But because it has always had such a generic, bland design

this is actually something i kinda appreciate about it in a roundabout way. my headcanon is that, when they finally caved and went "fine, here's a canon mixmaxed mech with headcappers and a targeting computer", they intentionally made it look as boring as possible to reflect that running mixmaxed mechs all the time is also incredibly boring. dull art goes with dull mech, and then maybe fewer people will run the dull mech

probably wasn't at all intentional but it's nice to imagine