It's easy to see both sides of this, but remember a lot of choices have been taken away based on the economic and regulatory realities. When it comes to comparing vehicles from "back in the day", or offerings in other countries, current North American "stripped" vehicles end up dealing with huge pressure from ever climbing fuel economy requirements, and customer demands. If you follow online bitching, you would assume that there is a great demand for manual transmissions, yet most product lines don't offer one for two reasons. First the REAL percentage of buyers who actually want one, and will step up and buy it, is so small that offering a manual transmission really isn't worth the hassle of engineering, tooling, production costs, and certification. Second, using CVTs and 8 or 9 speed automatics, fuel economy and emissions are actual better than with a manual trans. Other items like manual steering, or windows, are not going to happen for several reasons including a total lack of demand or weight considerations.
OTOH, the OP is correct, there is a ton of needless crap out there, but as a group of outliers, shopping for used products, sometimes it comes down to , "it is what it is". For many years I towed travel trailers and needed a larger SUV to do the job. Several times I bought older Tahoes and Suburbans. The odd part was that it was easier to find ridiculously loaded rigs for a good price, than more basic models. After a few years I just gave up worry about all the silly whistles and bells. For the most all the silly toys seemed to be durable and trouble free, and often if they failed, it just defaulted to being a usable, but less luxurious item. The seat warmer doesn't work anymore....... no worries.