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American rock group The Cars was founded in Boston in 1976. They were composed of Greg Hawkes on keyboards, David Robinson on drums, Eric Ocasek on rhythm guitar, Benjamin Orr on bass guitar, Elliott Easton on lead guitar, and Greg Hawkes on keyboards. Orr and Ocasek first worked together as members of the folk group Milkwood in the early 1970s, before The Cars were formed. They sprang from the new wave era in the late 1970s. Orr and Ocasek took turns leading the group's songwriting and playing lead vocals.American rock group The Cars was founded in Boston in 1976. They were composed of Greg Hawkes on keyboards, David Robinson on drums, Elliot Easton on lead guitar, Benjamin Orr on bass guitar, and rhythm guitarist Ric Ocasek. They came out of the late 1970s new wave era. Orr and Ocasek took turns leading the group's songwriting and playing lead vocals.In the 1978 Rolling Stone Readers' Poll, The Cars came in first place as Best New Artist. Six million copies of the band's debut album, The Cars, were sold, and it spent 139 weeks at number one on the Billboard 200 album chart. "Shake It Up" (1981), "You Might Think" (1984), "Drive" (1984), and "Tonight She Comes" (1985) were the four Top 10 successes for The Cars. At the first MTV Video Music Awards in 1984, the band's "You Might Think" video won Video of the Year.

Following the 1987 release of Door to Door, their worst-selling album, The Cars broke up in 1988. During the recording of this album, Ocasek and Orr had a creative falling out that prevented them from speaking for years. After spending the 1990s producing bands like Weezer and Bad Brains, Ric was influenced by the sounds of the day. As a result, he recorded his 1997 album Troubilizing with Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan serving as producer.

Orr passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2000. Along with Todd Rundgren and other members, Easton and Hawkes formed the side project band The New Cars in 2007. Move Like This, the band's seventh and last album, was released in May 2011 after the surviving founding members of the Cars got back together in 2010. The band took a brief break after supporting Move Like This on tour before going on sabbatical once more. The Cars got back together to play at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in April 2018. Cardiovascular illness claimed Ocasek's life in 2019.