
  • The train belonging to Mickey Mouse in the early Mickey cartoon, "Mickey's Choo-Choo".
  • The trains in Mighty Express.
  • The Shapies has Toots the Train.
  • Special Agent Oso: Rapide the high-speed spytrain.
  • The opening of the Van Beuren Studios Tom & Jerry short "Swiss Trick" features a sentient cartoon train. At one point, it gives out and a rescue dog arrives to give it some brandy to drink.
  • Thomas & Friends introduces several more characters alongside the cast of The Railway Series, including engines from foreign countries.
  • The train from the BabyTV cartoon Tricky Tracks.
  • Big Tim: The cartoon is about a new locomotive named Tim, and how his roller bearing axles allow him to not fall victim to Kid Friction, who likes grabbing train axles and bringing them to a grinding halt.
  • Chuggington focuses on the younger trains on the railway of the titular town.
  • Little Tikes Land: Rustee Rails (a creaky old steam engine) and Metro (a modern diesel engine).
  • PLAY SAFE! PLAY SAFE! featured a rather demonic-looking steam locomotive that actually scared the lives out of children that have watched this short.
  • The engines of Underground Ernie.
  • At least two of UPA's earliest endeavors featured trains of this kind:
    • The first, Hell-Bent for Election, which promoted Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1944 reelection, involves a race between two trains. One is the Win the War Special, a modern streamlined train with a caricature of Roosevelt's face on the engine, and the other is the Defeatist Limited, a rickety old train whose engine has the face of Roosevelt's Republican rival Thomas Dewey, and pulls a bunch of cars representing all that's wrong with America: hot air, high prices, taxes, business as usual (a sleeper car), poor housing for war workers, a hearse wagon for labor legislation, a small two-wheel cart with just a few apples inside for unemployment insurance, and finally a caboose named "Jim Crow." Naturally, the Win the War Special wins the race.
    • The second is the title character in Big Tim, which was produced for the Timkins Ball Bearings Company to advertise their roller bearings for freight cars.
  • Rhyme Time Town has Jaime, who chats with the other characters and is guided by a sentient star at night to get home.
  • The Magic Roundabout has Train, a living and talking red locomotive with a 4-2-2 wheel arrangement and a two-wheel tender who serves as transportation for Dougal and his friends in the Magic Garden.
  • The Brave Locomotive is centered around Linus, a blue locomotive who manages to save Samson, a fellow of his, and a few others.
  • Wild West has The Train With No Name.

Airplanes, Helicopters, and Other Aircraft:

    Advertising 

    Anime & Manga 

    Asian Animation 
  • South Korean cartoon The Airport Diary has most of its cast consist of living aircraft; the main character, Winky, is a turboprop plane.
  • Hogie the Globehopper: Floaty the hot air balloon, who serves as Hoagie's main method of transportation.
  • There's also the cast of Super Wings.

    Comic Books 

    Films — Animation 

    Films — Live Action 
  • Brett The Jet, which featured a CGI Brett narrating over live-action footage of real airplanes.

    Literature 
  • Loopy the little airplane.

    Video Games 
  • The Playable Curtiss P-40 Warhawk in Air Attack 2 mobile game is a haunted fighter plane that is possessed by a vengeful spirit of a deceased pilot who was shot down by the Japanese. However, it appears to be based on a phantom P-40 plane urban legend.
  • Jumbo and Jet Star from Airside Andy.
  • Windy Plane, the first boss of Ninja Baseball Bat Man. It's an anthropomorphic prop plane that stands on its tail and punches the player with its front wheels, no less.
  • Super Conductors: Despite its name, Chootonium isn't restricted to only animating locomotives, as evidenced by the smiling helicopter seen in the background of the official trailer soundtrack video.
  • Undertale has a monster called the Tsunderplane, which is, you guessed it- a Tsundere airplane, which attacks by summoning aircraft and needs to be "Approached" in order to spare it.

    Web Animation 
  • CRiTORA has Hooper Futureskye (some sort of jet), as well as Varin Bloon (a hot air balloon).

    Web Original 
  • Museum Girls: The premise of the entire series is about a group of museum planes who become friends despite being former enemies.

