Seattle's one fully pedestrianized street is hosting...an automotive photo shoot

It's pretty telling of the fact that:

Car-free streets and workable alternatives to driving, provide people the freedom that car ads are portraying.

There's never traffic in a car ad.
Advertising cars with the exact scene that carbrained people are constantly getting in the way of is ridiculously ironic.
Carbrained people want to enjoy the beauty and lifestyle that comes from walkable cities, but those things only exist because people aren't driving.
They want to drive on empty roads (that are empty because nobody else has cars) to get to a beautiful leaf-shaded downtown with cafés and shops (that only exist because of dense mixed-use cities) then park in an always-vacant spot right outside the door (that is only vacant because everyone else walked or biked)
The "dream lifestyle" of car ownership is a fakery that only exists if cars are an exclusive luxury for a tiny number of people. It's fundamentally elistist, and selfish. But nonetheless that's the lifestyle advertisers continue to push, and the public continues to lap up.
- Yes. Like "You're not stuck in traffic. You are traffic."
  But getting people to think through anything just seems impossible. It's like most people never really advance beyond toddler levels of reasoning.

Just like theme parks, the idyllic vision of the product is when you’re the only one around enjoying the product. The reality of LOTS of people enjoying the product while you do inherently reduces the appeal.

This is why indie rock lovers hated that it went mainstream. Suddenly everyone was enjoying the product they previously had to themselves.
- I think the difference for music, movies, books, etc is that the product itself doesn’t change in substance or function when more people are using it. Parks, Cars and the infrastructure that enables them, Restaurants, and other experiential products are negatively impacted by widespread usage. Cars are less enjoyable because of traffic. Lines to get on space mountain make the whole experience worse than you imagine the ride itself being. All this stuff is marketed as a fantasy version of the actual experience you have in a way that isn’t the same as when other people are cringe with your music.
- Is this a good comparison at all? I don't believe so, as the other commenter explained nicely.
  Did Indie Rock lovers hate that their music went mainstream?
  Or did they hate that they didn't play in small cozy venues anymore but large and anodyne halls that cost 10x per ticket? That their records started sounding worse for much the same reasons? That artists got bogged down with contracts that forced them to produce more, more, more whether they had ideas in their head or not?
  The last one is the most important one to me: Independent is not just a genre, it actually means independently produced. And that sort of Independent never dies and rarely goes mainstream.

Car companies realize that streets full of their products look terrible

As an art and design nerd who really appreciates cars as pieces of industrial design, that is an extremely succinct and perceptive criticism.

(Also it a lot of them just aren't that beautiful or interesting of pieces of design anymore which makes me a bit sad. Maybe it's actually always been that way. Regardless, that's really a different issue)

Also it a lot of them just aren’t that beautiful or interesting of pieces of design anymore which makes me a bit sad
A lot of the cars now are bigger. They don't look sleek or interesting. They look overweight. Cumbersome.
I really dislike those big-ass trucks with the bed that never gets used taking up a lot of space in the city.
I feel like one could draw a connection between this and the obesity problems in the US.
- Fun bit of introspection: I believe most SUVs and trucks are actually owned by women. The primary driver for big cars isn’t just male toxicity - it’s feelings of safety, extended to children. Many women have very genuine reasons to feel vulnerable anywhere they walk. That changes when they’re behind an 8000-ton tank.
Artistic designs has taken a backseat to profitability.
So we have a whole bunch of stylistically identical designs from all major companies. Without a logo on most vehicles today it is very difficult to distinguish between companies. They are all about the same with very little variability.
Case in point: the bog-standard station-wagon in that picture. Even the marketing dickheads realise they need a pretty girl in the picture to make it look remotely interesting.
- ... the fact that you just called an SUV a station wagon and, like, you're not wrong, just made me super depressed. I drive a Mini and have since I started driving. In the beginning, I had the smallest car around. Now, I usually have the only car around.
Cars used to be awesome, now they suck. Go look at pictures of cars from the 40s to 60s or 79s even... there is no comparison.
- This isn’t necessarily true. Even back then the streets were filled with shitbox cars that all looked the same. But only the cars that were beautiful and unique are still remembered and the rest are forgotten
- Some of the conformity is safety. Cars today are generally designed with crumple zones, airbags, and other safety measures in mind. That leads to them looking similar to other cars designed with the same requirements.
  There are still some beautiful cars today, but they are outliers. For example, I saw a Honda Prologue recently and loved it. It has a somewhat unique look that was much more obvious in person. And the Alfa Romeo Stelvio and Giulia, while bigger than their older brethren, always make me smile.
  There are other examples. But largely, cars have become pretty samey and boring.
- 79s even
  Uh, my first car ever was a '79 Chevy Malibu. There has never been a more boring basic car in existence, and for good measure it was mechanically a piece of shit. The only good thing about it was that it had once been owned by semi-famous comic book artist P. Craig Russell.

Would be a shame if a dozen eggs would accidentally land on that polished chrome surface

Gotem.

Huge towers of blue icecream. Or maybe something phallic. With stylised spaceships on top. Or maybe weirdly shaped chocolate chips.
- obviously two ice cream cones spilling their contents, hence why they're empty.