Music critic Robert Palmer, writer for The New York Times and Rolling Stone, described the Cars' musical style: "They have taken some important but disparate contemporary trends—punk minimalism, the labyrinthine synthesizer and guitar textures of art rock, the '50s rockabilly revival and the melodious terseness of power pop—and mixed them into a personal and appealing blend.

The surviving original members of the Cars reunited in 2010 to record the band's seventh and final album, Move Like This, which was released in May 2011.

In Boston, Ocasek and Orr, along with lead guitarist Jas Goodkind, formed a Crosby, Stills and Nash-style folk rock band called Milkwood.

After Milkwood, Ocasek and Orr formed the group Richard and the Rabbits, a name suggested by Jonathan Richman.

The band included Greg Hawkes, who had studied at the Berklee School of Music and had played saxophone on Milkwood's album.

Ocasek and Orr later teamed with guitarist Elliot Easton (who had also studied at Berklee) in the band Cap'n Swing.

The band also featured drummer Glenn Evans, later followed by Kevin Robichaud, and a jazzy bass player, which clashed with Ocasek's preference for a rock-and-roll sound.

Cap'n Swing soon came to the attention of WBCN disc jockey Maxanne Sartori, who began playing songs from their demo tape on her show.

After being rejected by several record labels, Ocasek fired the bass player, keyboardist and drummer and resolved to form a band that better fit his style of writing.

[6] After a warmup gig in a motel lounge outside of Boston, the Cars played their official first show at Pease Air Force Base in New Hampshire a short time later on December 31, 1976.

A nine-song demo tape was recorded in early 1977 and soon "Just What I Needed" was receiving heavy airplay on Boston radio stations WBCN and WCOZ.

[10] "Just What I Needed" was released as the debut single from the album, followed by "My Best Friend's Girl" and "Good Times Roll", all three charting on the Billboard Hot 100.

Following their 1982 tour, the Cars took a two-year break and the members worked on solo projects, with Ocasek and Hawkes both releasing debut albums (Beatitude and Niagara Falls, respectively).

However, in 1995 Rhino Records released a two-CD set titled Just What I Needed: The Cars Anthology, containing all the group's hits mixed with rarities such as demos and non-album B-sides.

The label released The Cars: Deluxe Edition in 1999, the band's debut album in a two-CD format, and Complete Greatest Hits.

Orr appeared with his bandmates from the Cars one final time in an interview for a documentary about the group before his death from pancreatic cancer at age 53 on October 3, 2000.

In 2005, Easton and Hawkes combined their talents with Todd Rundgren, Prairie Prince (the Tubes, Journey) and Kasim Sulton (Utopia, Meat Loaf) in a revamped lineup, the New Cars, to perform classic Cars songs along with some new original material and selections from Rundgren's career.

[16][better source needed] In October, Billboard reported that the Cars were recording a new album at veteran engineer Paul Orofino's studio in Millbrook, New York.

In an interview, Ocasek was asked whether the band would have reunited if Orr had still been alive, responding: "Ben and I had a real cold war going that lasted about 23 years.

[citation needed] After seven years of inactivity, the group reconvened, along with Weezer's Scott Shriner on bass, to play a four-song set at their 2018 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

[30] Critic Robert Palmer wrote that the Cars "have taken some important but disparate contemporary trends—punk minimalism, the labyrinthine synthesizer and guitar textures of art rock, the 1950s rockabilly revival and the melodious terseness of power pop—and mixed them into a personal and appealing blend.