    Western Animation 
  • Barney Bear: In the short "The Flying Bear", Barney pilots a cute little living aeroplane... which gets distracted and starts chasing after a pelican. Oh, and when the plane crashes at the end of the short it gets put in a hospital bed next to Barney's.
  • Brewster The Rooster has Speedy the plane and Muldoon the hot air balloon.
  • Cogs Hollow has Flip the plane and Gusty the helicopter.
  • Engie Benjy: Pilot Pete's self-evidently named Plane. A few other (nameless) living planes also appear in a few episodes.
  • Honk, Toot & Swo-Swoosh: Swo-Swoosh the helicopter.
  • Jay Jay the Jet Plane is set mainly at the airport in Terry Town, which is home to sentient jets, biplanes, a helicopter, and even a fire truck.
  • The Magic Key: In “The Flying Circus”, Biff and Chip visit a world inhabited by sentient airplanes.
  • Special Agent Oso: Whirlybird the helicopter.
  • Harold the helicopter and Jeremy the jet from Thomas & Friends
  • The planes in the 1980s UK animated series Jimbo and the Jet-Set.
  • "Little Johnny Jet", a 1953 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon directed by Tex Avery. A sentient B-29 bomber is despondent because he can't get work in the new age of jet aircraft. He is happy to learn that he has become a father — until he discovers that his new son is a jet, too.
  • Budgie the Little Helicopter: Many of the main cast:
    • Budgie is a little blue helicopter. Lionel, the "aircraft in charge", is a slightly larger brown helicopter with a four-blade rotor.
    • Pippa is a green "single-engined monoplane"note , although it's not evident where her engine is.
    • Chuck is a large twin-engined helicopter (a Boeing CH-47 Chinook, to be precise).
  • The Garbage Pail Kids (Cartoon) had a sentient plane named Bombed Bill serve as the Garbage Pailers' usual means of aerial transport, with "The Land of Odd" having Split Kit, Patty Putty and Clogged Duane find themselves in the Land of Odd while taking anthropomorphic hot air balloon Cheryl Peril for a ride.

Boats, Ships, Submarines and other Seacraft:

    Anime & Manga 
  • In Arpeggio of Blue Steel humanity has been driven out of the seas entirely by a massive fleet of sapient super ships. More than half of the regular characters are ships.
  • Anpanman has ChibiMarine.

    Asian Animation 
  • Bubble Bubble Marin is set in a world populated by living submarines, with the title character (whose name is pronounced "marine") being a sub child whose family just moved to a coral reef town called "QuaQua village".
  • The titular protagonist of Soyuzmultfilm's Katerok (The Little Boat in English).

    Films — Animation 

    Films — Live Action 
  • Implied with the Tiger Shark in Below; near the climax, it turns back towards the sinking site of the British hospital ship and actively resists any attempts to correct its course, leading some members of the crew to believe the sub is suffering from a "malediction" brought about by the taking of so many innocent lives and the murder of its captain. The fact that the submarine apparently waits until all the surviving crew are off before sinking for good and coming to rest next to the ''Fort James'' and its captain's final resting place supports this theory.
  • The titular Death Ship seemingly has a mind of its own due to being controlled by the vengeful ghosts of its former crew. Among other things, it can summon pieces of machinery to attack you and lower its lifeboats into the sea on its own in order to prevent you from escaping.
  • Little Tug's Big Adventure
  • Toby The Tugboat, a VHS put out by the same company responsible for the above-mentioned Brett The Jet and which could generously be described as “Brett except in the Boston Harbor”.

    Literature 
  • The unnecessary-quotation-mark-titled ”Cool” Capers: Children’s Stories has one story about the exploits of Taz, a sentient submarine, in hunting for pearls; this being ”Cool” Capers, random underwater aliens are also involved.
  • Little Toot, a children's book series about the eponymous tugboat which got two Animated Adaptations (see above).

    Mythology 
  • Old Icelandic folklore claims that the creaking of ships is actually them speaking to each other; some people have the ability to understand this language (it doesn't specify whether this is innate or something that can be learned), and ships are often overheard discussing future events. (When this was featured in the standalone myth "Skipamal", one vessel foretold that its fellow would be lost in a storm the following day; when it appeared in the Floamanna saga, two ships commented on how Thorgils would soon come to own them.)
  • Classical Mythology makes this Older Than Feudalism, maybe even Older Than Dirt, with Homer telling in The Odyssey of Phaeacian ships that "have no pilots, nor steering oars such as other ships have, but the ships themselves understand the thoughts and minds of men, and they know the cities and rich fields of all peoples, and the gulf of the sea..."
    • Sailors of the ancient Mediterranean had a tradition, which lasted into the days of Rome, of painting eyes on the bows of their ships. Modern historians still debate over the significance of this, but it seems that ships were commonly thought of as having a living spirit of their own, and eyes were painted on their prows to allow them to "see."

    Theater 
  • Tappy the tugboat from KAPUT!.

    Video Games 
  • Rainbow Billy: The Curse of the Leviathan: Friend-Ship is a talking tugboat with eyes who ferries Billy and his friends across the sea. He runs on colour fuel, which drains as he moves, and can be refueled by chugging through colour refueling water.
  • Ratatan: Fortrun, the flying ship, has an expressive face and as seen in the trailer joins in battles.

    Web Animation 

    Western Animation 

Other:

    Anime & Manga 
  • Elea in Blassreiter. Joseph's jet bike with chatty and all-around shapely little holographic avatar.
  • Digimon Adventure: (2020) features Machmon, a cybernetic motorcycle who loves to race, but used the power boost from a Parasimon to unfairly beat his competition. As a result, Parasimon periodically sends him out of control and he lives all alone on his track until he meets Yamato and Gabumon, the latter of whom is also a something of a racing enthusiast.
  • Kino rides a talking motorcycle named Hermes in Kino's Journey.

    Asian Animation 
  • The Iranian cartoon Motorehya stars a family of living motorbikes.

