Despite the subjectively awful looks, the CT somehow managed nearly 2M "pre-orders." Granted that's just a refundable $100 deposit; but it suggests that based on the original price sheet, a LOT of people were interested despite the polarizing design. Let me rephrase that:I think that you are overcomplicating why it's unpopular.
It looks like crap. It looked like crap in the announcement event. While it was popular with a few Tesla fan boys most people hated it.
It's the usual problem. There's a loud minority of people who are online a lot that hype things up then get surprised when reality doesn't match their internet bubble.
Potentially 2M rubes were willing to buy a fugly ass truck because the initial price was sensationally good. (We know they were never going to convert all of the pre-orders into purchases, but even a low bar like 25% would be half a million vehicles.)
Once the very cheap CT out to be vaporware, the true market revealed itself. Besides the flawed price, there are other key factors such as "range anxiety" and BEVs being undesirable in the core pickup truck market. Another way to put this is that if Tesla could fix the price problem (say offer a single motor variant for $55k), they might sell a few to buyers like @Kaido .