This visual still makes me grin.
When I was drawing Wheels strips, I would search Google Images for pictures of trucks, so I could get the scale and details approximately right. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a picture of the underside of a truck trailer? (I finally wound up pulling a Hot Wheels truck out of my old toy box and using it as a reference.)
It helped that I had already established a minimal, sometimes-even-sketchy style. No worries about the uncanny valley.