Creating/selling my own artwork

[CraaazyCat]

hello, i am looking to create my own car caricature images and sell prints of them to make money from a website

the images will be of existing models of car but portrayed in a 'cartoon' style where the car shape is de-formed and makes the car look alive etc. the images will be painted by watercolour paints, scanned and adjusted digitally by computer, and then copies of these printed off and sold

the trouble is, i know of a few 'car caricature' image selling companies that sell similar products. even though my images will be my own artistic impressions and made from scratch by myself (not directly copied), i am wondering if the creators of this other similar work can take legal action against me for copying their work/idea, and whether i am breaching any copyrights or intellectual property rights they may have? i'm not really sure of what these terms mean so i want to check i can not be in trouble for this, even though their work is only inspiraton to me.

also, i am not so worried about this, but i just want to make sure that car manufacturers cannot take legal against me for selling impressions of their vehicles? the manufacturer name and model name will be included in the title i use to advertise the image of that specific vehicle..

finally, if i am legally allowed to sell these, what rights do i have in terms of resale and copying of my work by other people?

cheers