Ampersands (and-per-se-and) can look like a 3 turned sideways with a t attached: latin et. Univers looks like that, Garamond Italic looks like a real e-t ligature. Some ampersands look more like the figure 8 (Futura for example), others more like e or E gone funny.
The one I saw on this car was a home-made variety that I had not seen before and hopefully never will. It is the ß (German double-s ligature), turned upside-down. I have no idea why this happened, as every font has the ampersand in it, even the nastiest free font. But perhaps the person who “designed” the type on this car actually preferred it this way. Everybody’s a designer.
