Songfacts®:

• The LA Woman album took a little more than a week to record, and along with this song, "Been Down Long," "Crawling King Snake" and a few other blues songs that didn't make the album were all recorded on one single "Blues Day" session.
• The "wah-wah" sound you can hear on the song was Jim Morrison impersonating first a guitar, then a harmonica.
• A new version of the song was included on the 2007 re-release of the LA Woman album, which featured new mixes of the songs by the remaining members of the band and their original engineer Bruce Botnick. The updated song had an added verse and a new stereo mix.
• "Cars Hiss By My Window" features a bluesy guitar riff and a driving rhythm that are characteristic of blues musician Jimmy Reed's music. "We always loved Jimmy Reed, and the whole band wanted to do a Reed-type song, guitarist Robbie Krieger told Louder Sound. "It's a simple arrangement, although the words aren't simple. We used to jam to a lot of Jimmy's stuff, and whenever we did, Jim would always change the lyrics. He was either too lazy to learn the real ones or he thought he could do better. I don't know."