It has become a contradiction due to the huge costs involved in modern car development.
I disagree. You can't polish a turd, no matter how much it cost. That is, an ugly car is still an ugly car. Whether the car company spent $1 on R&D or $1,000,000,000, it's still not the consumer's fault that it's ugly. Consumers want innovation, but that doesn't obligate them to refrain from criticism. Your original post sounds very much along the lines of (paraphrasing) "This is why we can't have nice things. You guys (consumers) want innovation then turn around and criticize." As if it needs to be somebody's fault, as opposed to just an unfortunate business reality. I don't blame the car manufacturers for playing it safe. Nor do I blame movie studios for cranking out endless reboots of old movies and TV shows. It sucks, but I can see how it makes a lot of financial
success sense (stupid autocorrect). But blaming consumers for wanting to have their cake and eat it too is just as absurd.
Consumers want the best product for the lowest price, and manufacturers want the highest return for their R&D dollars. Neither of those positions is inherently any more (or less) valid than the other. That's just how it works. And as far as financial risk goes, there's plenty of risk on both sides, and it scales proportionally with the reward. The whole reason that any company ever takes risks trying to innovate is because there's a potentially much higher payoff. Likewise, a new car is a huge investment, and a consumer is taking on a lot more risk buying a fancy, expensive new model of car than they are just buying yet another 2 year old used Honda Civic.
I don't dispute your reasoning about
why car companies don't innovate as much as they used to. I think that part is fairly obvious. What I disagree with is your seeming need to blame consumers for this state of affairs.
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