8 cars from Cyberpunk 2077 and their real-life counterparts: From Mustang to garbage truck

Futuristic car design in games almost always grows out of a very earthly garage. An artist can paint all the neon, chrome, and flying cars they want, but beneath the 2077 gloss, the silhouettes of cars our parents drove still show through. Sometimes what shows through has nothing to do with cars at all.

One Cyberpunk 2077 player decided to put that to the test and matched Night City vehicles with real-life lookalikes. These aren't direct prototypes, just models you could use today to roughly recreate a drive through the streets of the game.

Some of them hadn't even been released by the game launch in December 2020. Here is what the list looks like:

• Quadra Type-66 – Ford Mustang

• Villefort Alvarado – Cadillac Eldorado

• Rayfield Caliburn – Bugatti Chiron

• Villefort Deleon – Lincoln Mark VIII

• Villefort Cortes – Chrysler Imperial

• Rayfield Aerondight – Bodo 77

• Makigai Tanishi – Suzuki Samurai

• Herrera Outlaw – Cadillac Celestiq

The Aerondight, the most expensive car in the game, drew the most pushback. Comparing it to a modern coupe struck many as a stretch, since the split windshield and elongated hood clearly point to the coachbuilt coupes of the 1930s. The Bugatti Type 57 Atlantic and its prototype, the Aérolithe, come to mind, while the Guinevere version looks like the monumental Type 41 Royale. Essentially, it is a car for a Gatsby or a Rockefeller, transplanted into the age of megacorporations. Commenters offered other corrections:

• Villefort Deleon looks more like a Lincoln Mark VII or GM G-body cars, right down to the 1979 Chevrolet Monte Carlo from "Training Day"

• Makigai Tanishi is closer to the Toyota Land Cruiser FJ45 than to the Suzuki Samurai

• The pint-sized Makigai MaiMai recalls the Fiat 126p and the tiny American CitiCar electric of the 1970s

• Thorton Colby looks like a cross between the Subaru Brat pickup and the AMC Pacer

• Herrera Riptide Terrier practically quotes the wedge-shaped Aston Martin Bulldog

CD Projekt Red hid some of the references hardly at all. At launch, Type-66 variants with different radiator grilles nodded to pop culture, and the Jen Rowley is an obvious General Lee from "The Dukes of Hazzard".

The Porsche 911 Turbo driven by Johnny Silverhand is a licensed car outright. The reverse direction is just as curious: the Cadillac Celestiq only entered production in 2024, so the Herrera Outlaw beat the real luxury market to the punch by several years.

The cherry on top was the ninth slide, captioned "Coincidence?", which shows a Tesla Cybertruck parked next to an ordinary dumpster from the game.