I bet you’ve seen a particular image floating around the internet, and, as someone who more than likely has more than a passing interest in cars, I suspect that you may have even looked at it, and considered its meaning. I don’t blame you for that! Perhaps you even read a caption or an article and nodded your head in agreement, saying, “yes, yes, so very true” aloud, causing the other people in the jury to look at you funny. The image is one of 23 white SUVs on white backgrounds, all seen in profile, facing left. The implication of this image is that all modern cars look alike, and as a result individuality and design in automobiles is, well, dead. It’s a grim thought, and on some level, it may seem like it’s sadly true. Happily, I’m here to remind you that it’s bullshit.
There’s been a ton of very similar and pretty much equally whiny articles lamenting what the author thinks this image shows. Some of these articles are idiotic, but most are just boring and forgettable, much like the SUVs and crossovers they wring their hands over.
Essentially, they’re all saying something like this, just usually without the economy of words:
Design is dead. pic.twitter.com/7gzQH7jkzq
— CarDealershipGuy (@GuyDealership) November 27, 2022
And, sure, on some level, they’re not completely wrong– those vehicles do look a lot alike. But once you start thinking about what’s being shown for any amount of time and actually look at what’s going on in the larger context of automobile design, not only do you realize that what’s going on here isn’t some new phenomenon, what’s being shown isn’t the dire warning these smug-asses think it is. At all.
First, let’s really look at this image:
All the cars are the same color, and, significantly, all of their distinctive wheel designs have been blocked out with gray circles. Color has been de-saturated from all the cars, which makes any graphic design elements from their lighting much less noticeable. They’ve all been scaled to be about the same size. Significantly, this isn’t a random sampling of modern cars: it’s a sampling of cars from one particular type and category: midsize SUVs/crossovers. Also, they misspelled “Volkswagen.”
A lot of work has been done to this image to make cars of the same particular general design (high-riding, wagon-type body) seem like they all look homogenous, but the truth is they really don’t. Considering these are all cars in the same basic class, there’s a hell of a lot of differentiation going on. Here, look at these two:
I even picked two premium-segment cars, so they’d likely compete head-to-head in the market. Their designs are quite different: look at the distinctive C-pillar on the Mercedes, or the more fastback design of the Acura. Their front end treatments are very different, as are the window graphic, lighting design, and more. For two vehicles designed to fill the same market segment, carry the same number of passengers, roughly the same amount of cargo, and perform similarly, there’s a remarkable amount of design difference.
If you’re actually confusing these cars visually while you’re out driving, I don’t want to be driving with you, at least not until you go back to the optometrist.
Let’s look at this same idea in some historical context, too: cars of a given segment, in a given era, have always looked similar to one another, at least in broad strokes. Here, let’s look at big four-door sedans from the 1950s:
These are easily as differentiated from one another as any of those modern SUVs are. They all have the same basic proportions, similar design vocabulary of details (fins, wraparound windshields, lots of chrome, two-tone paint) and yet we don’t see anyone making grids of ’50s cars in grayscale and captioning it “Damn, everything was the same back then LOL,” do we?
Or, consider the 1960s, when compact and smaller car design all over the world was swept up with a desire to re-create the Chevrolet Corvair:
…or let’s look at two-door fastback coupés of the 1970s:
…or full-size sedans of the 1980s:
And, please note that I’m not cheating with any of these images by desaturating all the colors, making them all the same color, and pointing them all the same way, or blocking out their wheel design; you can see in these unedited images that, yes, cars of a similar category of a similar era tend to look generally the same. That’s how it works.
There’s a lot of interlocking reasons for why this is, too: some has to do with technological development; as new techniques of building become available, they spread throughout the industry, and get used by everyone. Think of things like custom-shaped lighting designs or body-colored bumpers, or aerodynamic advances that help make more efficient cars.
There’s also things like crash and safety regulations that all cars must follow, and those have a huge impact on design. Then there’s simple taste and fashion, which tends to change, and those changes spread throughout the industry, until preferences and fashion changes again, in a never-ending cycle of capriciousness and whatever the hell else influences why we find some things visually appealing or not.
And then we have market demands, and that tempers design. There are always wonderful outliers, but mainstream automotive design will tend to homogenize a bit, because in large groups, humans tend not to buy things that feel too unexpected. Raymond Loewy, the industrial designer who is credited with the Coke bottle, Exxon logo, and the Studebaker Avanti, among many other things, referred to this principle as MAYA, which stood for “most advanced, yet acceptable” and essentially means that people won’t buy something that feels too weird.
