I believe I’ve made it abundantly clear that I’m an unashamed automotive anthropomorphist. Car fronts look like faces, headlights are eyes, and if anyone wants to fight me on that, I’ll be all over you like adorability on a hand-knitted Kirby plush you found on Etsy. Yeah, that’s right. Who’s tough now? Happily, I’m not alone, as I stumbled onto an amazing Twitter thread that started when someone realised comedian Nick Kroll looks kinda like a 2012-ish Volvo XC70, and then snowballed from there.
Here’s the tweet that started it, responded to by Nick Kroll himself:
I drove a Volvo in high school and perhaps it wore off on my dna https://t.co/JBIb6mmUDP
— nick kroll (@nickkroll) July 21, 2020
And, yeah, I can kinda see it. Something about that arrangement of headlights and grille does kinda look like the star of the gleefully pervy animated show about the pains of puberty, Big Mouth.
What’s fun about this tweet is that it started a little celebration of cars that look kinda like celebrities. Like this Chrysler 300 and Jay Z:
Ok hear me out pic.twitter.com/hQTwRg9Sla
— Lexie| BLM (@llexiell) July 20, 2020
…or Jimmy Fallon and this last-gen Prius:
— milena (@malanery_) July 21, 2020
And I guess Vince Vaughn looks a bit like a Durango, sure:
And Vince Vaughn looks like a 2003 Dodge Durango pic.twitter.com/wuZ6vP1X3E
— maeg (@maeghangriggs_) July 20, 2020
And this guy, in that movie! I guess he does weirdly resemble a GMC work van?
Richard Kind Astro Van pic.twitter.com/YXKB0EMNwT
— biji Rojava (@_burnstuff) July 20, 2020
I like this one especially, though I suspect it’d work for anyone making this particular face:
— Joe (@JoeDowning___) July 20, 2020
That’s a 2004 Ford Shelby Cobra concept, and it does not look like things are going alright for that car, at all.
I’ve dabbled in this sort of thought-experiment myself before:
…though I’d love to see any others you may come up with. In this lone Twitter feed, the original Scion xB was said to resemble both Drew Carrey and John Goodman, so clearly this is hardly an exact science.
Still, it’s fascinating and important work.