I started driving in 1982... and I can say with 100% certainty that cars of 2020 may not look all that different from cars of 1980, but under that skin of glossy steel and glass, they are very different. The engines are different (electronic fuel injection, timing and compression ratio monitoring), the transmissions are different (dual clutch, torque vectoring differential), the electronics are massively different, safety features are like out of sci fi (parking cameras, adaptive cruise control, anti-lock brakes, in-dash navigation, ). All that and the quality (fit & finish, reliability, durability) is hugely better.
A typical mid-market car of today would have been considered absurdly high quality and uber-luxurious in 1980. The difference is night and day.
I started driving around that time, too... in a 1950 Studebaker. Not only do I agree with everything you say about the difference between cars of today and 30 years ago, the magnitude of advances has accelerated too.
In the 50s, they were predicting that cars would be flying and nuclear powered by the 80s. That's what I think about with accelerating magnitude of advances. What we have now seems much more like the expected linear progress of 70 years, helped along by the computing revolution, where most of the actual magnitudes of progress has occurred.
A typical mid-market car of today would have been considered absurdly high quality and uber-luxurious in 1980. The difference is night and day.