It was the last week of October, with the election fast approaching, and business was booming for Matthew Hiller. His Etsy shop was receiving hundreds of orders per day. He was preparing to leave for vacation in France, and was hoping that while he was away Elon Musk wouldn’t do anything “particularly crazy.”

那是10月的最后一周，大选即将开始，马修·希勒的生意十分红火。他的Etsy网店每天收到数百份订单。他当时正准备前往法国度假，希望在自己离开期间埃隆·马斯克不会做出什么“特别夸张”的事情。

It may seem strange, but every time Mr. Musk, the Tesla chief executive, causes a stir, Mr. Hiller has to fulfill orders for his online shops. The most popular of the items that he sells? Bumper stickers that say, in all-caps, “I Bought This Before We Knew Elon Was Crazy.”

听上去可能很怪，但每当特斯拉首席执行官马斯克引发争议，希勒就得应付网店收到的订单。他卖得最好的产品？用大写字母写着“这是在大家知道埃隆疯了之前买的”的保险杠贴纸。

For his vacation, Mr. Hiller asked a friend to cover for him. “I don’t know how she’s going to manage this,” he said. With Mr. Musk frequenting rallies in support of Donald J. Trump and posting on X relentlessly at the time, Mr. Hiller was dubious that business would slow. He had no idea that things were about to get far more hectic with Mr. Trump’s winning the presidential election and Mr. Musk’s status as his close ally.

度假期间，希勒请一位朋友替他打理网店。“我不知道她如何能应付，”他说。由于马斯克经常参加支持特朗普的集会，并在X上不停地发帖，希勒觉得生意应该不至于太差。让他想不到的是，随着特朗普赢得总统大选，马斯克成为他的亲密盟友，生意会比变得比以前还要火爆许多。

Mr. Musk spent more than $250 million on the 2024 election, according to federal filings, and then immediately stepped in as a key part of Mr. Trump’s transition team. Few business executives are as closely associated with their products as Mr. Musk, so his rise in the world of far-right politics led to plenty of celebration among Trump-supporting Tesla owners, but plenty of consternation among those who disagreed with the move, or who had simply grown tired of Mr. Musk.

根据联邦文件，马斯克在2024年大选上花费了超过2.5亿美元。然后，他立即成为了特朗普过渡团队的重要成员。很少有企业高管像马斯克这样，与他们的产品联系如此紧密，因此他在极右翼政治世界中的崛起让支持特朗普的特斯拉车主们欢呼雀跃，但也让那些不同意这一举动或只是厌倦了马斯克的人感到非常惊愕。

The solution, for many Tesla owners on both ends of that spectrum, has been to slap a bumper sticker on their car to let people know how they feel about Mr. Musk.

对于许多分处于政治光谱两端的特斯拉车主来说，解决方案就是在他们的车上贴上保险杠贴纸，让人们知道他们对马斯克的看法。

Mr. Hiller, who lives in Honolulu and works at the Waikiki Aquarium, became a key player in the situation by being ahead of the curve thanks to his side business: an Etsy shop called Mad Puffer Stickers.

家住檀香山的希勒在威基基水族馆工作，他凭借自己的副业——一家名为疯狂气鼓鱼贴纸(Mad Puffer Stickers)的Etsy网店，早早抓住了一个风口，成为了这一现象的关键人物。

At first, Mr. Hiller just sold stickers with fish illustrations (e.g. an image of a clownfish with the caption “Don’t talk to me. I’m a fishtrovert”) on Etsy and Amazon. He had been considering buying a Tesla, but in early 2023, several months after Mr. Musk completed his takeover of Twitter, Mr. Hiller said he found himself alienated by what he characterized as misinformation on the site.