If you look at modern car design and not limit your samples to one particular sub-category, you can see that there’s actually an incredible amount of novel design happening right now. Here, look at these pseudo-randomly-selected cars, all of which are currently available for sale around the world:
Cars don’t all currently look alike. In fact, there’s some really interesting and daring things happening in modern car design. And, cars of the past, when separated by categories, all generally tended to have broadly similar looks, because that’s how the world and human beings tend to work. Modern cars aren’t any better or worse in that regard.
So, if you’re tempted to post that image of those white SUVs and say something snarky about how all modern cars look the same, my advice would be to log off whatever social media app you’re on, delete that stupid JPG, and just go for a damn drive already. Nobody needs to see this stupid bullshit again.
They also cheated because they made all the wheels cartoon white. This has bothered me for years. Every time I owned a Challenger or Camaro a few goofs would insist that they looked just like a Mustang. And your Mama looks like Margot Robbie.
The NSU Ro80, because it is the only outlier here.
Get with the program, Jason! It’s all about the clixz! Controversy (even contrived controversy) gets people angry and nothing gets people to click on links like getting them angry. It’s the sad state of the Pavlovian-conditioned general public.
Also, I just love that there’s a “Bullshit” story tag on this site.
The Autopian is one of the last vestiges of free-thinking, polite, creative and intelligent people (both contributors and commentators) on the web. Keep up the good work!
I meant “commenters”. I sure wish there was an edit button :-/
Brilliant explanation, I’m so sick of this meme.
Just get over it, all of you.
A traction engine is a traction engine. They all look the same, although moon discs might improve the looks of a Marshall 6hp, the proportions of that thing are are wrong.
I think it highlights a problem you’re ignoring: proportion. The proportions on SUVs/Crossovers look bad. Like inflated minivans, or eggs. I will be blunt and say I hate 99% of new cars, and a lot of that is due to size and proportion. You are pointing out design DETAILS, but in my opinion the surfacing/design elements are just being used to MASK poor proportions. In previous decades, we had better proportions, especially the 90s, without crazy crash standards and a lot of glass. Less safe, sure, but way better proportions, and they didn’t have to have a bunch of complex/crazy creases/surface changes to hide anything, which is why super simple CLEAN designs from the 80s/90s still look hella fresh.
I wonder if we’re currently seeing the equivalent of 1970s car design, all baroque and complex, and just like with what happened in the 80s, it’ll soon give way to smooth lines like we say last week with the new Prius reviews…
With your last picture half of those cars are not sold in the US. Of the half that are sold in the US one of them is on its last model year, another is a sort of one off unique decently expensive BEV while all the other ones mostly look the same, and the third is an obscenely expensive Porsche BEV.
I agree the Scaling on the cars is BS, they should all be 1:1, not all made to be approximately the same size.
However since most cars sold in the US are White, Black, or Grey having only White, Black, or Grey colors for the comparison would make a lot of sense since they’re the most likely colors you’ll see on new cars.
New cars are very boring and usually pretty sad for your average person. Mostly low displacement direct injection overstressed turbocharged motors with crap automatic transmissions or numb port injection 4 cylinders with a CVT or e-CVT. If you pay more for a car than most people in the US annually then you can get something that is exciting but that tends to be heavily dependent on how much you’re willing to spend.
You used to be able to buy things like the Suzuki Samurai brand new, now the closest thing we have to that is a Jeep Wrangler 2 door Sport and that has almost no aftermarket axle support whatsoever. You’d have to spend around $10K to get the new Dana 44s and that’s not including installation or axle mod costs whatsoever. Building a new very basic Jeep Wrangler 2 Door into a soft-roading rig is pushing $50K+ (total cost including buying the Jeep Wrangler 2 Door Sport).
Want to buy a new small car? Welp the Scion iQ and Smart Car haven’t been sold for years, so hopefully you want a small car in the same way you want a small soda (it’s at least a medium in every other country).
