Bean counters.... the thing is, a few hundred quid here and a few hundred there and you end up with something costing a lot of money...
Which then means people won't buy it.
At the bottom end of the market few will pay for "options" and if you make those things baseline they won't buy it at all.
Ever wondered why you can't spec the glitzy features on a Corsa? Because they will never sell them to Corsa buyers.
Conversely, in models further up the tree, the options are there to be milked. A 60k base car you can easily get those customers to spec another 10k of options, maybe more.
But because of the way that car manufacturing is structured (most components made by third party suppliers and you have to commit to volumes of units) having an option nobody ever orders is bad for the business. So you need to judge your customers correctly or lose money hand over fist. Which is why you see VW regularly delete options on Golfs...nobody ordered them sufficiently and they were losing money.
One of the things though that has happened, as well as some features becoming "must haves" to sell a car (eg sat nav and ACP/AA) is that the law requires all sorts of technology now. From air bags to adaptive speed limiting.... it all adds to the cost.
Excactly, VW sell imagine 10 m cars a year, so for every £1 cut, that's £10m saving, which includes now, the reduced cost on switches, dials and anything with a mechanism, even your old glass holder, so what is a daft and minor reduction in part or quality to us, is always £ x by 10m to VW.
The under seat draw was my biggest annoyance, so useful, but we obviously can live without it, and once past the initial moans, everyone soon forgets.
The one area that can bite into sales, is material quality, it definitely put me off what was then serious consideration to Polo GTI for wife, the interior materials were shocking, especially when it was replacing a Audi A1 S Line, the comparison was certainly not favourable on the newer car. Wife eventually ended up with a 2019 R, much cheaper and obviously far superior in every aspect there is.
As the aforementioned R was having its MOT and oil service last week, had a good pour over the MK 8 R sitting in showroom, and know folk love how they drive, and have got used to interiors to like, for my new eyes, interior did feel cheaper materially, and it was too minimal, so hope the MK 8.5 does up the quality for what are premium car prices these days,