Cars, sort of like people, often end up stuck in an outside-imposed identity just because of one little detail or event. A kid eats one booger publicly in kindergarten, and you know that kid is the booger-eater at least until 6th grade. So what cars have been unfairly stuck in one specific identity?
There's a fair amount of examples of this, and often those cars most stuck were ones originally designed to be something very different. The PT Cruiser and Scion xB, for example, were intended to be fun, youth-oriented cars, and both ended up being cars of choice for the AARP crowd.
The Miata has for years been unfairly pigeonholed as a "girl car," a term I hate (but I'll cover that in more detail), though I think the car most affected by this has to be VW's 1998 New Beetle.
Maybe it was the inclusion of the bud vase, or maybe it was just the risk of introducing a friendly-looking car when everyone else was going hyper-agressive, but the original New Beetle can't shake it's negative "girl car" associations.
Objectively, it's just a Golf with a more cramped and (arguably) much more interesting body. In silver it sort of resembles some Porsches, and the Turbo versions were fun, distinctive-looking hot hatches. I think they deserve to be freed from their pigeonhole, already.
So. What do all of you think? Lemme see some cars you want to set free!