Tesla managed to break this trend massively, which proves a problem for things like insurance. The feature set on (say) the January 2014 Model S is very different from the December 2014 Model S, even though they technically share the same "year".
This may make finding and pricing spare parts difficult, or categorizing safety and performance metrics.
This is a case of Nvidia working with that sentiment rather than against it.
They were roasted by review sites previously for co-mingling architectures in the same numbering generation. So this time, they didn't.
TU106 was far too big of a chip to die-harvest low enough for a true volume x60 budget part.
Add in all the non-graphics acceleration hardware that needed to be cut to hit price and... Nvidia didn't feel this could be called an RTX 20xx part.
The 16xx is awkward, but it's the least bad choice.
Just look at BMW or Porsche. Their numbering systems are just as obtuse as GPUs.
Since they started strapping turbochargers to everything down to 1.0l, the engine size comparison has become less important. If anything my 3.0l car is seen as a negative because of the higher fuel consumption.
The manufacturers are just trying to walk a fine line.
Cars are versioned by year/model, which again makes it pretty clear to understand minor/major updates. Sometimes significant updates are introduced in a model year, but generally the core features remain the same and it could still be considered an upgrade to that model.
Without a clear and intuitive versioning scheme it can be confusing and time consuming to make sense of a product line. And that gets frustrating if it keeps changing.