Want to buy a new small Truck? Well considering the New Ford Maverick is 6.6 inches longer and 5.9 inches wider than my 1994 Toyota pickup which has seating for 5 AND a 75″ long bed while the Maverick only has a 54″ long bed, and I’ve never felt like my Truck was small ever, narrow sure but not small, not compact. But don’t worry, the bedsides on the Maverick are very high too and its turning circle is less than 1 foot smaller than that of some current production F-150s…
Yes the meme is slightly misleading, but the truth is that new affordable cars, Trucks, and SUVs are boring and sad while being less practical, less durable, and less reliable than 90s cars.
Really I think your point is more that there’s little that is ‘cheap and cheerful’. Most cars now are products of safety/economy/etc regulations and don’t ‘feel’ as fun.
“New cars are boring and sad for the average person” – but the average person is usually just looking for transportation, as shown by most of the best-selling cars for many years. Cars like the Camry or Taurus may have been neither when first on the scene, but by the time they achieved the status of best-selling car in the U.S., they were extensively copied and duplicated by others, and usually decontented to some degree on their own.
For small cars, Americans never wanted them as small as the iQ or Smart. Ford/GM/etc. getting out of the game is more representative of your point; the Civic is still technically a small car but is actually as big as the 5th-gen Accord of the mid-90s.
Small truck – while the reviews of the Maverick have been mixed on back seat comfort, it’s going to be considerably more comfortable than most 90s pickups. Not to mention the improvements to crash safety. But we didn’t have any small trucks for some 10 years. I doubt we’ll ever get as small as those early 90s pickups, but not to say something couldn’t pop up.
I agree about regulations playing a large factor.
I’d disagree. How many people who don’t need a pickup Truck have been buying pickup Trucks? Now with gas prices so high and costs up greatly everyone is looking to replace their massive fuel hogs with cheap commuters. If these people wanted basic transportation they wouldn’t have bought a stupid crew cab short bed “full size” (more like plus size) pickup that gets under 30 MPG highway.
I wanted a Scion iQ but I was too young to buy one when they stopped selling them in the US. I wanted a manual transmission Smart Car but they got rid of them with no notice and I didn’t get one, then I wanted to get a BEV Smart Car but the closest dealer to me was a several hour drive away so I was worried about repair work, then Smart announced that they were stopping sales of all Smart Cars in the US that year and I immediately called up the closest Smart Car dealer to place a final order and they said that Smart was only fulfilling existing orders and that no new orders could be placed.
Comfort is very subjective. For example I can comfortably sleep in the bed of my pickup because it’s long enough to fit my twin memory foam mattress and so with my camper top I basically have a mini bedroom in the back of my Truck. Besides getting matching BTK amputations there’s no way I’m going to be able to comfortably sleep in the Maverick’s bed with the tailgate up. Also my extended cab will warm up quicker in the winter than the Maverick’s crew cab. Considering I have a hard enough time parking my Truck parking a wider and longer Maverick pickup sure doesn’t make me feel more comfortable. And while this is very subjective I am much more comfortable driving a car with a manual transmission due to the extra safety margin and the control over the power I send to the wheels. Yes my pickup is not the best way to haul 5 people, however a pickup shouldn’t be, it’s a work vehicle for work.
Agree that comfort is subjective and that sure, plenty of people that don’t need a truck buy them – but people have always bought more car than they need, or not the most perfect tool for the job. You also were talking about cars with four-cylinder engines and the like, not trucks, and I didn’t say basic, but an F-150 is just transportation to people even as silly as it sounds as a $60k Lariat or whatever. The decline of passenger cars is more due to the shift to crossover sales, Toyota has sold more RAV4s than they do Camrys for the last 5 years, neither is any more exciting than the top-selling cars 20, 30 years ago.
What mad rush to dump thirsty vehicles? There were certainly many articles about the pinch higher prices & inflation were causing, but for one there’s no new cars *to* buy, manufacturers have continued to drop more cheap cars or trims of their cars while rolling out new crossovers, and honestly people that could afford trucks are the ones still able to buy cars with the inflated prices nowadays.
That rush definitely happened in 2008, but SUVs that had been popular were much less efficient SUVs, whether full-size, body-on-frame midsize, V8 power, etc. People rushed to dump vehicles with mpg in the teens to get 30+ mpg vehicles, and I’d argue that kind of jump isn’t quite there any more as most crossovers have improved in fuel economy. Even the larger ones that have supplanted thirstier predecessors – look at say the Explorer or Traverse now and they’re rated for about the same MPG in the city today, as an Explorer or Trailblazer 15 years ago was rated on the highway. Crossovers and minivans have also improved, a Honda Pilot today is rated for 20% better economy than one in the late 2000s; minivans ~10% better, just comparing the regular gas ones. And hybrids have proliferated regular model lines now, no longer standalone models – Toyota sells more RAV4 Hybrids than they do the Prius now, and the hybrid is at least a third of all RAVs sold.
