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How can someone have passion...for a car that looks like every other car on the road, is a technology laden piece of “something” that can’t even be worked on?

This.
There was a time when people were passionate about railroads - because they were new, and had distance-shrinking speed and power.
In fact, as a side note, I enjoyed reading an old socialist tract because it argued so assiduously that a worker’s council could help make the right decision on whether/when to transition from the production of steam locomotives to diesels! It was written just as the airlines were about to eliminate the market for long-distance rail passenger service . . .
When you and I were young, Maggie, automobiles were still the big thing. Detroit was at its zenith - but the reality was that if you were just starting out, it was time to go into software/digital electronics. Not cars - or airplanes, either.
Another funny side note to the issue of knowledgeability of auto salesmen:
I was buying a minivan and the salesman was pretty good - but when he got to the point in his pitch where he explained the controls for the A/C it was plain that he was in over his head. As a mechanical engineer, I waved him off and explained A/C operation to him.
When you turn on the A/C, the fan has to be on or the evaporator will frost up. He knew that much, I think. But I explained that the A/C compressor automatically works as hard as it needs to to chill the evaporator to a set temperature which is colder than you actually want the air in your environment to be. If it were designed to chill the evaporator only down to the temperature you want to live in, the relative humidity would skyrocket, probably to 100%.
But to understand A/C operation, the first rule is that the A/C works as hard as you tell it to according to how high you select the speed of the fan. Because air moved thru the evaporator warms the evaporator - and the compressor automatically works to keep that temperature down. The higher the fan speed, the harder the compressor will work.
When you first start up the A/C, the car will ordinarily be hot, and you will be fine with the cold blast of 100% humidity air that the A/C puts out. But if the cabin of the car gets comfortably cool, there can be a reason to actually add heat to the air coming out of the evaporator to reduce the humidity in the car (of course that heat comes from the engine coolant, so it doesn’t cost anything).