起初，希勒只是在Etsy和亚马逊上销售带有鱼图案的贴纸（例如，一张小丑鱼的图片，上面写着“别跟我说话。我是个鱼向的人[fishtrovert]。”）。他考虑过买特斯拉，但2023年初，也就是马斯克完成对Twitter的收购几个月后，希勒说，由于这个网站上那些他所说的不实信息，他感到了隔阂。

“So I’m like, there’s no way I’m buying a Tesla: I don’t want to give this guy a penny,” he said. “Then I started thinking, there’s got to be so many people who are just embarrassed, who have a Tesla already, and they’re like, ‘Oh my god, now I’m repping this guy. I don’t want to endorse anything this guy stands for.’”

“所以我想，我不可能买特斯拉：我不想给这个人一分钱，”他说。“然后我开始想，肯定有很多已经是特斯拉车主的人觉得丢脸，他们会想说，‘天哪，现在我成了这个人的代言人了。我不想支持这个人所代表的任何东西。’”

联邦报备文件显示，公开支持特朗普的马斯克在 2024年大选上花费了超过2.5亿美元。

That is when he added the new bumper sticker — “I Bought This Before We Knew Elon Was Crazy” — to his offerings, aiming to draw in left-leaning Tesla owners. Initially, he sold between five and 10 of the stickers a day. But as Mr. Musk became increasingly outspoken in his support of Mr. Trump, more orders started to flow in, with Mr. Hiller reporting he has sold around 18,000 of the stickers across 30 countries.

就在那时，他在店里上架了一些新的保险杠贴纸——“这是在大家知道埃隆疯了之前买的，”旨在吸引有左派倾向的特斯拉车主。最初，他每天卖出五到10张贴纸。但随着马斯克越来越直白地支持特朗普，更多的订单开始涌入，希勒说，他已经在30个国家/地区售出了大约1.8万张贴纸。

“It’s become a pretty good side business,” Mr. Hiller said.

“这已经成为一项相当不错的副业，”希勒说。

The situation turned into an opportunity for supporters of Mr. Musk as well, with multiple pro-Musk bumper stickers surfacing, including one that seemed to be a direct response to Mr. Hiller’s that reads “I bought this after I knew Elon was awesome.”

同时这也为马斯克的支持者们带来了机会，各种各样支持马斯克的保险杠贴纸开始出现，其中一张似乎是对希勒产品的直接回应，上面写着“我知道埃隆很棒后就买了这个”。

Among the customers for that sticker was Sean Ziese, who runs a machine shop in eastern Oklahoma.

在俄克拉荷马州东部经营一家金属加工厂的肖恩·齐塞就买了这么一张贴纸。

“I’ve always been against E.V.s. — the oil patch is what puts food on my family’s table,” Mr. Ziese said. “During the Republican National Convention, Trump said that Elon is going to start supporting conservatives. I told my wife, ‘If Elon is going to start supporting conservatives and free speech, I’m going to start supporting Elon, even though I hate E.V.s.’”

“我一直反对电动汽车——油田养活了我们家，”齐塞说。“在共和党全国代表大会期间，特朗普说埃隆将开始支持保守派。我告诉我的妻子，‘如果埃隆开始支持保守派和言论自由，我也会开始支持埃隆，虽然我讨厌电动汽车。’”

So he bought a Cybertruck and added the “awesome” sticker. It has become his favorite car.

于是他买了一辆Cybertruck，贴上了那张“很棒”贴纸。这成了他最喜欢的车。

It is a situation fairly unique to Tesla that the company’s products are viewed, by some, as a direct endorsement of the company’s chief executive. Buying an Amazon Kindle does not necessarily signify that you’re a Jeff Bezos fan. And less than a decade ago, being a Tesla owner didn’t necessarily imply an endorsement of Mr. Musk’s public persona as much as it signaled an interest in electric cars, a fair amount of disposable income and a concern about climate change.

这种情况基本只会出现在特斯拉身上：有些人认为该公司的产品是对公司首席执行官的直接认可。购买亚马逊Kindle并不一定意味着你是杰夫·贝佐斯的粉丝。不到十年前，成为特斯拉车主并不一定意味着对马斯克公众形象的认可，而是表明对电动汽车感兴趣、有相当数量的可支配收入和对气候变化的关注。

It is not possible to know the overall impact of Mr. Musk’s political messaging on how Teslas are perceived by their owners. But his sharp pivot to the right was cited as a potential factor for a slump in sales earlier this year, and a vocal group of Tesla owners, like Mr. Hiller’s customers, has become self-conscious about the cars. For them, the anti-Musk bumper stickers allow them to create a distance from the company’s chief executive without actually selling their vehicle.

