“Unfortunately for us, Oldsmobile never went ahead and produced the Incas. They made a slew of other wild concept cars as well, but none of those saw the light of day either […]”
The point of clickbait is that the link will get reposted to all kinds of places online, with a headline that intentionally misrepresents the article to those readers and fools them into clicking.
(Original headline was “The 1986 Oldsmobile Incas Had The Wildest Dashboard You’ve Never Seen.”)
Concept vehicles like this are typically built one-off and showcased at manufacturer auto shows. Some of them later go into mass production, and some of them don't.
Obviously, such a truthful headline would get much fewer clicks.
The actual headline intentionally wants us to think they’re going to show us the “Wildest” Knight Rider car that people were driving in the 80s. (Maybe they were rare, maybe you were too young to have seen them, but we have pics! Click here!)
I immediately presumed it was a concept car from the headline. If you presumed otherwise, that just might be your unfamiliarity with the subject matter.
A clickbait headline elides, omits key information strategically, deliberately creating a far juicier story in the minds of readers than is justified by the actual post-click article.
Key information like the fact that no one ever bought and drove this car on the road.
I don’t think a headline gets immunity from being called clickbait if it successfully dupes only those people insufficiently familiar with its particular subject matter.
Clickbait gets under the noses of such people by design.