AI-Generated “Classic Car Guide” – Polluting The Web With Garbage

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– Posted on February 23, 2025

By now we’re all-too familiar with AI-generated images of cars, among other things. Some of them are quite artistic, and we’ve had our fun with them here in the past (links below) to create What-If scenarios. But in a Google image search the other day for a specific car, I was offered a lilac-colored image that was not at all like the real thing, although it was rather intriguing and surprisingly useful to me; it will be in an upcoming post.

When I followed this image back to its source I was surprised to find that a company called Metro Molded Parts, which makes rubber and plastic parts for a huge array of older cars, is using an AI generator to provide images as well as written descriptions, performance, collectability appeal and other metrics for every car that they offer parts for, and that’s in the hundreds. It’s presented as a “Classic Car Guide” and of course threatens to pollute Google searches, which are already becoming ever more difficult in finding genuine sources rather than AI generated answers. I clicked on a sample of them and offer them here for your perusal, but you might want to try it for yourself.

Looks semi-convincing, at first glance. But a closer look shows that these images were AI generated too.

We’ll talk about the text information later, and look at a sampling of its images first. The surprising thing was just how few cars it actually nailed, or came close to that. Yes, it does know what the iconic ’55 Chevy looks like.

But it mangled the also-iconic ’59 Chevy by giving it an accurate ’58 front end. A nice hybrid of the two, but…

And yes, it’s got the ’65 Mustang down (almost) pat; the roof has too much curvature and there’s a few mother minor details, but pretty close.

And it’s got the 1972 Mustang down fairly well, except it thinks this is a 1975 Mustang II. That’s a pretty egregious mistake.

And the 2003 version looks like it got thrown in the washing machine on the hot water setting.

But its comfort zone is quite small, and it starts hallucinating all-too often; like much of the time.

A 1941 Ford Jeep (military MB)? Looks more like a Willys coupe to me.

But for the 1943 version, it’s trying a bit harder.

And for the 1945, it decided to make it a full convertible instead of a convertible sedan, although the roof is a bit low on both of them.

It seems utterly flummoxed by some very common cars.

And others it just mixes up. It’s got the shape of the ’68-70 Mopar B-Body down pretty pat.

Especially in the case of the Road Runner.

It just keeps using it too often, as in a number of years of Plymouth Furys, like this ’70.

Here’s another complete hallucination, with no similarity to the real thing.

It’s a fair bit closer with the 1960 Corvair. It would have made a sweet hardtop, as I’ve pointed out before.

But the gen2 is being seriously mixed up with the Camaro.

Hmm…where’s the wood?

The Edsel’s iconic horse-collar grille is totally missing.

The 1960 Falcon previews the ’63 Fairlane Sport Coupe’s roof.

This presumably is supposed to be the 1963 Falcon Sprint.

It does a lot better with the ’64 edition.

It should not be surprising that this is what it thinks a ’32 Ford looks like.

Or a 1926 Model T.

It’s better with the older 1916 T, although the body behind the front seat is pure imagination.

A “customized” ’58 Thunderbird.

The ’64 is one of the more relatively accurate ones.

But that’s short-lived.

It’s trying, sort of.

The real 1960 Valiant is so distinctive I assumed some that would come through. Not so.

Let’s try a few Lincolns. This 1957 has almost zero connection to the real thing.

The ’58 Lincoln looks like it’s got a bit of ’57-’58 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham in it.

And the 1960 is previewing the ’61, to some extent.

 

The ’61 is the closest one to reality. A coupe would have been a nice addition to the line.

By 1970 and in the next few years it tries to meld the Mark with the Continental sedan,

How about a ’57 Olds “888”?

Olds non-Achieva.

Henry J you say?

Looks like the Mirada got downsized into a little FWD sporty coupe.

Closer to reality again.

There’s vast numbers of trucks in this database. I picked a more obscure one, the big and tall Ford N-Series of mid-heavyweight trucks. I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised to see an F-100 for the image, as well as variations of that for quite few others from this period. I guess they haven’t scraped our article on the N-Series yet.

With every single car and truck, there’s accompanying data and this write up. A CC these are not. No, these N-Series trucks did not have Twin I Beam front suspension, which only came out in 1965 was only used on the F100 and F250 pickups. It’s bland, generalized, vague, misleading and sometimes just wrong.

But let’s not be too harsh on this poor overworked AI generator; it does know what a VW Beetle looked like, although this looks more like a ’62 than a ’46.

And the ’78 cabriolet has two tops, just in case!

Here’s the link again: https://metrommp.com/classic-car-guides-ratings-features/

 

 

Related CC reading:

A link to fuzzyman’s various AI generated “What If” posts

QOTD: Is AI Ready To Replace Human Writers At CC?

The Radioactive Cars of Chernobyl – Can You Identify Them?

What If: AI Generated Cars That Never Were by T.Halter

What If: More AI Generated Cars That Never Were (But Should Have Been)  by T. Halter