How many buyers do you think actually walk away from cars due to shoddy cupholders? I think the amount of complaining indicates that most people go on to buy cars and then complain.
Exactly what happened to me. Not with cupholders, but with “car shoddiness by a thousand cuts” that you don’t realize until after you bought it, that isn’t “bad” enough to justify returning but also is too bad to tolerate using the car. For example, a visor that can’t fold out and to the side without significant collision with your head, and which also fails to protect most of the side window. Untraceable, hard-to-reproduce rattling sound. And a bunch of similar things I can’t think of at the moment.
Exactly what happened to me. Not with cupholders, but with “car shoddiness by a thousand cuts” that you don’t realize until after you bought it, that isn’t “bad” enough to justify returning but also is too bad to tolerate using the car. For example, a visor that can’t fold out and to the side without significant collision with your head, and which also fails to protect most of the side window. Untraceable, hard-to-reproduce rattling sound. And a bunch of similar things I can’t think of at the moment.
So the car had bad aesthetics/taste in the sense Paul Graham uses the term here.