Slideshow: Easter eggs in cars

Over the past week, we’ve been on a mission to find some Easter eggs. No, not the chocolate variety but those unique and often undocumented details in cars that bring in that little bit extra flavour to them. Swipe right for some of the ones we found.

 

Jeep is one of the industry’s uncontested champions in the Easter egg department. The cowl beneath the Wrangler’s windshield has seven slots, just like the grille, and there’s also a 7-slot insert in the tailgate, next to a metal plaque that provides information like the approach angle. Some alloy wheel designs (pictured) feature small Willys graphics as a tribute to the original Jeep developed for World War II.

The Compass sold in India also gets its share of Easter eggs. There’s a lizard embossed under the front wiper and even the Loch Ness monster finds place on the rear windshield! The trademark 7-slot grille is a feature on the tailgate, and there’s even one near the centre armrest. There are enough details to keep you busy in the lockdown.

Tata Motors is known to use names of birds for its car development projects, and even some production cars. For instance, Altroz is derived from albatross and Hornbill is the internal name for the HBX. But you won’t find any bird-themed Easter eggs in your Tata car.

The Tiago started the trend with 3 elephants embossed on the inner glovebox lid. The Nexon has 2 tigers on the rear windscreen, and the Harrier sticks to the feline theme with a lion engraved on each of the headlights and a depiction of what seems like a lioness and her cubs on the rear window. The upcoming HBX mini-SUV should have some interesting details too. The concept from Auto Expo 2020 had a rhino on the C-pillar!

 

The Renault Triber has quickly won itself a fan following with a superbly flexible cabin being one of its highlights. The middle-row seats fold, while the rear seats flip, fold and can be removed altogether. In all, Renault says the Triber offers over 100 seating configurations. Of the layouts possible, ‘Camp Mode’ (all but the front seats folded for maximum cargo room) is depicted on the Triber’s rear windscreen by an image of the car and a tent. A cool little detail to discover by a bonfire, isn’t it? 

Volvo knows kids are more likely to sit in the XC90’s third row than adults, so it attempted to keep them entertained by hiding a spider in its web under the storage bin’s lid. The 8-legged traveller hitched a ride in the Swedish company’s biggest SUV because an engineer found the original design boring.

 

Jaguar is new in the world of SUVs but the family is growing. The youngest of the litter, the E-Pace, has an outline of a walking jaguar followed by its cub on the windscreen. The same design appears in the puddle lights that illuminate the ground below the doors as the owner walks up to the car. Jaguar explained the cub represents the E-Pace, its smallest SUV, and the fully-grown cat portrays the bigger F-Pace.

 

In 2016, Tesla co-founder and CEO Elon Musk instructed owners to activate Autopilot four times in quick succession to unlock what he described as a psychedelic cowbell road. It’s in the digital instrument cluster, where an image of the car shows what’s going on around it in real-time, and it’s reminiscent of the Rainbow Road levels in Mario Kart. Tesla has added several video games to its infotainment system in recent years, partly as a way to keep motorists occupied while they wait for their car to charge. 

 

Also, owners of a Tesla Model S or Model X equipped with air suspension can replace the image of their car in the central touchscreen with one showing James Bond’s Lotus Esprit-based submarine, after pressing the T-shaped icon for five seconds and entering ‘007’ in the access code field. Doing this also brings up a menu called ‘depth (leagues)’ that lets motorists adjust the height of the air suspension.

 

 

If you drive a Volkswagen ID.3, you press play to accelerate and hit pause to slow down or stop. Designers added corresponding symbols to the pedal caps; the feature is carried over from the first ID concept introduced at the 2016 Paris motor show. It’s a sign Volkswagen is aiming its first purpose-designed electric car at members of a generation that grew up with the Sony Walkman.

Did you know there were multiple messages hidden in the Toyota GT86’s logo? Yes, the ‘86’ pays homage to the iconic AE86 but the number is also a reference to the flat-four engine’s bore and stroke, which both measure 86mm. The '86’ on the logo also depicts a four-wheel drift. And there’s more. Logos on the side have the '86' flanked by a piston each on either side to symbolize the engine’s boxer layout.