I had a '16 eGolf, loved everything about it except the range. Eventually when my commute got longer I had to upgrade, would go for a 300mi eGolf any day, but they killed it in favor of the bland AF ID.4. No thank you.

I feel pretty similar about the changes at VW. We bought a used 2020 Golf this year and are really happy with it so far. I was kind of tempted by the SportWagen, but we don't need the extra space right now. I'd consider that as our next vehicle, but here in Canada they discontinued that a few years back. They had the Alltrack which might still tempt me but this year they stopped selling that as well as the baseline Golf. So now the closest options to what I would want in the future are the ID.4, the Golf GTI, or the Jetta, none of which appeal to me!

I want to say companies that enshittify get what they deserve, but realistically we’ll just be left with fewer companies that are free to make worse products because there aren’t many alternative options. Google and Amazon both come to mind.

In other words, enshittification is a direct consequence of failure to enforce anti-trust law.

Volkswagen has always been garbage, long before any "late stage capitalism" influences. They're even worse than American cars (well, Chrysler is about as bad as VW). At least American companies embraced influences from Japan starting in the mid-70's, with Ford and GM partnering with Japanese companies, bringing some of the quality influences in from them.

I've worked on most brands since about 1975, VW has never changed quality. There's a reason VW is a meme in the repair biz - their electrics are so bad they always have a light out/dim. Similar to Chrysler in this way - they market shiny/features, but the systems are poorly designed.

Oddly Honda and Toyota don't have these issues, even today.