What your car says about you

The power of automotive identities

Since the earliest days of the automobile, cars have been a conveyor of identity. Cars and their drivers are bound together. Collectively we say something about them, and they, in turn, say something about us.

This can work in a wide variety of ways. In 1901, for instance, if you owned an automobile, it conveyed the idea that you were both rich and adventurous. The correlation was pretty direct: cars were expensive and they broke down constantly, so you had to have a lot of money and be up for a bit of adventure to own one.

In the 1920s automobile marketers helped to pioneer a major shift in advertising in the United States. They began to move beyond nuts and bolts and what a car could do technically, to crafting an image or even lifestyle around their products. The most famous example of this was a 1923 Jordan automobile magazine advertisement that was designed not only to say something about their cars, but their owners. The one-page ad doesn’t mention the car’s engine, acceleration, or top speed, but rather that it is:

Built for the lass whose face is brown with the sun when the day is done of revel and romp and race.

June 23, 1923 advertisement “Somewhere West of Laramie” for the Jordan Motor Car Company

The goal was to convince buyers that when they bought a Jordan they not only bought a car, they were buying a desirable persona, a set of values that people would be excited to be associated with.

Marketers didn’t always have the last say, however. Groups of people could work together to imbue a car with meaning as well. In the 1980s, as Japanese cars were becoming increasingly popular in the United States, American factory workers felt threatened. They branded the imported cars as “un-American.” To drive one was to betray your fellow countrymen.

Of course, it’s not just gasoline powered cars that “say something” about their owners. Electric vehicles have been tied up with their owner’s identity from the earliest days.

In the 1910s and 20s, Detroit Electric, the biggest manufacturer of EVs at the time, highlighted some of the technical differences between its cars and internal combustion engine cars and made an argument for what this said about its owners. Their cars were free from gasoline and oily messes and they had electric starters, which meant no more breaking your wrists trying to wind a crank. Thus, they argued, their cars were built for polite society. Buy one and you’ll have an “aristocratic appearance.”

Detroit Electric Advertisement circa 1914

In the early 2010s, many EVs were marketed as sustainable. The lack of tailpipe emissions was framed as a way to help the environment. People bought EVs not only in an effort to be environmentally responsible, but also to be seen as environmentally friendly.

Over the past few months, however, there has been a rather remarkable shift going on in EVs and identity politics. It’s not true of all electric cars, but the image of the largest and probably most important EV company in the history of the United States – Tesla – has been changing rapidly.

More than most car companies, the Tesla brand has been intimately wrapped up with the image of its CEO: Elon Musk. Over the past two decades Musk has built up a huge following. He has embodied the Silicon Valley ideal of “move fast and break things.” And in many ways Tesla the company did just that. The company produced cars that few people thought were possible and disrupted the trajectory of an industry that had been focused on building gasoline powered cars for well over a century. Musk had the image of a bold innovator who was ushering in a new and better future.

Many people who purchased Teslas did so because they wanted to help the environment. And others did so because they wanted an incredibly quick car for not much money. But the company also caught the eye of people who were attracted to the image that Elon Musk conveyed. To buy a Tesla was, at least for some, a way to be an early adopter, to push for new and better futures, and align with a technological pioneer.

But Elon Musk’s public image has undergone some shifts. He is still seen as an innovator and technological pioneer, but he also has been associated with some of the negative aspects of rapid technological change. Soon after he purchased Twitter and changed some of its policies, the amount of hate speech on the platform increased and some of his fans began to have second thoughts. They spent less time focusing on the future that Musk was promising and began to worry about the present that he was creating. In response to those actions and others, some Tesla owners sought to distance themselves from the CEO by adding a bumper sticker to their car: “I bought this before Elon went crazy.” These Tesla owners were looking to take control of the image that their car conveyed.

Since the beginning of the second Trump Administration, the number of people looking to distance themselves from Elon Musk has increased. Many in the US and beyond are not pleased with the Trump Administration’s efforts to radically reframe the US Federal Government in general and are specifically upset by the ways in which Elon’s team is reducing the federal workforce. There’s been a trend recently for a number of Tesla owners looking to get rid of their cars to reduce their association with Elon Musk. And a number of non-Tesla owners are looking for ways to express their displeasure with the Trump administration in general and Musk in particular and have called for a boycott of Tesla products.

The debates are playing out in message groups across the internet. Many Tesla owners clearly love their cars. They are amazed by the technology, the way they drive, the benefits for the environment, and the impressive charging network. But they are struggling to figure out what to do with the new identity their cars are conveying. Some are considering selling. Some have already sold on their cars. And many are cheekily saying that be more than happy to take their used Teslas for free if they no longer want them.

The impact of these concerns can be seen in the sales numbers for Tesla. The final numbers are not in yet, but first quarter 2025 US sales of Tesla vehicles are predicted to be significantly lower than a year ago. Sales in Europe are far worse. January 2025 sales of Teslas in Europe dropped 45% from a year ago. Even the value of used Teslas has dropped precipitously over the last year.

There are many debating why sales of Teslas are slowing so significantly. Some point to the fact that Tesla hasn’t updated its lineup for a while and many are simply waiting for the new Model Y to be released. Some argue that the dramatic increase in quality and variety of other EVs is giving consumers many other options. But it’s reasonably clear that Tesla’s association with Musk and the Trump Administration is playing a key role. For many people – both in the US and around the world – to own a Tesla is at least in a small way to align yourselves with the values and priorities of its figurehead, Elon Musk.

In looking back across the history of the automobile in the United States I can’t think of many instances where the identity of a car company changed so radically in a short amount of time. The Ford Motor Company was increasingly questioned in the 1970s as it became public that the company knew that the fuel tank design of the Ford Pinto would lead to fatalities. Chevrolet worked to defend itself after the criticism Ralph Nader made of the safety of the Corvair in the 1960s. And in the late 1930s Studebaker decided to rename the car it had previously sold as the “Dictator” after the rise of fascism in Europe made the word less than pleasing to many Americans. All of those companies survived, but their marketing teams and corporate leadership worked overtime to reclaim control of their image.

Tesla and Elon Musk are working on that right now. However, while most companies have responded to the direct politicization of their product by trying to claim they are apolitical and distancing themselves from political parties, Tesla is taking a different approach. On March 11^th, President Trump held a live-streamed event on the White House lawn showcasing Tesla cars, saying that he personally is going to buy one, described their technical details, shared the different lease deals that people could get on them right now, and labeled Elon Musk a patriot for the work he’s done with the company. On March 19^th, the US Secretary of Commerce directly encouraged viewers on Fox News to buy Tesla stock, referring to it as an investment in Elon Musk himself. These actions seem designed to strengthen the image of Tesla as being directly tied to the actions and values of Elon Musk and the Trump Administration. That may well appeal to some, but will alienate others.

Sadly, some in the US over the past two weeks have decided that changing the image of Tesla is not enough, and have begun to engage in malicious destruction of property. Tesla showrooms, Tesla charging stations, and individual Tesla vehicles have been targeted. These are automobile identity scenes we haven’t seen since the violence aimed at Japanese cars in the 1980s.

What happens next is still very much up in the air. What is clear is that the fight over the identity of Tesla and Tesla owners isn’t over yet and the ramifications are likely to be far reaching.