Motorama

Spurred by his parents' fight about another mouth to feed, ten-year-old Gus cashes out his piggy bank and steals a Ford Mustang. He hits the road with a single, desperate goal: collect all the MOTORAMA cards from participating gas stations and claim the grand prize. He hopes the prize will set him up for a better future.

At the first gas station stop, Gus's actions indirectly cause attendant Phil to be hit by a truck. The accident reveals the danger of a child on the road and foreshadows the consequences Gus will face as he tries to navigate adult problems.

Staying the night at a roadside motel, Gus meets the proprietor who uses car exhaust to kill squirrels. The encounter adds a grim note about the adults Gus encounters on the road.

The next day Gus tries to steal gas from a couple; they catch him and knock him out, injuring his eye socket. They take him to their place, realize he's a child, call a doctor, but decline surgical repair and later smear makeup on themselves and Gus, implying abuse. The wife ultimately tells him to keep the gas and leave.

With an eye patch, Gus is identified by a biker as a pirate and challenged to an arm wrestle for money. He loses, and the biker humiliates him by branding him with a demeaning tattoo.

At a rest stop, Gus gambles with a father over a game of horseshoes and wins. The father then uses the moment to abandon his own children, as he and his wife drive away.

With one MOTORAMA letter left, Gus drives through Essex, an industrial area where people fight, burn crosses, and take drugs. On a rain-soaked highway, he swerves to avoid a truck and drives his car off an unfinished bridge, damaging it and rendering the car undrivable.

Walking back along the road, he encounters an older version of himself, driven mad by not finding the final letter. He meets a mentally handicapped gas station attendant who sells him gas and gives him the final letter.

At the company headquarters, a lobby representative explains that collecting letters only makes Gus eligible for the prize, not a winner. He tries to meet executives but is blocked by the secretary, and everyone begins to treat him as the small child he still is. When the security guard throws him out of the skyscraper window, his hopes are crushed.

Gus falls from the window into a pool of water and re-enters the river where his journey began. His car is restored, his eye returns, and the tattoo disappears; he sheds the metal leg extensions he built to drive the car and begins hitchhiking home.

On the road back toward home, Gus learns that Phil has survived the truck accident but is severely injured. Lacking other options, Gus stays and works at Phil's gas station, now being treated as an adult by those around him despite still being a child.

Gus later fuels a gambler's car; the gambler claims to have won a million dollars and shows the cash to Gus. He drives away, but the gambler dies in a head-on crash with a truck. Gus remains at the desolate gas station with Phil.