You wanted an iQ or a Smart, but again you’re not most people – I’m not either, so not trying to preach or whatever, I bought a new manual GTI and might have been more likely to buy a Focus ST at the time and then still now if it weren’t discontinued. But the cars people have been buying are what they want to buy even if it’s not what you or I want to buy.
Obviously, the picture of the white SUVs is ridiculous since it removes all identifying features and then complains the vehicles look the same. However, even if the selected vehicles were indistinguishable in reality, does it matter? Midsize SUVs/CUVs are designed to be practical transportation. They aren’t intended to be beautiful or interesting. I’m sure many of us have a daily driver that isn’t interesting or nice to look at, but excels at its stated mission of providing practical transportation (my daily driver is a Leaf; it is objectively boring, but I love my Nissan electric shitbox since it is comfortable, quiet, and dirt cheap to drive). I’m sure most buyers of mid-size SUVs and CUVs value the practicality of their vehicle, and don’t pay that much attention to styling. I don’t see why that is a problem. As long as interesting and distinct vehicles still exist (which they do), I don’t care that 90% of vehicles are fungible transportation appliances.
Excellent write up and dissection! I think the other thing that is getting ignored here (and gets ignored with a lot of design work-architecture, graphic design, UX) is the amount of constraints that all of these companies are working within and still even in the dumbed down whited out versions you can see subtle identity differences between all of these-ffs has anyone noticed all buildings essentially look the same…?
I got sent this image and before I noticed the text I was drawn to the images. “look how clear the design features are without the wheels”, “I like the Porsche and Lexus, but if someone likes the Lincoln or big BMW I won’t argue”. Eventually the text distracted me. Then I got indignant.
Design is just fine, critical analysis is dead though.
That graphic is an old one that Ive kept and or modified. Since in 99.999% of parking lots, the cars look exactly like that…
Mine is Square (it is SQUARE), Blue and its a Honda. Couldnt miss it in a Fire. It serves as a glimpse to the outside world that even though the car purchase is one of the biggest purchases ever… the item purchased is as boring as physically possible.
In a world of covering your face with masks.. and staring down at your device as you drive with a massive increase in inattentive driving… and the vehicle doing things for you… that image above.. is just Orrible.
I only see the word “safety” mentioned in this essay once. My thought is that modern crash testing has more to do with this than anything. From the IIHS’ website, verbatim:
“Although the U.S. population has been growing steadily since 1975, the rate of crash deaths per 100,000 people in 2020 was about half of what it was four decades ago.”
I’d guess most reasonable people would choose fewer gruesome deaths on the road with a tradeoff of boring beltlines and pillar placement.
It’s just a classic case of people trying to create controversy where none exists. People are so desperate to be the next “viral douchebag of the day” (trademark pending) they will post anything to get the attention crave, facts be damned.
Good job Jason! I couldn’t agree with you more. My two cars look like nothing else on the road, C8 and JLU with 3.5 lift and 35’s!
Cheating aside this,does,speak to the steady disappearance of color from cars, houses, etc. and dominance of the mid sized CUV.
My opinion is that alot of that segment looks like Mazda CX-5. The Mazda is fine but why do so many competitors look like it?
Personally I’m doing my part since two out of our three vehicles are red, including the crossover.
You can actually buy a Challenger in places other than the US or Canada?
Where would you drive it?
Any real car enthusiast’s first thought upon seeing this is “Wait, you can get moon discs for the MDX?”
That’s about the only acceptable response. 😉
These all appear to be slightly altered to appear the same basic size, too. I could be wrong, but it would fit the agenda nicely to have cars from 5+ segments look like they’re all the same.
And it distracts from the real problem, which isn’t design. It’s lack of color! QED or something.
How different in style and shape do people think an SUV capable of carrying 5 people, 2 sets of golf clubs, being aerodynamic and meet ALL the varying global crash test standards can be? Really it’s a miracle of design that they look so different.
In the past perhaps European cars looked more distinct from Japanese ones from American ones, but now cars are designed to be sold globally so styles have become more homogeneous.
