I take them on very short trips so that they are not entirely panicked when I do have to take them somewhere in a car, such as to the veterinarian. Although there may be exceptions, since there seems always to be exceptions, most cats don't like riding in cars.
I have moved four cats from the Rio Grande Valley of Texas to Maine, although we stopped early each night. Before I left, the vet gave me something that I could use to calm them but I never found that to be necessary. This included a feral cat that I had been feeding, and decided to take with me when I moved.
They were very good. I had them in two large cages, with a mother and daughter in one cage, and the other daughter and the feral cat in the other cage. I was prepared to make a change, to allow the feral cat to be alone in one cage if necessary, but they got along okay. There was one accident, where a cat vomited on the way, and that wasn't very pleasant, but everyone held off on their bathroom breaks until we stopped for the night. We ate from drive-throughs so that we wouldn't have to leave them unattended in the car, and I fed them an occasional cat treat along the way. Sometimes, I would take one of them out at a time while my wife was driving so that I could hold her on my lap.
Before leaving the hotel the following morning, I would feed them a light breakfast, then wait an hour or so to have time for that to come out the other end before heading off for another day of driving. They would make a lot of noise for the first fifteen minutes each morning, but then settle down. They weren't happy about it, and I'm sure it was a miserable trip for them, but it wasn't nearly as problematic as I feared it would be. Since then, I have moved them from Maine to North Carolina for a couple of years, and then back to Maine.
So I will occasionally take one cat with me when I go for a short drive. They can be a major pain in the butt when they are not in a cage and I am driving because, as you say, they seem to want to be under the control pedals, on the dashboard, or otherwise in the way, but I live in northern Maine, where we don't have much traffic.
