Obviously it's a matter of opinion but I don't think "Cars" did any of those things well, it had a very predictable story but the heart and humour were there, only had one memorable character (Mater), the main character was obnoxious and Owen's voice grated on my nerves and by the end i didn't care about him at all.

The show was weak Pixar is on a Burnout Run...Clever pun!

The problem I had with "Cars" was that there were just WAY too many characters. With so many main and supporting charatcers, yuo don't have enough time to explore and build up the characters as much, and you end up with lame stereotyped characters (such as Filmore and Sarge). Had they cut the cast down a bit, they could have explored the main characters further, and gotten into the history of the town and the falling in love of Lightning and Sally. Instead, both of these were left up to music montages.

While these montages did serve their purposes to an extent, they could have been great cappers to a build up rather than stand alones.

The worst thing "Cars" had going for it was that it was the follow up to "The Incredibles", whose story and characters were rock solid. As a whole, it wasn't a bad film, but it wasn't their strongest.

As far as character development and story, I'd rank the Pixar films as follows:

1 The Incredibles

2 Toy Story

3 Monsters, Inc

4 Toy Story 2

5 A Bug's Life

6 Cars