Also, and perhaps most pertinently, we as humans are pretty fucking dull, not generally liking to stray too far from the herd or group consensus. Normally a wild design is met with wide eyes and negligible sales, at best getting a cult following, recently I’m thinking BMW i3 for example. (Very) Occasionally a new style does catch the zeitgeist and causes a step change in our collective taste, but it’s a risky business committing to a wild design in the hope that it does when in all likelihood it’ll be a sales disaster.
Are you trying to say these are all uniquely ugly? /s
I had managed to avoid that particular image until now. It just seems like the same shit we see in so many forms. “Society is going downhill because I don’t like [some current trend or development].” All music today sounds the same because I listened to a Top 40 station and compared it to a classic rock station that hand-picked the best music from three decades.
It’s also really telling that the creator of the image not only blandified the colors, but also chose the models that best created the narrative. If the smallest or largest SUV in the lineup looked the most “generic,” it seems to be the one picked, no matter whether it would be a direct competitor to the others.
And all classic rock stations basically sound the same. I appreciate AC/DC as much as the next guy, but how many times in a person’s life do they need to hear Back in Black. I wasn’t even alive when it came out, if you were born in 1968 and have been hearing it since you were a teenager, my god how are you still calling in to request it.
I’ve long thought we need at least a decade-long ban on certain classic rock songs played over the air, just so we can appreciate them anew at a later date rather than currently/endlessly hating them.
Back in Black’s on the list near the top, as is Stairway to Heaven, Hotel California, and much of the Rolling Stone’s catalog.
There is one part of it that is kinda true though. Colour options. Which is probably something we can partially blame on people who buy new cars, although its mostly an issue of keeping production costs down, since car paint and rust protection is probably a bit better now. But at least from the 50’s through the 70’s cars were often available in actual, and interesting colours. Some of that has luckily come back in later years, but some manufacturers still try to deny us real colours.
I just remembered I should add lighting design has certainly become a lot more interesting in the last 15-20 years. Something I didn’t use to care about, and actually though was a bit silly on cars like the first Audi A5, but it makes it possible to identify certain cars from a distance even in the dark.
Can any of this color homogenization be blamed on higher insurance rates for flashier vehicles? Hence people choosing less flashy colors that drive up premiums… or at least they used to.
I think the blame is more on dealers choosing ‘safe’ colours for quicker turnaround, and people choosing ‘safe’ to make the car easier to sell/trade in. On the other hand, some car brands have managed to come up with some really nice looking greyish ‘colours’. (Honda and Volvo in particular, but I’m kinda biased)
You make a persuasive case but if I stopped doing things just because they’re wrong and stupid then I wouldn’t have any automotive interests left.
I feel like this is sub paragraph 2, clause a) of our collective mission statement.
Makes me yearn for the days of COTD.
Well done, sir
I don’t…. think its…. That far off? Because these days I find myself sometimes having to look at whatever the badges are on the hoods to know whatever brand it might be. Probably because I seriously don’t care about what most newer cars look like anymore. That is why when something that actually looks different comes out- like the new Bronco- people go apeshit because it doesn’t look like yet another sneaker on wheels.
There is a reason why so many vehicles look the same. Because certain shapes lend themselves better to aerodynamics. Most cars today uses what I’d call the “Humpback cricket” design. Its that same general form factor that makes the meme have some relevancy. Ignore the color and wheels and they are all in about the same shape. Its the same reason why most new cars now have lame CVT transmissions and direct injection: To eeek out whatever last bit of fuel economy a ICE engine can be capable of.
honestly I think the CVT is because it is cheap to make, nevermind how often it fails at 60-80 thousand miles. Direct injection also results in carbon build up because there is no cleaning properties of the fuel hitting the valves. I kind of feel like this is all that planned obsolescence that nearly tanked the US car market in the 70’s. but more and more people accept it or the companies just plain ignore it.
We bought a new Subaru for my wife and it has BOTH things. Basically you MUST change the lubricant every 30-40,000 miles and also use an upper engine treatment to clean all the carbon crap off of the intake. I don’t look forward to that. I Suspect the next vehicle will be a EV as a result.
You may be right the acceleration of planned obsolescence and that it’s a consequence of people just not caring anymore. More and more things are considered disposable, companies have an interest in encouraging us to do just that and buy another, and most people just say “sure”.
