In my area the biggest factor is multiple families purchasing homes together. When you’re splitting the mortgage it’s a lot more affordable.

The overlap between “cares enough about image quality to not be okay with jpeg” and “doesn’t know to install a third party app” is probably too small for most manufacturers to care about.

The perfect middle ground happened for me with my 2001 E46. Modern headlight shape but with easily replaceable lenses. Gluing the damn things together is BS.

• Manual transmission availability
• Being able to easily modify for more power
• Being able to take part in full sessions for a whole track day and be able to get home after
• Much less weight so you aren’t cooking the brakes and chewing up tires on track
• Minimal planning for road trips
• Much better flexibility on stops on road trips

My money’s on the chairman not learning from the experience either; he still blamed you even though he was totally unable to find a way to actually blame you.