Songfacts®:

• "Car Chase" tells the story of a mental institution patient who escapes at night. The lyrics depict the thrill of freedom and the adrenaline rush of the escapade, juxtaposed with the dark undertones of a disturbed mind.
  
  "It's about someone who cleverly breaks out of the mental institution every night, unbeknownst to his owners," Public Image Ltd frontman John Lydon explained. "It's based on having to go to shopping malls at night for cigarettes and wine and seeing the vast car park space and lighting surrounded by a little village and a lot of dark trees and country lanes. It's a really creepy scenario. What if somebody creeps out of there, like a mad lunatic?"
• While "Car Chase" tells the true story of a friend of Lydon's who has been confined to a psychiatric hospital for his own good and has tried to escape on numerous occasions, the song uses the escape yarn to skewer the inflated self-image that can consume us.
  
  "Mainly through technology, people are beginning to think of themselves as the center of the universe," Lydon explained to The Guardian.
• PiL released "Car Chase" as the third single from End of World on June 22, 2023. Lydon's wife, Nora Forster, passed away two and a half months earlier after years battling Alzheimer's disease. Nora loved this song because it chimed with her familiar sense of panic.
  
  "She connected with that song in a very serious way," Lydon told The Sun. "That feeling of wanting to run away from whatever was making her freak out."
• Though "Car Chase" is told from the point of view of someone in a mental institution, it could be about any home where they send old people. "These places are torture clinics," Lydon told Uncut magazine. "It's not something I'd ever have considered for Nora. Nobody should die unhappy."