Even in what’s near and dear to us here, “parts” are slowly being replaced in many cases by “systems” where you simply replace the entire assembly rather than fixing the broken element.
It’s only planned obsolescence because they hand-wave all the maintenance concerns away with ‘lifetime fluids’ and whatnot. In reality if you service them regularly they should last decently, but I agree that the marginal fuel economy benefits are disheartening in the face of the skyrocketing failure rates due to deferred maintenance.
IME of 2 DI cars with 200k+ (NA) and 180k miles (turbo), DI issues aren’t an across the board issue. Absolutely no maintenance in regards to the fuel systems on either Ford. There was probably some carbon build up (as there would be with any fuel system at that mileage), but there was never an apparent loss of performance, mileage, or drivability from it, so it’s an overstated concern or a particular OEM(s) problem poisoning the tech’s reputation.
CVTs are absolutely terrible, though. In spite of being a manual diehard (partly for superior longevity), I prefer the driving experience of some CVTs to modern autos that constantly, annoyingly jump among their too-many ratios, but the lifespan is completely unacceptable, especially with the average prices of cars. How many people are still making payments when they need to eat an out-of-warranty transmission replacement or otherwise prematurely trade it in at a big value hit? It’s disgusting.
I’ve heard if you stick to a 30k fluid flush interval and don’t do any heavy towing or such then CVTs can easily last over 100k miles, but nearly no one actually does that since ‘modern cars need so little maintenance!’ I quite like driving them, it’s strangely satisfying to mash the throttle and watch the revs hang at a certain rpm while the car comes to speed; the ones that fake shifts are so ridiculous, it defeats the entire point. Might as well have a 12+ speed auto if you’re gonna fake shift.
I think the main thing is it’s not new. Like give me a batch of 1930s cars, I couldn’t tell you which was which.
I do think part of the reason everything looks more homogenous is there’s less of a national identity. In the ’80s, all American cars looked the same – especially at GM where badge engineering went overboard – but Japanese cars looked different (and similar to each other), German cars looked different (and similar to each other) and so on. While individual models all look pretty different, trends are fairly consistent across markets. Even if individual models look pretty dramatically different overall, because the trends are relatively universal you don’t get the same “well that’s German” or “that’s definitely American” subcategorization. Well except for the Broncos, those are definitely American.
They resist easy subcategorization.
All very good points. Yes. When I was a kid we had a 1985 Camry. It was VERY Japanese looking. These days? A Camry looks like a frickin’ Buick.
In a similar vein, I get tired of hearing that cars today “lack soul” or are somehow intensely boring compared to cars of yesteryear. Yes, there are a lot of boring cars out there compared to the number of interesting and fun to drive cars. But that’s how it’s always been. Pick an era from the past, and for every car we lust after and dream about as a “classic”, there are 50 more that are forgotten to history… because they were boring and uninteresting. I mean, look at that comparison of 50s sedans up there. I bet 90% of you can’t tell me what those are. And yes, they look interesting now, but that’s only because they look very different from what we drive today. Back then, they blended into the scenery just like a RAV4 or CR-V.
Of course, the 10% that can identify them are gonna chime in here just to show off. Of somebody’s gonna cheat and look them up, making us think you’re part of that elite group. You know this is true, so go ahead.
One of my brothers used to have a ’57 Ford and the other had a ’58 Chevy, so I’m elite-group-adjacent.
You might be a bit of on your percentage guesstimate. this site is trolled by a lot of older CARmudgeons. That Windsor one year later in 1960 was made into a less conforming design and then did not make it past 1961. at least in the US.
It’s a ’58 Windsor, however, not a ’59. Canadian-market, as it otherwise shares its trim with the US-market Saratoga.
You don’t even need to look them up to cheat. If you zoom in on the picture, the model names are clearly visible.
Obviously, I knew what they were before I zoomed in, and only looked to make sure the pictures were accurate…
The image would be much more obviously wrong if the cars weren’t all scaled so they looked like they were the same length. A RAV4 and X5 are not the same size.
Also Volkswagen is spelled with an e.
If they chose all the vehicles of the same class, they’d show more differentiation. They cherry-picked what looked the most generic to them. I’m a little surprised that they didn’t try to keep rounder vehicles together and slowly move to more angular ones.
“Volkswagen is spelled with an e” would actually be a pretty good tagline for the id series, at least in the US where half the population can’t spell Volkswagen 🙂