Car Brand Loyalty Is Falling Fast: Why More Americans Are Switching Sides

Maybe if the cars weren't so bad, I'd be more loyal to them.

Latest example: on my current car, if I wanted to tune treble EQ (say I entered loud section of highway), or a balance (my passengers don't like current song), it takes tens of seconds touching the touchscreen with no audible or tactile feedback. It's basically impossible to do safely while driving. And meanwhile, the steering wheel has 4 buttons which are mostly useless as long as car is in the motion.

(For the reference, my previous car, 2012 model, had nicely designed physical buttons with characteristic feedback that allowed one to tune this without taking eyes off the road. And the car before that had dedicated rotary knobs.)

Some of it is car brands not being loyal to themselves and SUVs just becoming amorphous blobs.

The Ford Mustang used to mean something, I'd imagine they could still make an electric Mustang that would rock people but no it is just some random SUV with a picture of a horse on the front and it doesn't even look like the horse that used to be on Mustangs. If this is what carmakers aspire to, people have no reason to be attached to a brand.

Infotainment is part of the problem. You've got a choice of "atrociously bad" and "extension of a smartphone". In the first case you have the potential of building an experience that would tie you to the brand but it's bad so it pushes you away, in the second case it is the same whatever brand you pick.