    Audio Plays 
  • The title character of a fairly inexplicable Jewish CD called The Amazing Torah Bike.

    Comic Books 
  • The Punisher 2099 made his police vehicle sentient by giving it the personality chip from his old robot partner, who turned out to be in the same vigilantistic line of work.

    Eastern Animation 

    Films — Animation 
  • Bikes: Three guesses what's alive in this Mockbuster of Cars, and the first two don't count.
  • In Cars, there are tractors that act like cows and a combine that acts like a bull.
  • In Father Christmas and the Missing Reindeer, the spell Santa uses to make his sleigh able to fly without the reindeer pulling has the side effect of bringing the sleigh to life.
  • In one of the Mater's Tall Tales shorts, there were bulldozers that acted like bulls.
  • A tie-in storybook based on this series called Mater Saves Christmas showed Santa Car (a vehicle resembling a Dusenberg) being pulled by snowmobiles that acted like reindeer. Bessie, on the other hand, despite also being a bulldozer herself, is for some reason, not anthropomorphosized. The sequel featured a giant dump truck near the beginning that presumably acted like a bison. Another one of Mater's stories features "The Banshee", a monstrous earth-mover.

    Films — Live Action 
  • Construction With Digger The ‘Dozer, a series of two VHS tapes put out in 1995.
  • Fifteen-minute film The Day the Bicycles Disappeared has a town's bicycles coming to life and going on strike due to the inhabitants of the town riding without regard for safety.
  • The Dirt Bike Kid is about a boy who purchases a dirt bike that, unbeknownst to him, has a mind of its own. Oh, and it can fly too.
  • I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle has a malevolent, sentient motorbike that is possessed by a demon.
  • Five-minute short film Scooto has a drunkard finding a talking scooter in a junkyard, with the scooter regaling him with the tale of how he got there.
  • The Skateboard Kid is something of a ripoff of The Dirt Bike Kid, starring a boy whose electric skateboard comes to life after being struck by lightning.
  • The Warrior of the Lost World has Einstein, a talking motorbike, although mostly it just repeated "90s street lingo" phrases in triplicate in a high-pitched whine. Joel and the Bots were unimpressed.
    FOUR BAD MOTHERS. FOUR BAD MOTHERS. FOUR BAD MOTHERS.

    Literature 

    Live-Action TV 
  • Heat Vision the motorcycle from Heat Vision and Jack.
  • Bill the Steam Shovel from Mr. Squiggle.
  • Run! Bikuru-kun!: Doza the bulldozer.
  • The construction vehicles from animation-live action hybrid Terrific Trucks.
  • The construction vehicles from Tonka Tales (which are “played” by live-action footage of real construction vehicles with added voiceover).

    Tabletop Games 

    Video Games 
  • LocoCycle, brought to you by the same people that made 'Splosion Man, has you playing a sentient female motorcycle assassin.
  • In Superdimension Neptune VS Sega Hard Girls, Neptune from the first timeline is stuck in IF's motorbike and possesses it. She can talk without problem, but is unable to move by herself.
  • One of the races in Progress Quest is "Enchanted Motorcycle."
  • Pokémon Scarlet and Violet introduce the Pokémon Varoom and its evolution Revaroom, which are sentient engines. They’re noticeably used by Team Star to power the Starmobiles, which are treated as Revaroom with Secret A.I. Moves in gameplay.

    Web Animation 
  • Reconstructed in The Stories of Sodor. Ever since the mid-19th century, vehicles have had a chance to gain faces the first time they're activated, and no-one can figure out why. Faced vehicles can move on their own if they have fuel, but usually have humans with them just in case. They also have rights; for example, they can't be bought or sold without their permission, they can't be scrapped while they're still alive, and they can be euthanised. Most faced vehicles are happy with their purposes in life.
  • Screaming Soup! has Road Rash the motorbike.

    Web Original 
  • Bosun's Return: Caravan, one of the three artificial posthuman bodies that the Bosun created to explore the Earth, is an organic vehicle who serves as the expedition's transportation and base, and like the other two houses a copy of the Bosun's own mind. He's shaped to resemble a quadrupedal mammal of sorts, with a sealed offshoot of his body cavity shaped to act as a living space in which the other two members spend their time while traveling.

    Western Animation 

 
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Video Example(s):

Double Freighter

The 1944 presidential candidates, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Thomas Dewey, are characterized as trains in a pro-FDR campaign film.

Klaus' Favorite...

#5. Self-Drivin...

Sparky, Don't Y...

Clive's awakening

Cargo

Worville Wright

Alternative Title(s): Sapient Vehicle

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Double Freighter

The 1944 presidential candidates, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Thomas Dewey, are characterized as trains in a pro-FDR campaign film.

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How well does it match the trope?

5 (6 votes)

Example of:

Main / SentientVehicle

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0:17

Double Freighter

0:39

Klaus' Favorite...

 0:41

#5. Self-Drivin...

 0:12

Sparky, Don't Y...

 0:38

Clive's awakening

 1:39

Cargo

 2:28

Worville Wright