Sir Miles Axlerod

Sir Miles Axlerod
Home	London, England
Occupation	Ex-oil baron Host of the World Grand Prix Leader of the Lemons Professor Z, Grem and Acer's boss
Story appearances
Feature films	Cars 2
Video games	Cars 2: The Video Game
Voice actor	Eddie Izzard

Sir Miles Axlerod is the main antagonist of Cars 2.

He was voiced by Eddie Izzard.

Background

Official Bio

"Axlerod is a former oil baron who has sold off his fortune, converted himself into an electric vehicle and has devoted his life to finding the renewable, clean-burning energy source of the future—ultimately discovering what he believes is the fuel everyone should be using. Axlerod is also the car behind the World Grand Prix, a three-country race he created that attracts the world’s top athletes—but it’s really an excuse to show off his new wonder-fuel, Allinol."

Personality

Axlerod presented himself to be friendly and well-meaning to other cars and invented Allinol as a way to help promote the usage of alternative fuel. However, it later turned out that Axlerod is actually a ruthless, greedy, deceptive, and manipulative criminal mastermind who wished for non-lemons to respect him and was willing to harm other cars in order to do so. He is even willingly to commit murder in order to achieve his goals in becoming rich through his untapped oil reserves where he ordered the death of Lightning McQueen when the latter decided to use Allinol in the last race after the Lemons had managed to successfully discredit Allinol. Axlerod also planted a bomb on Mater as a way to kill him after the tow truck discovered and started interfering with his plans.

Axlerod is also very intelligent, as shown when he made the plan to get rid of alternative fuel. Additionally, he can speak in a deeper, disguised voice that is hard to be descrambled, which would serve to deceive any potential spies. He also was able to come up with backup plans in case of any first plans did not work. For example, he planted onto Mater in case the latter escaped from his bonds and would rush to save McQueen if the EMP emitter did not kill the racecar. Also, if Mater found out that the bomb was on him and drove onto to the racetrack, Axlerod prevented any emergency vehicles from driving onto the track so McQueen can pursue Mater without any interferences.

Despite coming from a background where Axlerod was mocked and ridiculed for being a lemon, he has no redeeming qualities as his anger and greed made him pure evil and was willing to commit heinous crimes just to get revenge on those who laughed at him and all lemons.

Axlerod was sadistic and cruel as he enjoyed the injuries the racers of the World Grand Prix received when their engines exploded by being hit by the EMP emitter. Axlerod was also shown to hate Mater where he blamed on a oil leak on Mater, planted a bomb on him just to kill him, and started acting cruel towards him when Mater was trying to expose him. It's possible Axlerod's hatred of Mater stems from the fact that Mater is a tow truck, possibly hinting that Axlerod did not get a lot of proper help and fixings from tow trucks in the past.

Axlerod also showed signs of overconfidence as he kept his identity as the lemons' mastermind hidden until Mater exposed him, shocking Axlerod. He also tried to maintain his cover of being the lemons' mastermind when confronted and cornered by Mater until he was forced to deactivate the bomb he planted on the tow truck just to save his own life. This also shows Axlerod truly cares about no one, but himself and is truly a coward.

Appearances

Cars 2

Though at first Professor Zündapp appears to be the main villain, it is revealed near the end of the film by Mater that Axlerod is actually the mastermind of the whole plan. His supposed "alternative fuel" was actually gasoline engineered to explode if hit with an electromagnetic pulse, and was part of a plot to turn the world against alternative energy and have them rely on gasoline, bringing profits to the lemons and himself due to the fact that they own the largest untapped oil reserves in the world. At a party promoting the World Grand Prix, he leaked oil on the floor, proving that he wasn't an electric car; he blamed it on Mater.

Eventually, Axlerod arranges for Zündapp and the lemon cars to plant a bomb on Mater's air filter as a backup plan to kill Lightning McQueen. Mater later discovers the story about the conspiracy after helping Finn McMissile and Holley Shiftwell arrest Zündapp and the lemon cars, and confronts Axlerod for it, with his suspicions being confirmed when he forces Axlerod into deactivating the bomb with a voice command in order to keep the bomb from killing himself since he would have been caught in the blast. To proceed further, Mater opens Axlerod's hood, revealing the same engine (a Rover V8) as the unseen mastermind depicted in the photo, which Finn and Holley obtained from their American counterpart earlier, proving to be a perfect match. Axlerod is then arrested offscreen on the charges of conspiracy to commit crime, murder, and embezzlement, with his final appearance in the film showing him being surrounded by several police cars.

Trivia

• His design resembles an extremely modified version of a Range Rover L322.
• His license plate is ALT NRG, an abbreviation of "alternative energy." However, before his "electric conversion" (ultimately a lie), he does not appear to have a license plate at all.
• Miles' tires' texture repeats a leaf-shaped motif.
• If you look closely at his front wheels, you can see the words "REGEN R8," meaning "Regenerate."
• Miles uses a lot of parts made by "British Wheeland" to keep himself going. "British Wheeland" is a parody of British Leyland, which produced both the Range Rover and the notoriously unstable V-8 engine that powered them. Even the logo was a parody of British Leyland's, using a big bold printed W instead of the big bold printed L. Mater states truthfully that B.L. made parts that won't fit on other cars because of them not using standardized bolts.
• The jungle Miles gets lost in before he converts to an electric vehicle is the jungle from Up.
• The DVD commentary for Cars 2 states that the climax where Mater confronts Axlerod at Buckingham Palace over the plot to sabotage the World Grand Prix came rather early in production, so the Pixar team went backwards from there to make Axlerod the ultimate good guy and someone else the bad guy, so that when it got up to the climax, everyone could see how brilliant Mater was in figuring out the whole thing.
• Before coming up with Axlerod, Pixar had considered a Russian super car as the main villain.
• Axlerod's name apparently originated from an old joke his voice actor Eddie Izzard actually once told concerning the invention of the wheel and axle.
  • Axlerod's voice actor also played Nigel the Koala from The Wild.
• Along with Grem, Acer, Professor Z and Victor Hugo, Axlerod is playable in Cars 2: The Video Game, even though they are villains. However, it could be that the tracks are actually part of the simulation, so it's possible that they are part of it as well.
• Axelrod's personality is very similar to Waternoose (one of the main antagonists from Monsters, Inc.): both are portrayed as evil businessmen who are originally introduced as being friendly, both rely on deception as part of their motivations, and both are ultimately defeated by being exposed by the heroes as villains and being subsequently arrested.
• Axlerod is the true main antagonist of the film because he was actually Professor Z's boss and had bigger plans than he ever did.
• Axlerod, Ernesto de la Cruz, Syndrome, Lotso, Hopper, and Professor Zundapp are the most darkest, ruthless, sinister, and evil pixar villains to date.
• Axlerod is the fourth Pixar villain to be pure evil.
• Axlerod and Professor Z are the only Cars villains to be pure evil.

Quotes

• "Deactivate!"
• "How did the tow truck figure it out?" (Axlerod's last words)