“the car” shares glaive’s imaginary take on a cheating situation between a friend of his and the boy’s girlfriend. As everyone involved goes through mixed emotions, the girl makes it unclear who she wants as she gets together with a new boy. As the chorus reflects on the girl’s words, the verses are used to describe how the boy and glaive’s friend feel, making him feel more guilty for being the partner in crime. As the story goes on, the cheater’s assistant is set back into reality, where the girl was never his as he looks back on his father’s words.

The song was first teased through a tweet by glaive himself on December 14, 2022, with a draft of the lyrics, which he quoted the next day claiming that he changed the lyrics “to be more real to his life,“ twisting the song into a first-person perspective, despite it being a fictional story about a friend. The song was first previewed months later when a 15 second clip would surface from an unofficial source, and was first officially previewed on glaive’s TikTok in late June. The song’s runtime and place on the tracklist would then be made public through Apple Music,[where the song’s release date was found in the source code a week prior to the drop. Two days prior to its release, glaive confirmed on his Instagram story that "the car” would be the final single off the album.