Tesla’s Cybertruck Is a Retro-Future Space Brick—and I’m Down With That

Listen—I love classic off-road vehicles. The Land Rover Defender. The Toyota Land Cruiser. The ’60s–’70s Broncos. But lately it feels like these rough and ready icons have literally lost their edge. Today’s models sport cozy interiors and curvaceous exteriors that look downright refined—and almost cutesy—in comparison with their cold-rolled, rectilinear predecessors. 

Enter Tesla’s latest vehicle, the Cybertruck. It’s a beveled slab of steel. It’s a B-2 bomber on four wheels. It’s a Mad Max meat wagon ready to tackle the apocalypse we’re almost certainly headed towards. (So what if the windows can’t withstand steel balls? They’ll fix that.)

It looks nothing like Tesla’s previous vehicles. It looks nothing like any car on the streets today. It looks exactly like it flew off the set of Blade Runner for its grand debut at Tesla’s design studio in Hawthorne, California.

It’s the antithesis of urbane—it’s a bulletproof, drivable wedge, and it’s sure to split opinion. (Curves? Where we’re going, we don’t need curves.) It’s the freshest, weirdest production vehicle any automaker has rolled out in years—and I can’t help but love it.

 Long live the Cybertruck. See you in the Thunderdome. 

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