马斯克的政治信息在总体上如何影响车主对特斯拉的观感是很难说清的。但他的突然右倾被认为是今年早些时候特斯拉销量下滑的潜在因素。一群态度鲜明的特斯拉车主——比如希勒的那些顾客——已经对自己的车感到难为情。对他们来说，反马斯克的保险杠贴纸让他们能够与这家公司的首席执行官划清界限，同时又用不着把车卖了。

Brian Esola, a paralegal and real estate agent who lives on City Island in the Bronx, identifies as an “independent with left-leaning ideologies.” He purchased a Tesla in April, but began to feel uneasy about the implied association with Mr. Musk.

布莱恩·埃索拉是一名律师助理兼房地产经纪人，住在布朗克斯区城市岛，自称是“思想左倾的独立人士”。他于4月购买了一辆特斯拉，但开始对拥有特斯拉与马斯克的隐含联系感到不安。

“I appreciate what he does occasionally in his business endeavors, but from a personal perspective, and from his words and attributes and actions, I just could not support him,” Mr. Esola said. So he purchased a sticker from Mr. Hiller’s Etsy shop that said, “Anti Elon Tesla Club.”

“有时候，我确实欣赏他在商业方面的尝试，但从个人角度，从他的言行举止来看，我无法支持他，”埃索拉说。因此，他从希勒的Etsy网店购买了一张贴纸，上面写着“反埃隆·特斯拉俱乐部”。

Morgan Ames, a professor of data science at the University of California, Berkeley, purchased her first Tesla in 2013. Four years later, after she had her second child, she bought another one to accommodate her growing family.

2013年，加州大学伯克利分校数据科学教授摩根·埃姆斯购买了她的第一辆特斯拉。四年后，有了第二个孩子的她又买了一辆特斯拉，以满足一个更大的家庭的需求。

很少有公司首席执行官会像马斯克这样与自己的产品有如此紧密的联系。

“Even in 2017, we were definitely uncomfortable with some of the more outrageous stuff Elon Musk was saying in the news,” Ms. Ames said. She nevertheless doubled down on her Tesla ownership because she couldn’t find other electric cars that matched Tesla’s capabilities.

“即使在2017年，我们对埃隆·马斯克在新闻中说的一些较为离谱的话也感到很不舒服，”埃姆斯说。尽管如此，因为找不到其他能与特斯拉相媲美的电动汽车，她还是又购买了一辆特斯拉。

After Mr. Musk’s association with Mr. Trump became impossible to ignore, Ms. Ames printed a bumper sticker for her Tesla that said, “Shut up, Elon Musk.” She briefly sold them on the online marketplace Zazzle, but said her shop was removed after complaints. Nowadays, any time someone compliments her sticker, she gives them one.

在马斯克与特朗普的关系变得无法忽视后，埃姆斯为她的特斯拉打印了一张保险杠贴纸，上面写着“闭嘴，埃隆·马斯克”。她一度在网上市场Zazzle出售过这些贴纸，但她说她的店铺在收到投诉后被关闭了。现在，只要有人称赞她的贴纸，她就会送他们一张。

For Mr. Ziese, however, Mr. Musk’s actions have only made him more sure that he made the right decision.

但对于齐塞来说，马斯克的行为只会让他更加确信自己做出了正确的决定。

“It’s really a neat experience,” he said of driving his Cybertruck with its Elon bumper sticker. “It never would have happened if Elon never would have bought X, and, you know, got free speech going again.”

“体验绝了，”他谈到驾驶贴有埃隆保险杠贴纸的Cybertruck时说道。“如果埃隆当时没买X，这一切就不会发生，然后，你知道吧，现在言论自由又起来了。”