[1] The series features 11 different cars racing against each other in various road rallies throughout North America,[2] with all of the drivers hoping to win the title of the "World's Wackiest Racer".

The series spawned numerous spin-offs featuring Dick Dastardly through the years, the most similar in theme being Fender Bender 500 in 1990.

In 2006, the animated short for a spin-off series titled Wacky Races Forever was produced for Cartoon Network.

Other characters included the Slag Brothers, Professor Pat Pending (depicted here with a mad scientist personality), a teenage version of the Gruesome Twosome, and Dick Dastardly and Muttley (working for a new villain named Mr. Viceroy, who sought to steal Perfect Industries).

[10] On June 15, 2022, it was announced a stop-motion Wacky Races series produced by Hanna-Barbera Studios Europe was in production and would have aired on Cartoon Network.

[citation needed] Various drawings of the Wacky Racers cameo on Dick Dastardly's prison cell on the wall during the credits.

[citation needed] Penelope Pitstop was to appear physically as a main character interacting with Scooby and Shaggy according to concept art, but she instead makes a brief cameo on a video game cabinet themed around her.

A new video game for the Wii and Nintendo DS consoles titled Wacky Races: Crash and Dash was released on June 27, 2008.

The complete box set of Wacky Races was released on July 31, 2006, as an HMV exclusive but is essentially the standard Volumes 1–3 with no extras.

Warner Home Video released the entire series, with commentaries and other extras, in a DVD box set on October 19, 2004.

On February 14, 2017, Warner Archive re-released Wacky Races: The Complete Series on DVD in region 1 as part of their Hanna-Barbera Classic Collection as a Manufacture-on-Demand (MOD) release.

[20] Life-size working replicas of the vehicles have been built in the U.K. (where the show was very popular) and appear annually at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, with new additions each year.

The year 2008 saw the last of the cars (the Ant Hill Mob in the Bulletproof Bomb #7) added to the collection, making a complete set.

The commercial made several references to the cartoon as well as utilizing the show's theme music and Muttley's iconic snicker.

[22] The English adult comic Viz had a one-off parody strip called "Wacky Racists" with David Irving as Dick Dastardly, Unity Mitford as Penelope Pitstop, Eugène Terre'Blanche as Lazy Luke, Oswald Mosley as Muttley, and comedian Bernard Manning in the "Fatcuntmobile".

[23] In 2013, the car manufacturer Peugeot launched a TV commercial for the Brazilian market (and later used in Spain and Turkey), featuring the cartoon characters in a real-life universe.