I do not suppose anything we say has any merit, but I know money talks, (or the lack of it) - there is hope...
I very respectfully disagree given the modern context. And here is my reasoning:
If we were to be living in an isolated world of the eighties or nineties or earlier, the good old money talks would have mattered a lot more. Back then decision makers were almost like opinion/market drivers/shifters. Whereas in 2018 we live in a much more transparent, well aware world with solid competition driving the tech advancements as well as the economics of things. Every now an then you'll have a Tesla or RED camera blowing everything out of the water. Look into what the RED camera did do the nice, comfortable, fat and lazy film tech industry where a camera body alone used to cost upwards of two hundred grand, without the lenses. RED almost killed the film industry giants such as ARRI, Panavision, Kodak, and Agfa (the mercedes and bmw of that trade) with a single strike. All those giants had become lazy as the business was already good with no real need for R&D in advancements and the film tech basically sat and rot over the decades, that is until RED exploded on the scene and woke everybody the hell up and force-sent everyone from one extreme end of being profitable and lazy to the other extreme end of survival mode.
Tesla now has everyone else scrambling including once-innovators but now turned fat and lazy makers such as mercedes and BMW. Havent seen any ground breaking tech from them lately, and by lately I mean the last couple of decades
But most of all, a lot of it is now driven by the fact that the modern consumer/customer is a much smarter customer. ****** products will have a small run and will simply not survive however conforming they maybe to the prevailing fads/demands as there are just too many makers out there looking for opportunities.
And, as a consumer/customer, my job is to simply demand a better product the moment I become interested in a brand and reach for my pocket, period, and specially when the brand is supposedly a "prestige" brand, costing me upwards of 65 or 70k.
Sympathy and well-being of the executives in charge should be the least of my concerns as a customer as I am pretty sure that most of them will survive with owning only four houses each instead of five and/or an island getaway cabin. And I am also sure that regardless they still will find a way to buy their fifth house with a matching yacht to go with it
So yes, what we, the potential or existing paying customers have to say, matters in 2018. And the more we let the automaker(s) know what we are thinking and how we are responding to their product(s), the more it will keep the executives/suits in check, the better the product(s) will be, and we as paying customers will also win at the end of the day along with the executives/suits with their fifth homes.
The passive the paying customer, the shittier the end-product, thats how its always been.