It's amazing the lengths manufacturers now go to, to make cars refined, quiet etc. It's amazing how intricate those door panels are - take the panel off an older car and you're usually holding (at best) a slab of plastic with a bunch of felt wedged into the gaps.
Was thinking about this the other night - I'm almost disappointed sometimes when I get to drive a modern luxury car, because regular, affordable cars have made such massive progress in terms of build quality, refinement, NVH and so-on that there's no longer such a big gap to the expensive stuff like there used to be - particularly given many luxury cars are negatively affected by the big, wide, noise-producing tyres they now require.
Back in say, the early 90s there was a massive difference between something like a Ford Escort with a noisy CVH engine with a basic air filter, barely any sound damping material, poor panel fit etc and an S-class. Today, there's far, far less difference between something like the 3-cylinder Ecoboost Focus and a modern S-class. Even though the Merc has got better, the cheaper stuff has got better by an order of magnitude.
